Monday, November 08, 2004
Off-road vehicles run over trail law
Rangers are overwhelmed by the onslaught, which is tearing up public lands in Colorado and nationwide.
By Steve Lipsher
Denver Post Staff Writer
Glenwood Springs - Improbably, the 35-foot recreational vehicle had negotiated its way around several road-blocking boulders, up a steep dirt hill and past a trench known as a "tank trap" meant to stop such excursions into the forest.
With the vehicle perched on the top of a rise overlooking a meadow choked with beaver ponds and willows, the RV's inhabitants - a half-dozen unshaven men in blaze-orange enjoying a hunting camp - said they didn't realize they had done anything wrong.
"This has obviously been closed," forest ranger Mike Kenealy calmly explained at the camp on a recent morning. "You can see people have been driving around (the barriers), but it doesn't make it OK for you to drive around it."
Kenealy is among an overwhelmed and overextended cadre of rangers fighting the increasing problem of illegal off- road vehicle use on national forests and other public lands, which typically is at its worst during hunting season.
"The problem comes particularly when suddenly someone shoots an elk back up in there, and they don't want to pack it out on their backs," Kenealy said of hunters who head into the high country each autumn.
"Many folks decide to take an ATV (all-terrain vehicle), especially if it's open terrain, then they tear up the meadows.
"With the technology of the quads and ATVs today, you can go almost anywhere, crawl up trees."
Quads are four-wheel all-terrain vehicles.
While a wayward recreational vehicle deep in the backcountry is a strange exception, the growing illegal use of off-road vehicles has been deemed by U.S. Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth as one of the greatest threats to forest health across the nation by carving new trails and contributing to erosion and the spread of noxious weeds.
"I've noticed quite a bit of that," said hunter John Montoya of Colorado Springs, legally parked in his pickup just off a road on a recent weekend in the Fourmile Creek area near Glenwood Springs. "I haven't seen any ATVs, but there's a pretty good ATV trail over there, and every day it gets a little thicker. It's a problem."
In the grassy meadow ahead of him, a muddy two-track clearly displays the tell-tale cleated tracks of knobby tires; 300 yards away, another group of hunters has illegally driven several pickup trucks to a camp secluded by an island of trees.
"I get comments from people saying: 'I've been driving up there for 40 years, and now you're hassling me?"' Kenealy said after citing one of the drivers in the group as a token punishment.
"My response is: 'Well, sir, 40 years ago, there were three of you. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of you."'
In fact, the number of off- road vehicles registered in Colorado has ballooned from 11,744 in 1990-91 to 88,988 in 2003-04, according to the state Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation.
As more ATV riders take to the woods, more complaints pour in to public-land managers about noise, vegetation damage, erosion, and webs of new trails and braided pathways.
"I personally believe - and I know the agency believes - that off-highway use is a bona fide form of transportation and an acceptable way for people to enjoy the national forest," Kenealy said.
But, he added, that use ends at the end of the road - a point that is merely a suggestion to some riders of ATVs, dirt bikes and rock-climbing vehicles.
"Six years ago, a single vehicle went off there, just to see what they could do," Kenealy said, pointing to an illegal track running parallel to a smooth dirt Forest Service road in the Fourmile Creek drainage. "You can still see it."
Finding the culprits, however, is a needle-in-the-haystack scenario. Kenealy estimates that rangers catch as many as 10 percent of the violators, but he acknowledges that each ranger is assigned such a large territory that a lawbreaker's chances of getting nabbed are pretty small.
"There aren't enough people on the ground to enforce even the basic rules," said Scott Kovarovics, director of the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization.
"Right now, nationally, there's one law enforcement officer for an average of 452,000 acres. There's no cop on the beat out there."
In some situations, rangers have been unable to track down culprits who drove from private property onto public land because no legal routes exist to the areas where the off-road use is occurring.
And when they do find violators, the punishment is light: Rangers may cite violators and even confiscate their vehicles, but a ticket carries a maximum penalty of only $75, and seizures are rare because the Forest Service generally has no place for impoundments and officials don't want to assume liability.
Even gates across closed roads haven't stopped the problem, as ATV riders simply have walked their machines under them or figured out ways around them.
"We were finding people with trucks were just backing up to standard-sized gates, putting a ramp over the gate and dumping their ATVs," Kenealy said, pointing out a spot where a second gate had been installed 100 yards farther down a closed road.
"I've had two instances with people driving around with oxyacetylene torches in the back of their trucks. We've had gates cut. We've had gates blown up with dynamite. We've had them pulled out, bent over - you name it."
Under a new policy now in place in the White River National Forest - but being considered nationwide - routes are closed to motor vehicles unless specifically designated as open, a subtle but significant change from the historic stance that areas were open unless specifically designated as closed.
Vehicles are allowed as far as 300 feet off designated routes, however, and those trails can appear permanent after just a few vehicle treads, giving those who follow the impression that they can go an additional 300 feet in a never-ending game of linkages, especially when damage from just a single off-road vehicle can appear as a viable path.
Dennis Larratt, president of the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition, acknowledges that a few bad actors have tarnished the image of ATV users, and he encourages riding only on legal trails in part out of fear of losing access to large areas of public land.
"Oftentimes, it's just the sight of somebody being where they're not supposed to be that is enough to cause problems for us. I can't say it always causes problems in terms of resource damage. I can say it causes problems in terms of image," he said.
