I had the opportunity to meet with Colorado’s Representative Doug Lamborn recently, along with stakeholders from other groups supporting the proposed Browns Canyon Wilderness Area in Chaffee County, near Salida. It’s encouraging that Representative Lamborn took it upon himself to initiate this meeting, and he said we made “a strong case” for Browns Canyon, but he also met with representatives from groups opposed to the new wilderness area.
Their primary concern seems to be “access,” mainly for off-highway vehicles (OHVs). In 2003, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth confirmed the damage and antagonism being caused by OHV use on our public lands: “We’re seeing more and more erosion, water degradation, and habitat destruction. We’re seeing more and more conflicts between users. We’re seeing more damage to cultural sites and more violation of sites sacred to American Indians. And those are just some of the impacts.”
Slow attrition follows road and trail development like its shadow. Wherever there is a road or OHV trail, there is slowly spreading damage, and OHV abuse has become a modern-day Hydra for public lands managers (The Hydra of Greek mythology was a many-headed monster Hercules fought and killed. After each head was cutoff, two others replaced it), as verified by Forest Service Chief Bosworth.
Today in America there are 7 million miles of roads; in our National Forest System alone, more than 460,000 miles — enough to circle the earth 18 times. Just to put that figure into perspective, the Interstate Highway System is only 43,717 miles long. Some 270,000 miles of roads and routes are legally available to off-road vehicles nationwide, over six times the length of the interstate highway system. Meanwhile, at least 60,000 miles of unauthorized routes zigzag through public forests. Access has become excess.
Former Forest Service and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation biologist Alan Christensen states flatly: “Roads are the single biggest problem on the landscape…It’s well documented and everything else pales in comparison. It’s simple biology and common sense. Roads are the delivery system for people to invade habitat. If a wildlife population is weakened by land management decisions — in this case motorized access — you’ll have higher losses from everything: winterkill, predation, hunting, accidents, and disease.”
Unfortunately, makers of all-terrain vehicles have found a strong ally in the National Rifle Association (NRA), which openly opposes the protection of roadless areas and designation of wilderness areas (the gold standard for wildlife habitat and hunting grounds). This in turn promotes increasingly brazen and oftentimes illegal OHV use, further degrading our dwindling backcountry wildlife habitats and hastening the demise of hunting as we know it.
A poll conducted in 2000 by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance found that 83 percent of hunters surveyed supported efforts to keep the remaining roadless areas in national forests the way they are. In a recent survey by the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, 54 percent of respondents indicated that off road vehicle disruption represented a barrier to their participation in hunting. And as Dan Heinz, retired Forest Service District Ranger says: “The backlash against ORV abuse is gaining momentum…They are ruining hunting everywhere, disrupting ranching operations, and any feeling of solitude.”
Durango-based hunter David Petersen concurs, “The motorized crowd may not be able to go everywhere they want sitting on their butts, but if they chase all the game out, gouge the meadows, muddy the streams and make all that noise, I have no reason to go there. They effectively have denied access to everyone who doesn’t want those things.” Petersen perceives that most organized ATV groups would like to police the bad apples that give them a bad name, but that no real action ever takes place. “Every year, it gets much worse.”
According to recent studies, only about 6 percent of national forest visits involve the recreational use of off-road vehicles. However, this small percentage of users has an incredibly destructive impact on the landscape and the quality of recreation for other public lands users.1 A now years-old report by the Council on Environmental Quality stated that, “ORVs have damaged every kind of ecosystem found in the United States.”2
Uncontrolled off-roading also affects private landowners. Kiley Miller and John Rzeczycki, who own 160 acres south of Moab, Utah, are fighting an ongoing court battle to keep off-highway vehicles from crossing their property on an old mining road. “We use four-wheelers ourselves to work on the ranch,” says Rozman. “But public land is supposed to be multiple use, and the problem with OHVs is that they preclude every other use. You can’t run cows out there with them tearing around, people don’t want to bike or hike near them, so where’s the multiple use?”
Yes, we all use vehicles to visit our favorite spots to hike, camp, hunt, fish, or just relax, but over 90 percent of us do our actual exploring on foot. What about our rights? Besides, wilderness areas are open and accessible to all, only certain “uses” are limited. One of the most important purposes of wilderness is to provide people with a broad array of outdoor recreational opportunities. These include backpacking, hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, horseback riding, mountaineering and rock climbing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, wildlife viewing, photography, canoeing, and kayaking.
The proposed wilderness in Colorado, Browns Canyon, is a limited core area of 20,000 BLM and Forest Service acres nearly surrounded by encroaching roads and OHV trails characterized by over-use and abuse. The proposed Browns Canyon Wilderness is literally an island of still wild public lands that is easily traveled by foot and horseback and provides a high quality hunting experience.
It is readily accessed by a number of roads north, south and east, and the adjacent Pike & San Isabel National Forests have 5,350 miles of motorized roads and trails. The surrounding Salida Ranger District offers over 476 miles of motorized roads and trails, whereas there are only 199 miles of trails designated for non-motorized users. As a result, most points within Chaffee County are less than 2 miles from a motorized route. In fact, no low elevation BLM lands have wilderness designation east of the continental divide in Colorado.
The Hydra is back, in the form of cross-country ORV two-tracks sprouting from main stems of thousands of miles of roads. But even Hercules found a way to stop the Hydra’s regrowth. Banning cross-country use, as the new Forest Service rule does, is one way to stop this ORV Hydra from growing beyond control.
— David Lien is the volunteer co-chair of Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Wherever there is a road or OHV trail, there is slowly spreading damage, and OHV abuse has become a modern-day Hydra for public lands managers.
Footnotes
1 Wildlands CPR. “Six Strategies for Success: Effective Enforcement of Off-Road Vehicle Use on Public Lands.” 2007.
2 Minnesota Department of Natural Resources-Ecological Services Division. “Assessing the ecological impacts of ATV trail construction and use on public lands: factors to consider and a review of literature.” Internal Peer Review: 10/3/02