Off-roading Clashes with Ranching in New Mexico (and Utah)

The Alamagordo Daily News published an article today on off-road vehicle conflicts with New Mexico's traditional ranching culture, as well as other lower-impact land users. "NM Tradition Clashes With Off-Road Users on Public Land," quotes ranchers and residents of the Glorieta Mesa area on the impacts they have seen from ORV use.

Dan Patterson of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has an especially good quote: ''The truth is, there's maybe a few good apples who are trying to get a handle on this thing and far too many off-roaders who have just a callous disregard for the rights of other people on public lands.''   Here in southern Utah, where I live, I hear regularly from ranchers that have had massive problems with off-road vehicles. People who have worked the same lands for generations, through drought and fire and price drops, now have a new problem to add to the list: off-roaders who come out to "tear it up" on public lands.   About an hour's rough drive from Moab, there is a formerly beautiful spring-fed complex of red sand dunes and canyons, near the Green River. In recent years, this area has become a sacrifice zone for destructive off-roading. In addition to destroying the area's springs, delicate desert vegetation, and several Native American archaeological sites, ORVs are wreaking havoc on the local ranch. This is from two taped interviews with the family that has run that ranch for three generations:

"What we’ve witnessed with the four-wheelers, the ATVs, the motorcycles…you can go out there right now, you can find human waste, toilet paper, bags of garbage, trash, bottle piles, can piles, you can see where they have girdled the cottonwood trees that survive in this ecosystem outhere and leave 'em to die and come back again and use ‘em for firewood. With the higher-powered machines that they have now…they didn’t used to be so high power, but now they’ll leave strips for hundreds of yards where they completely tear out every bit of vegetation that they come across. And this is a desert area, it takes years and years for that stuff to even think about trying to grow back.   "They have caused a lot of problems...people would like to get out and enjoy this peaceful and quiet beauty. But they have no noise restrictions on the machines that they bring out here, you can hear them for miles. There’sat times up to a hundred individual camps..."   "We live here, so we know where they’re coming from. Colorado has put a lot of restrictions on what trails people can use, the places they can go, making sure they’re licensed, so on and so forth. The BLM from Utah funnels ‘em out here, I guess because it’s far enough from Moab that they’re not concerned about it... They buy all their gas in Colorado, they buy all their groceries, everything. They don’t make one dime’s worth of investment here in this area. They come out here, ride around, tear things up, do whatever they want, leave their garbage, and then go home."   “I would say the damages are long-term. They've killed a lot of the trees. They ride up and down everywhere they can, so nothing can grow or hold like it used to. It's totally different than it used to be. I flew over the the wash at Easter, and I almost cried. I'd ridden that thing on horseback my whole life, but it just looked like a spiderweb of trails. I could not believe it. Trails everywhere, weaving in and out all through that rough country. It just looked like a maze. Where are the bighorn sheep going to go? I haven't seen the bighorns there for two years. You used to be able to go to Busted Butte and see the bighorns, every time."   “We've had them run cows to death while they're calving, and we lose the cow and the calf. You can't keep cows in the wash at all—the ATVs run 'em out. No way. The best springs in our whole permit are in that wash.”“The local law enforcement agencies complain that they don’t have enough manpower to police the areas surrounding Moab. People know that when they come out into this beautiful desert. You’ll see trails running right around those 'restricted area' markers. You’ll see the signs pulled out, or run over. If they try to keep people from running up and down a hill , the hill next to it will be all torn up. You can’t afford to let them to do that. If we do, it’s going to be a big mistake for this area."