Off-road-vehicle bans seem to please no one

“We have followed a very careful, very methodical approach that takes into account the interests and viewpoints of the many stakeholders,” Mr. Villalvazo says in an interview at Eldorado Forest headquarters in Placerville, Calif. “It’s a balan­cing act and we’re trying to do what’s right for all involved.” The new map, he says “is in no way the end of this process.”

But Furnish and others say it shows the Forest Service’s national push on ORVs is just a “paper exercise” that protects damaging activities while doing little to fund new off-road restrictions.

“We’re concerned about that, too,” says James Bedwell, director of recreation for the US Forest Service in an interview. “We don’t want to do just a paper exercise, we know there’s a lot of management and education that has to take place. We do believe we are taking the right first steps.”

Budgets already too small to maintain all routes

Standing by an Eldorado trail whose “no vehicles” sign has obviously been driven over recently, Ms. Schambach says the Forest Service has approved more trails for off-road use than it has manpower or budget to manage.

Indeed, federal data for other national forests strongly suggests that the number of miles of off-road vehicle trails being approved will come on top of already strained Forest Service transportation-management budgets – if there is any extra funding at all to oversee the new trails that are designated.

In the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona, for instance, the budget for maintaining routes can support just one-third of the existing routes, according to that forest’s most recent transportation analysis. In the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, annual road maintenance funding is $5.7 million, though it has deferred maintenance needs of

$30 million and can afford only 9 percent of its road system, another report found.

“We don’t expect a national forest [official] to say: ‘We can only afford this percent, so we’re shutting down,’ ” says Cyndi Tuell, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group. “But we don’t expect them to add a bunch more trails, either.”

Off-road enthusiasts see a mixed bag, too. Richard Yeargan is former president of the Motherlode Rockcrawlers, a four-wheel-drive group that has helped Eldorado Forest managers maintain a number of trails.

“We haven’t had any of our adopted trails cut off, but there are a lot of places we just can’t go anymore,” he says. “It really upsets me, the loss of all the little spur roads where we used to go camping.”

That means the 35 families in his Motherlode group must now park and lug their gear to a remote site – or camp near the motorized trail to which their vehicles are now restricted.

“If you want to camp now, you have to do it right next to the trail with motorcycles, jeeps, and stuff driving right by your tent,” Mr. Yeargan says.

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