POLICY POSITION ON THE
MANAGEMENT OF OFF-ROAD VEHICLES IN THE SOUTHERN ROCKIES

February 20, 2002

While we recognize that many off-road vehicle recreationists relish the natural values of our public lands and practice responsible riding, motorized recreation by its very nature causes disproportionate impacts on the environment and other uses. We are concerned about the growing impacts that motorized recreation in the Southern Rockies is having on fish and wildlife, vegetation and streams, the wild character of the backcountry, and the quality of other recreationists' experiences. As such the groups of the Southern Rockies Forest Network endorse the following principles for management of motorized recreation (defined as dirtbikes, all-terrain vehicles, and four-wheel drive vehicles, collectively referred to as off-road vehicles (ORVs)) on our public lands.

Travel Management Planning

• Federal agencies should expeditiously establish an ORV management system on all public lands that allows ORV use only on designated routes that are clearly signed as open and that eliminates cross-country travel.
• Federal agencies should designate, construct or upgrade ORV routes only after an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement fully analyzes impacts (direct, indirect, and cumulative) pursuant to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); this includes actions that alter the designated use or character of the route, or the area in which the route(s) is located. No new ORV recreation routes should be designated or constructed until and unless all existing routes in the area have been subject to NEPA and monitoring plans are in place.
• Federal agencies should plan motorized recreation with the ecological needs of the land as the priority.
• Agencies should plan motorized route systems, not only on the project level, but also on a landscape scale, taking into consideration habitat fragmentation and cumulative impacts.
• Agencies should establish and retain Quiet Use Areas in both roaded and roadless lands, recognizing that motorized users make up a small proportion of the user population but have disproportionate impacts on the land and other users.

Minimizing Environmental Impacts

• Federal agencies should designate ORV routes only where it has been shown that the routes will not cause significant adverse environmental impacts.
• In general, federal agencies should prohibit ORV recreation on all wilderness-quality lands and sensitive landscapes, including roadless areas, Wilderness Study Areas, citizen-proposed wilderness areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Resource Natural Areas, wetlands and riparian zones, wildlife corridors, important plant and animal habitat, natural heritage program sites, and areas with concentrations of archaeological and historic resources.

Designating Interim Travel Management

• In designating interim management, merely adopting all existing routes as open is not an acceptable interim travel policy and creates perverse incentives for users to illegally pioneer new routes.
• On national forest lands, during the interim period prior to designation of ORV routes through a travel management plan (TMP), the only routes that should be open to ORV use are those that have previously been authorized through a public planning process pursuant to NEPA. All other routes should be considered unauthorized and closed to ORV use and be so labeled. Because the creation of routes without explicit federal agency approval and NEPA review is illegal, user-created routes should be labeled as "unauthorized" instead of "existing" to identify accurately their legal status and avoid confusion on the part of the public about their legitimacy.
• On Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, during the interim period prior to designation of ORV routes through a TMP, the BLM should temporarily designate a select number of routes that provide for adequate travel and recreation opportunities while also creating incentives for affected interests to work actively to help complete final travel designations.

Implementing Travel Management

• Federal agencies should exercise existing legal and regulatory mandates that give them the authority to address adverse ORV impacts, such as issuing emergency route closures or adapting management to mitigate impacts, and indeed are compelled to take action wherever significant resource damage or illegal ORV use is occurring.
• Congress and the federal agencies should make ORV management a priority by reprioritizing agency budgets to fund fully the completion and implementation of travel management plans, route signing and law enforcement, and closure and rehabilitation of illegal, redundant, and environmentally adverse routes.
• Federal agencies should ensure that monitoring, enforcement, and maintenance programs are funded, implemented and sufficient to provide ecological and cultural resource protection and minimize user conflicts.
• Federal agencies should establish threshold conditions for triggering management changes and/or allowing continued ORV use such as the following:
  • ORV use remains on designated routes;
  • ORV users comply with seasonal closures;
  • ORV resource damage stays within established parameters;
  • Recreation conflicts are minimal; and
  • Travel signs remain intact and in place.
• Federal and state legislatures and the agencies should enhance mechanisms to improve ORV user compliance including:
  • More effective law enforcement;
  • Adequate presence of management personnel in field;
  • Stiffer penalties for violations of law;
  • Required user education on responsible riding;
  • Required visible license plates on all ORVs; and
  • Effective signing of ORV travel routes.