Responsible Motorized Recreation
in the Southern Rockies

Throughout the Southern Rockies, unregulated use of off-road vehicles (ORVs)—including dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, four-wheel drive vehicles, snowmobiles, and personal watercraft such as Jetskis—are posing serious threats to the tranquility, wildlife, and wild landscapes of our cherished public lands. Vast, user-created motorized trail systems have invaded the region's prized roadless areas, and have extended human influence into virtually all wildlands not protected by wilderness designation.

Erosion caused by ORVs at Pagoda Wetland in the White River National Forest (Kate Rogerson)

When not used conscientiously, ORVs cause habitat fragmentation, displace wildlife, degrade water quality, emit noise and air pollution, and exacerbate a growing infestation of noxious weeds. ORVs are also increasingly involved in user conflicts with private landowners and other recreationists. Hikers, hunters, equestrians, and other quiet trail users are finding that ORV traffic has effectively eliminated non-motorized recreation opportunities across hundreds of miles of traditional foot and pack trails, and is seriously degrading hunting opportunities on public lands.

Technological advances allow ORVs to penetrate farther, faster, and into steeper terrain with each passing year, placing our wild backcountry landscapes at increasing risk. While all types of recreation cause some resource impacts, the high-speed, cross-country capabilities of ORVs have made them a pervasive agent of landscape degradation and one of the greatest threats to our national forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands.

Brushy Creek Roadless Area in the Routt National Forest (Rocky Smith)

To address this proliferation of unchecked motorized recreation and its resultant impacts, SRCA's Responsible Motorized Recreation Committee works to promote balanced and ecologically sound management of ORVs on public lands in the Greater Southern Rockies (see detailed Policy Position paper). We do not seek to remove ORVs from all public lands. We do, however, aim to achieve balance in how our federal lands are managed by working through local, regional and national partnerships to:

• Raise public awareness of problems caused by unchecked ORV use, and build public support for responsible ORV use policies and behavior;
• Establish a mandatory "closed unless posted open" designated trail system, developed with thorough scientific environmental analysis and public input;
• Ensure reasonable protection of wilderness-quality lands and other sensitive landscapes, including such places as roadless areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Research Natural Areas, riparian zones, sensitive plant and animal habitat, wildlife travel corridors, and areas with important concentrations of archaeological and historic resources; and
• Provide resources for federal land management agencies to monitor natural resource conditions and enforce sensible ORV restrictions to protect against irresponsible resource damage, and work to obtain the necessary congressional funding to effectively do so.
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Current Issues

2005 Annual Quiet Commontion
On October 14 - 16 in Crestone, Colorado, citizen activists and local experts will gather for the 3rd annual Quiet Commotion. Over the course of the weekend, human-powered recreationists will gather to exchange experiences, share inspiration, and learn skills from national experts to enable effective advocacy for protecting the quiet non-motorized experience in the places they cherish. In addition to networking opportunities and field trips to BLM lands in the San Luis Valley, the forum gives local activists a chance to explore strategies, exchange ideas, and recharge their energy on the issues.

Click here for more information and registration forms.

Dirt bikes on BLM lands in Colorado (The Wilderness Society)

Advocating for Quiet Use
SRCA is working with a variety of quiet outdoor enthusiasts including hunters, anglers, mountain bikers, horseback riders, hikers, climbers, and skiers to collaboratively ensure that land managers protect and restore the quiet backcountry experience on public lands in the Southern Rockies. In the face of rapidly increasing motorized use and damage, it is critical that quiet users work together to protect our backcountry heritage. We are concerned that travel management planning to date has focused solely on what routes will be open or closed to motorized use, and not the larger question of creating and maintaining areas of quiet use on the landscape level. Come join us in learning more about how to protect our wild and quiet backcountry.

For more information, please contact Aaron Clark, SRCA's Responsible Motorized Recreation Coordinator at 303-650-5818 x113, or aaron@quiet-trails.org.

Partnerships with the Motorized Community for Responsible Recreation
Since 2002, a SRCA representative has been on the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition (COHVCO)-Stay the Trail educational campaign committee working to reinforce responsible motorized recreation in an effort to minimize resource damage on public lands. In the summer of 2005, SRCA groups will partner with various motorized clubs to restore damaged and illegal motorized play areas in an effort to build a strong land and stewardship ethic among all recreationists. Be sure to visit our resource page for related information.

Travel Management Planning
SRCA is working with land managers and other quiet recreational organizations in the region to develop more responsible policies for travel and recreation management, including limiting motorized and mechanized travel to designated system routes that are marked as open to these respective uses. We believe this is the only reasonable approach to managing recreation on public lands and curtailing the unchecked trend of illegal route creation that is seriously damaging wildlife and watersheds.

