During his October 23 show, Stephen Colbert of the Cobert Report aired this hilarious five-minute take on the gas-price crunch, it's dampening affect on off-road recreation and the resiliency of Hummer-owners' love for their "sport." He introduced the piece by saying, "The Hummer is in danger, but one patriotic group is working to save our chariot of freedom." (05:01)
I was saddened, but not terrifically surprised to see a story today reporting on a Wildlife Conservation Society study regarding African elephants. With new road construction cutting into roadless areas in central Africa, the elephants have apparently learned to equate roads with poachers. As a result, the elephants are basically trapped into smaller and smaller areas of habitat. As you can probably imagine, it turns out that elephants need pretty large areas of unroaded land to thrive.
I came across this article about a man who wanted to "do some hill climbing" in Eastern Washington and ended up driving up a popular hiking trail in a county park. Sure, it was dark (it was 2 a.m. on a Saturday night) and maybe the "No Unauthorized Vehicles" sign was difficult to see, but when asked why he drove up there, he replied he was unaware it was illegal and questioned why anybody would want to walk up a hill.
Read the full article here.
It has been well established that some bird species will avoid roads. Scientists believe that noise created from highways may disrupt bird communications which are important for establishing territories and advertising their breeding status to potential mates.
On Friday, October 10, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a detailed letter taking the Forest Service and Plum Creek to task for their backroom dealings to renegotiate thousands of miles of road rights-of-way to allow for residential development on Plum Creek Lands.
I spent three days this week checking out hiking, biking, equestrian and motorized trails on Forest Service lands in Montana and Idaho. I was participating, along with a handful of activists representing each of the trail user groups mentioned above, in a Forest Service “field listening session” about the agency’s revision of their trail classification system.
Utah's governor, Republican John Huntsman, told the Salt Lake Tribune in a recent interview that he had witnessed extensive ORV abuse in Utah, and that "a crackdown is coming." The Trib's editorial cartoonist, Pat Bagley, responded with this excellent illustration (the little dude in the corner is supposed to be the governor):
The article:
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