WAY more than “a few bad apples”

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.

Organized by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Furnish and other Rangers for Responsible Recreation went to Washington DC this week to release survey results of land managers charged with managing off-road vehicle use. The group is calling on Congress to require federal public lands agencies to increase enforcement capacity and make penalties for violations meaningful.

Sixty-nine BLM and Forest Service rangers and supervisors responded to the survey. Respondents generally concluded that the off-road vehicle problems are going from bad to worse: nearly three out of four (74%) say that off-road abuses “are worse than they were five years ago” while fewer than one in six (15.2%) believe the situation is improving.

Those surveyed support tougher rules that are fully enforced: almost two out of three think current penalties for ORV violators are not tough enough.

"A $25 to $50 fine just doesn't serve much purpose. It's not much of a deterrent," Furnish offered the Land Letter. "But if you're able to give out a $500 ticket and seize their vehicle, now you've got their attention."

Furnish didn’t pull any punches with his assessment of the problem, as quoted by the Deseret Morning News: "There seems to be an entrenched renegade element within the off-highway vehicle community," he said. "I would characterize the attitude as 'we're going to go where we want, we're going to do what we want, we don't care."'

Reaction from off-road pressure groups was defensive and dismissive, as best summarized by in an article that appeared in the Grand Junction Sentinel (Colorado):

PEER is trying to demonize OHV users with its survey in time for travel management plans to be updated, said Brian Hawthorne of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an OHV advocacy group.

OHVs should be restricted to designated trails, he said, but PEER shouldn’t influence that planning process by publicizing a survey that can’t be taken at face value.

“We laugh at these people,” Hawthorne said.

John Martin of the Western Slope ATV Coalition said he believes the survey isn’t credible.

“Real statistics and real studies and real science are worth really dealing with,” he said. “This kind of nonsense should have been released on the first of April.”

Two reflections on this passage:

1. Mahatma Gandhi has a famous quote relevant to Hawthorne’s dismissal: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

2. With the help of board member Chris Kassar of the Center for Biological Diversity, Wildlands CPR recently reviewed three state-level surveys commissioned by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Utah Division of Parks & Recreation, and a diverse Colorado coalition with heavy involvement by off-road groups.

These studies contradict the myth that “it’s just a few bad apples causing the problems.” They reveal that off-road vehicle recreationists prefer to ride off of legal routes in order to travel cross-country.

• Colorado Coalition for Responsible OHV Riding, 2001 -- as many as two-thirds of adult users go off the trail occasionally, even though they know it’s not “correct” off-road vehicle behavior.
• Utah Division of Parks & Recreation, 2000 – 49-50 percent of dirt bikers and ATV riders prefer to ride “off established trails” or did so on their last outing.
• Montana state Fish, Wildlife & Parks, 2006 -- 23 percent always or sometimes ride cross-country even though off-route riding is against the rules. Over 58% have traveled off of legal routes to retrieve downed game.

The Colorado study concludes, “In a ‘nutshell,’ it is our premise that further information and education per se – will not result in substantial behavioral change” (emphasis in original). "Education" is the solution pushed off-roaders as the way to solve the "bad apples" problem.  Even the conservative editorial board of the Deseret Morning News doesn't buy that lie. In an editorial today titled "Boost Penalties on ORV louts," the Utah paper supported calls for stiff enforcement and meaningful penalties. Here's the lead:

On Wednesday, Deseret Morning News reporter Joe Bauman reported on a survey that catalogued the abuses by off-road vehicle users in Utah and other Western states. And the piece brought up an age-old rule of society: If you can't behave responsibly, your freedom needs to be limited.  

Read the full review of these "bad apple" surveys here. Click here to read about the report Wildlands CPR published earlier this year on enforcement strategies that work.