Cherokee Park Roadless Area in Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest (Eric Swanson)

We are thus actively engaged in numerous priority planning processes on both Forest Service and BLM lands, making significant strides in promoting more ecologically sound travel policies. We are working with coalition partners, local citizens, and other allies to achieve balanced travel management plans in the White River National Forest, the Arkansas River corridor managed by the Royal Gorge BLM office, the San Luis Valley BLM lands and all of the San Juan area public lands including both Forest Service and BLM lands. SRCA's ORV focus includes better management of snowmobiles in the winter, as well. For example, we are working with Friends of the Routt Backcountry to address winter user conflicts on Rabbit Ears Pass, Hahn’s Peak, and Buffalo Pass in the Routt National Forest. Our past efforts in balancing recreational snowmobile use have paid off, as well—SRCA's efforts in Rocky Mountain National Park resulted in the National Park Service announcing in 2003 that it was closing Trail Ridge Road to snowmobiles, while allowing snowmobile use on an equally beautiful route across Park land that connects users to snowmobile routes in the adjacent national forest.

We continue to work with the BLM on important inventory and planning activities in the Sand Wash Basin in NW Colorado, the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, and Bang’s Canyon near Grand Junction. All told, there are over 17 travel planning processes pending on public lands in the Southern Rockies.

Although litigation is a last resort, we are forced to go forward in court on occasion, especially when motorized user groups file lawsuits challenging even the most needed and least restrictive agency decisions. In the past few years, SRCA organizations have stood up several times to uncompromising and extreme motorized groups, intervening on behalf of the federal agencies to support and defend proper and balanced travel management decisions. We won in COHVCO v. Routt National Forest, where the federal district court ruled for the Forest Service and SRCA groups as the interveners to uphold the Service's decision to establish designated routes for motorized vehicles and close damaging routes to improve wildlife habitat. This case is valuable as precedent because it affirms the Forest Service's authority to close ill-considered and destructive motorized routes without first doing a tedious and unnecessary site-specific analysis for each individual closure.

Erosion caused by ORVs at Four Mile Creek in the San Isabel National Forest (Kate Rogerson)

Motorized Events
With the increase in number and magnitude of motorized events such as enduros, motorcycle trials, jeep jamborees, rock crawls, and races on public lands, we initiated an effort to monitor these events to ensure that adequate environmental review occurs, as well as to organize citizens to oppose this destructive activity when the impacts cannot be effectively controlled. In 2001, we were successful in convincing the Forest Service to reassess the wisdom of permitting the Buffalo Peaks Hill Climb without up-front assurances of proper resource protection. We also prevented the unprecedented issuance of a five-year permit to Bombardier, Inc., a snowmobile manufacturing company, for high-speed, high-altitude testing of new prototypes adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park.

In recent years, we have monitored two motorcycle enduro races—the Calamity Pass Enduro in the Routt National Forest and the Del Norte Enduro in the Rio Grande National Forest—in which hundreds of dirt bike racers competed on a 60-150 mile course through backcountry National Forest lands. Through SRCA's organizing we encouraged the Forest Service to insist on a reclamation bond from the race sponsors, to ensure the races occurred on designated routes only, and to enforce other common-sense mitigation measures in the race permits. We have also monitored ATV tour events, extreme jeep routes and motorcycle trials events. Through written and verbal communications with the San Isabel National Forest, we convinced the Forest Service in 2003 that the law required an ATV tour organizer to apply for a permit to ensure proper control of such an activity. In 2005, we succeeded in preventing a motorcycle trails event in the Gunnison NF near Pitkin, CO when—based on our past trails event monitoring and local organizing efforts—local citizens and groups overwhelmingly opposed the event. Currently, due to our efforts at bringing awareness to the public and the media, the popular yet severely damaged Carnage Canyon Extreme Jeep Route is proposed for closure by the Boulder Ranger District because all attempts to control this area have failed. Because of our involvement, the agencies have become much more committed to properly analyzing environmental provisions in the permitting processes and to proper monitoring and follow-up after these events. We will continue to follow motorized events in the next few years to ensure environmental compliance and improve special use permitting processes for these events, including better public comment opportunities.

Snowmobiles in line to enter Yellowstone National Park (Jeff Henry)

If you have an interest in becoming involved in these grass-roots efforts at controlling irresponsible motorized recreation and securing places to experience natural sights, sounds and smells, please contact Aaron Clark, SRCA's Recreation Director, at 303-324-7031 or aaron@quiet-trails.org.