Blog Archives for December, 2007

The Forest Service announced yesterday that it would close the popular Tellico ORV area during the winter wet weather season, and keep four of the most eroded trails closed for a year. Kudos to the great work and dedication of the groups who have been working for may years on this area, including Trout Unlimited, North Carolina Council, Trout Unlimited, Tennessee Council, PEER, Wild South, and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Jim Furnish, the retired deputy chief of the Forest Service and 2008 board president of Wildlands CPR, is helping lead a group of land managers who are calling for strengthening and fully enforcing rules that govern ATVs, dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles on public lands.

ORV groups have raised $25,000 to fund the court costs of a man who was ticketed for purposely leading a group of 9 ATVs into a Wilderness Study Area. The Canaan Mountain area, part of the Zion-Mojave proposed BLM wilderness in southwestern Utah's canyon country, has been closed to motor vehicles since 1980. However, some ORVers apparently feel that no one has the right to keep them from driving on anything they consider a road. Not surprisingly, the trail in question is claimed as a county "highway" under RS 2477.

The Rangers for Responsible Recreation and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility released a new survey of land managers in the Southwestern US documenting off-road vehicle problems on public lands. Those surveyed articulated the significance of the ORV problem on public lands, the significant impacts to public lands, and even the "atrocious" attitudes of ORV recreationists.  

The news about flooding in the Pacific Northwest was, unfortunately, all too familiar for the people living there, though the intensity of the storm was particularly bad this time around.  And as officials went out to assess the damage, the news started pouring in about how many roads and bridges were washed away by the storms.