**LINK**
Oak
Off-road vehicles run over trail law
Rangers are overwhelmed by the onslaught, which is tearing up public lands in Colorado and nationwide.
By Steve Lipsher
Denver Post Staff Writer
Glenwood Springs - Improbably, the 35-foot recreational vehicle had negotiated its way around several road-blocking boulders, up a steep dirt hill and past a trench known as a "tank trap" meant to stop such excursions into the forest.
With the vehicle perched on the top of a rise overlooking a meadow choked with beaver ponds and willows, the RV's inhabitants - a half-dozen unshaven men in blaze-orange enjoying a hunting camp - said they didn't realize they had done anything wrong.
"This has obviously been closed," forest ranger Mike Kenealy calmly explained at the camp on a recent morning. "You can see people have been driving around (the barriers), but it doesn't make it OK for you to drive around it."
Kenealy is among an overwhelmed and overextended cadre of rangers fighting the increasing problem of illegal off- road vehicle use on national forests and other public lands, which typically is at its worst during hunting season.
"The problem comes particularly when suddenly someone shoots an elk back up in there, and they don't want to pack it out on their backs," Kenealy said of hunters who head into the high country each autumn.
"Many folks decide to take an ATV (all-terrain vehicle), especially if it's open terrain, then they tear up the meadows.
"With the technology of the quads and ATVs today, you can go almost anywhere, crawl up trees."
Quads are four-wheel all-terrain vehicles.
While a wayward recreational vehicle deep in the backcountry is a strange exception, the growing illegal use of off-road vehicles has been deemed by U.S. Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth as one of the greatest threats to forest health across the nation by carving new trails and contributing to erosion and the spread of noxious weeds.
"I've noticed quite a bit of that," said hunter John Montoya of Colorado Springs, legally parked in his pickup just off a road on a recent weekend in the Fourmile Creek area near Glenwood Springs. "I haven't seen any ATVs, but there's a pretty good ATV trail over there, and every day it gets a little thicker. It's a problem."
In the grassy meadow ahead of him, a muddy two-track clearly displays the tell-tale cleated tracks of knobby tires; 300 yards away, another group of hunters has illegally driven several pickup trucks to a camp secluded by an island of trees.
"I get comments from people saying: 'I've been driving up there for 40 years, and now you're hassling me?"' Kenealy said after citing one of the drivers in the group as a token punishment.
"My response is: 'Well, sir, 40 years ago, there were three of you. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of you."'
In fact, the number of off- road vehicles registered in Colorado has ballooned from 11,744 in 1990-91 to 88,988 in 2003-04, according to the state Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation.
As more ATV riders take to the woods, more complaints pour in to public-land managers about noise, vegetation damage, erosion, and webs of new trails and braided pathways.
"I personally believe - and I know the agency believes - that off-highway use is a bona fide form of transportation and an acceptable way for people to enjoy the national forest," Kenealy said.
But, he added, that use ends at the end of the road - a point that is merely a suggestion to some riders of ATVs, dirt bikes and rock-climbing vehicles.
"Six years ago, a single vehicle went off there, just to see what they could do," Kenealy said, pointing to an illegal track running parallel to a smooth dirt Forest Service road in the Fourmile Creek drainage. "You can still see it."
Finding the culprits, however, is a needle-in-the-haystack scenario. Kenealy estimates that rangers catch as many as 10 percent of the violators, but he acknowledges that each ranger is assigned such a large territory that a lawbreaker's chances of getting nabbed are pretty small.
"There aren't enough people on the ground to enforce even the basic rules," said Scott Kovarovics, director of the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization.
"Right now, nationally, there's one law enforcement officer for an average of 452,000 acres. There's no cop on the beat out there."
In some situations, rangers have been unable to track down culprits who drove from private property onto public land because no legal routes exist to the areas where the off-road use is occurring.
And when they do find violators, the punishment is light: Rangers may cite violators and even confiscate their vehicles, but a ticket carries a maximum penalty of only $75, and seizures are rare because the Forest Service generally has no place for impoundments and officials don't want to assume liability.
Even gates across closed roads haven't stopped the problem, as ATV riders simply have walked their machines under them or figured out ways around them.
"We were finding people with trucks were just backing up to standard-sized gates, putting a ramp over the gate and dumping their ATVs," Kenealy said, pointing out a spot where a second gate had been installed 100 yards farther down a closed road.
"I've had two instances with people driving around with oxyacetylene torches in the back of their trucks. We've had gates cut. We've had gates blown up with dynamite. We've had them pulled out, bent over - you name it."
Under a new policy now in place in the White River National Forest - but being considered nationwide - routes are closed to motor vehicles unless specifically designated as open, a subtle but significant change from the historic stance that areas were open unless specifically designated as closed.
Vehicles are allowed as far as 300 feet off designated routes, however, and those trails can appear permanent after just a few vehicle treads, giving those who follow the impression that they can go an additional 300 feet in a never-ending game of linkages, especially when damage from just a single off-road vehicle can appear as a viable path.
Dennis Larratt, president of the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition, acknowledges that a few bad actors have tarnished the image of ATV users, and he encourages riding only on legal trails in part out of fear of losing access to large areas of public land.
"Oftentimes, it's just the sight of somebody being where they're not supposed to be that is enough to cause problems for us. I can't say it always causes problems in terms of resource damage. I can say it causes problems in terms of image," he said.
**LINK**
Oak
