News bites: off-road vehicles in Moab

Created by Laurel Hagen on May 1, 2009

In the wake of Jeep Safari and the onset of tourist season, more stories and letters have appeared in the Moab newspaper that display the effects of marketing an area as an off-road vehicle destination:

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SITLA asks for county’s help in curbing damage to mountain lands

by Craig Bigler
 

Officials with the state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) explained a travel planning process that the agency plans to undertake in the La Sal Mountains during a meeting with Grand County Council early this week. SITLA also asked for the council’s help in coordinating the effort with the public.

Kim Christy, director of the surface branch of SITLA, explained that “rampant off-highway abuse” is compromising the agency’s ability to manage its La Sal properties to protect resources. Read more.

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Moab Solutions cleans up Potato Salad Hill

by Ron Georg

Every day during spring break, Sara Melnicoff led volunteers on Potato Salad Hill, raking out tracks and picking up trash.

Melnicoff says that no matter how well she defines the route and parking areas, people will drive across the vegetation; no matter how pristine she leaves the ground, people will mistake it for an ashtray or trash bin...

Melnicoff also routinely builds small rock barriers to keep the impacts from spreading, but she said the rocks she can move by hand are hardly an impediment to vehicles designed to make easy work of Potato Salad Hill. Read more.

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We invited them…
Letter to the Editor
In response to “Moab Solutions cleans up Potato Salad Hill,” by Ron Georg: We invited them. Every year it is the same thing. Dead plants. It is going to happen.

Just watch the Jeep commercials. What is it that they do? Well, they drive off-road. So, to some that means if you have a Jeep then you should take it off-road. To some, off-road means off the road...

What price are we willing to pay for the path we have chosen? A few crushed plants for our livelihood? Or banishment of the ignorant? I think the cash will win.

Read more.

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And a letters to the editor from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Public Forum Letter
04/10/2009

I just read Rainer Huck's "Bill confiscates our public lands" (Opinion, April 5) regarding motorized access to public lands, and I'm fuming!

It would be nice if access didn't have to be restricted for these lands to remain unspoiled, if all users were responsible stewards who wanted future generations to have what we have.

I invite Huck to take those same friends to visit Mill Canyon, north of Moab, and see the after-effects of shared access. Then they would be truly "appalled at the waste and injustice." The San Rafael Swell is a maze of trails going everywhere and nowhere. Last time I stopped at Little Sahara it looked like a town's trash dump! These are just a few of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of areas across the state that have been blighted for the reckless pleasure of a few.

If Huck has his way, we will all have to say goodbye to these places, forever.


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