Off-Roading Overabundance

Travel use changes in northeastern Washington

Just thirty or forty years ago, our more self-reliant predecessors had the freedom to access unimaginably vast tracks of unspoiled wilderness in which to hunt, fish, hike, camp, and explore amongst abundant native wildlife and relatively intact ecosystems.

That changed across much of the West’s public lands, not overnight or after a national public process like what is now unfolding around the off-road vehicle (ORV) issue, but one road, clearcut, and acre of wild country lost at a time. Roads were built, often on top of historic trails, to make logging and mining possible. And by the time the public had figured out that too many special places had been lost, ATVs, dirt bikes, and jeeps were already claiming riding rights on old logging roads, skid trails, and equestrian and hiking trails, disturbing and displacing traditional outdoorsmen and women who had already been pushed off of millions of acres of once pristine lands.

As the impact of rapidly expanding off-road vehicle use and abuse of public lands spreads across the nation, the cry for more “access” by off-road vehicle activists is increasingly repeated in the pages of newspapers, on angry web postings, and at public meetings. Those complaining the loudest cite their loss of freedom to ride roads and trails, even though in many cases they were riding their ATVs or other ORVs illegally or through loopholes in existing laws.

The often ignored irony in debates with off-roaders over their highly amplified freedom and access angst is that those of us who depend on big, wild country for our wilderness pursuits (not to mention the wildlife that need these areas to survive) are the ones who have lost the most, including access to millions of acres of what used to be wilderness only a generation ago. While it’s pointless to argue against core values like freedom, making a case for this historical perspective on issues of access in wranglings with off-roaders helps to reframe the debate.

Country singer Toby Keith makes another often conveniently forgotten point about the price of our beloved American freedoms in one of his patriotic songs: “Freedom don’t come free.” While Toby wasn’t talking about the so-called freedom to tear up our public lands with an expensive recreational vehicle, those pushing for more ORV freedoms need to acknowledge that the price for the access they’re asking for is more accountability.

Seeing beyond the handlebars

Most of the millions of everyday Americans understand the need to balance access with accountability, and that includes those who occasionally hop on an ORV for a family ride down a forest road or load up the dirt bikes or ATVs for a trip to the racetrack or designated ORV park. Many ORV activists, on the other hand, have a hard time seeing beyond their handlebars and accepting the destructive realities of their sport. For them it’s simply about pushing for ever more access. 

Over the past several decades, biologists and land management specialists have done their best to illustrate what’s at stake in the ORV debate. Countless scientific papers, studies, and opinions detail the harm off-road vehicles can do to our fish, wildlife, and lands. For those of us who have seen hillsides torn up and trout streams muddied beyond recognition or who have watched wildlife bolt at the approach of an off-road engine, the conclusions aren’t surprising. 
In addition to the unmistakable engine whine and roar displacing wildlife and people out for a quiet backcountry experience, the 4x4 power of ORVs to drive over the river and through the woods and just about anywhere else can tear up native plants and fragile soils, spread noxious weeds, and create ruts and erode hillsides, adding sediment to already struggling fish-bearing streams.

Off-road vehicle activists repeat the claims of the ORV group, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, that it’s only a few bad apples causing the damage that is increasingly tarnishing their sport. Recent surveys of riders at several locations in the West, however, indicate that the number is arguably much higher. A survey by the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation in 2000 found that some 50 percent of dirt bikers and ATV riders prefer to ride “off established trails” or did so on their last outing. That’s half the crate, not just two bad apples. More recently, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks surveyed ORV riders in 2006 and found that 23 percent always or sometimes ride cross-country even though off-route riding is against the rules.

The percent of unethical riders who actually pioneer the illegal, cross-country routes that are so damaging to the land and wildlife is only a small part of the equation. Once the tracks are set, they pave the way and encourage future use by inadvertent outlaws who happen upon them. Whether it’s ATVs going around a gate or barrier on a closed road, driving through the woods or a wetland for a more thrilling ride, or cutting a fence to cut across private property, the damage they can cause to the land, wildlife, and the experiences of traditional quiet recreationists and rural landowners is becoming exceedingly difficult for just about anybody to ignore, let alone justify.

Quiet communities get loud

Conservationists are not alone in sounding the alarm over out-of-control off-roading. A growing number of others, from private land owners, hunters and anglers, and law enforcement officials, have also begun to come forward to challenge illegal, poorly planned, and under-managed ORV use. Responsible Trails America, a broad coalition including those who love the backcountry, private property owners, and others who responsibly use off-road vehicles for work and recreation, is one grassroot response to the use and abuse. 

A report on the harm done by irresponsible off-roading on hunting and fishing published by the Izaak Walton League (one of the nation’s oldest conservation groups, founded in 1922) in 2007 determined that “A growing body of evidence in journals and other studies points to the conclusion that ORVs can negatively affect hunting and fishing.”

