Rural Utah has been waking up to the drawbacks of promoting ORV tourism.

The small, remote town of Escalante in south-central Utah recently refused state funds to build an ORV staging area in a city park in their town. Citing concerns from highway safety to long-term ecological impacts, local residents asked the state not to grant the funds, which were requested by ORV boosters in the county seat to increase off-road tourism in scenic east side of the county. 

The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

"Escalante's canyon country will stay a little quieter because solitude seekers from the small southern Utah town successfully turned back a state grant to build a park for off-highway vehicles. 

"Nine Escalante and Garfield County residents whose families and tourist-dependent businesses were drawn by the high-desert wilderness condemned the plan in St. George on Tuesday at a Utah State Parks and Recreation Board meeting. They successfully argued against giving $43,500 to the city for a staging area that they feared would lure ever more four-wheel all-terrain vehicles. 

"Swarming the area with more motors and chewed-up trails will turn off visitors who come for the quiet isolation, especially European tourists who increasingly seek out Escalante, resident Nick Reznick said.""'Once it gets messed up with these ATV tracks, it's all over. They're not going to come back,' he told the board."

Read the full story at the Salt Lake Tribune [1]

Wildlands CPR has been working with residents of the communities around Boulder Mountain. For more information on our campaign here, go to our Utah campaign pages.