Idaho Fish and Game biologist Jake Powell summed up how increased motorized use can translate to a net loss for hunters in a recent press statement: “Which would the hunter rather give up, ATVs, or the opportunity to hunt every year? Hunters can’t have it both ways­—big bucks just aren’t found in areas with lots of roads and trails and lots of ATV access.”

In northeast Washington’s Ferry County, a groundswell of local citizens, many of whom live along rural county roads that were recently opened for recreational ORV use by county ordinance, have formed the Quiet Communities Coalition to challenge what they see as an irresponsible and illegal attempt to push unsafe ORV traffic, noise, dust, and increased risk of property vandalism onto local residents.

Reckless and illegal ORV riding has also become a burden on law enforcement officers who are unable to adequately enforce area closures and existing laws. In northeast Washington’s Statesman Examiner, Stevens County Sheriff Craig Thayer recently expressed his concerns about the new ordinance that opened up dozens of rural roads to recreational ORV use in his county: “This is an unfunded mandate…. I don’t have any additional resources for additional traffic enforcement.” On more remote lands on the neighboring Colville National Forest, there are only three enforcement officers now for the 1.1 million acre forest, despite widespread ORV abuses.

One of the top four threats to forests

Mounting ORV abuses across the country led former Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth to identify damage from ORVs as one of the four major threats to the nation’s system of national forest lands.

In a 2006 Earth Day speech, Bosworth explained the threat posed to public lands by off-highway vehicles (OHVs): “In recent decades, OHV use on national forest land has grown from next to nothing to something like 11 or 12 million visits a year. In 2004, there were more than 14,000 miles of user-created trails on national forest land alone. That’s a lot of damage, and it costs a lot to repair. We have got to do a better job of managing that use.”

The Forest Service responded with a national policy that set in motion both agency action on ORV planning and management, as well as a public process for off-road vehicle riders, conservationists, and quiet recreationists to help shape the future of ORV use and deal with past abuses on our public lands. Of course, like most public lands management processes, the outcome of what’s known as Travel Management Planning depends on who chooses to participate. In many isolated regions of the West, where vast public lands are at stake, public meetings and comment periods are often dominated by ORV interests bent on liberalizing recreational vehicle use while turning a blind eye to abuses and user conflicts. The Colville National Forest was one of the first forests in the nation to begin collaboratively implementing the travel management rule.

Home is where the heart is

The Kettle River Range in northeast Washington epitomizes America’s wild places, all of which used to be a lot bigger and wilder. The nationally significant inventoried roadless areas, or IRAs, along and adjacent to the Kettle Crest have been proposed for wilderness protection since Jimmy Carter was President, more than a decade before recreational four-wheelers hit the market.

As the years passed by without the steadfast protection wilderness designation provides, the remaining wild country has been slowly chipped away at, one road, stump, and clearcut at a time. At the same time, once-resident wildlife, including mountain caribou, Canada lynx, grizzly bears, wolves, wolverine, bull trout, and others have continued to disappear.

The timber wars are, finally, at truce in the Columbia Highlands, with people from all walks of life working to create jobs, restore forests, and protect wilderness. Wildlife including wolves, once gone from the land, are making a slow and natural comeback. Yet now here comes a small minority of local ORV interests to open new routes, legitimize illegal trails behind gates and closed areas, and connect them all to a massive regional ORV network.

This desire to convert the Kettle River Range into a motorized free-for-all is now the area’s newest and gravest threat, and a nightmarish vision to many who live here. It could bring hundreds of out-of-town off-roaders each weekend to tear up and down rural Ferry and Stevens County roads past homes, ranches, and farms on their way to the once-quiet campgrounds, fishing spots, trailheads, solitary hunting grounds, and previously peaceful and safe Forest Service roads.

Working it out

Conservation Northwest and other local conservation and non-motorized recreation leaders have attempted to work with off-roaders for the past several years to find routes on the Colville National Forest in the Columbia Highlands that law enforcement officials could enforce and law-abiding riders could use without abusing the land or wildlife.

We have supported opening 650 miles of mixed-use forest service roads for ORV travel and we’ve agreed to collaboratively consider additional routes that would help make a more usable, enforceable ORV system that would limit unwanted impacts. We have also proposed trading controversial trails —off-road trails in the heart of the Kettle River Range that harm wildlife and non-motorized recreation—for routes elsewhere. Unfortunately, lack of meaningful enforcement, as well as political maneuvering by ORV activists for nearly unlimited access, threatens to derail any hope for common ground. It’s a damn shame that doesn’t have to be. 

The competing visions for the Kettle River Range, quiet wildlife haven or motorized racetrack, contrast sharply. Yet there is clearly a precedent in northeast Washington for diverse stakeholders and even past adversaries to come together and work out a solution that could meet the needs of wildlife, wilderness recreationists, and ORV enthusiasts—a novel idea whose time has come.