Colorado

Bill Grant

Following a public meeting last Friday, attended mostly by off-highway-vehicle club members, the Colorado State Parks Board delayed its final recommendation on the dispersal of funds collected from OHV registrations until its July meeting. Hopefully, this delay will allow time for the board to consider carefully proposals from outside, as well as from within, the OHV community.

Not that the advocates of OHV reform have been silent. Over 40 Colorado organizations, representing more than 110,000 members, have petitioned the board for OHV reform. These groups represent Colorado outdoor sportsmen,  conservationists, scientists, rural landowners and law enforcement personnel, as well as elected officials and non-motorized trail users. Early this year, the board received over 4,000 e-mails, letters and telephone calls in support of reform in a single month.

Bobby Magill

Gene Iley of Fort Collins spends a lot of time riding the off-highway vehicle trails in the Red Feather Lakes area, North Park and the other OHV hot spots of Northern Colorado.

Many of the trails he rides, he said, were built and are maintained with grant money from the Colorado State Parks OHV Program, which provides $3.5 million annually not only to OHV trail maintenance in state parks, but in national forests and on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land as well.

Colorado's newest legally designated Wilderness area, Dominguez Canyon, is 66,000 acres of rugged red rock canyon country along the Gunnison River just northwest of Delta.

Horseback rider Claude Rocchia says, "The natural beauty is spectacular. The wildlife, the sheep, ya know the tranquility of it, the red rocks, the vegetation."

Bobby Magill

A decision on the legitimacy of several environmental groups' request to use the Endangered Species Act to keep the Poudre Canyon's rare Arapahoe snowfly alive could come within 30 days.

The environmental groups, including the Save the Poudre Coalition and other national organizations, this week filed an emergency petition with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the snowfly, possibly affecting a popular trail in Young's Gulch and a major trail-building project in Elkhorn Creek south of Red Feather Lakes.

Toni Steffens

CREEDE—The Creede Town Board held a meeting to discuss using the railroad right of way through town as an ATV trail.

Currently ATVs are not allowed within the city limits. The Mineral County Sheriff’s office said that persons riding their machines in the town could be ticketed, but it does usually depend on the situation. 

Dave Lien

I grew up hunting, hiking, fishing, camping, trapping and canoeing amidst America's national forests and other public lands, and I'm an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) user. I use ATVs while hunting each fall and understand the attraction of these motorized vehicles.

There are thousands of miles of roads and trails across Colorado and the nation open for ATV use, but we have a responsibility to maintain a balance out in the woods. Right now, I'm here to tell you, that balance is far out of whack. The result: an extensive and growing network of unauthorized, user-created ATV routes that crisscross the landscape and damage critical wildlife habitat.

The nearly decade-long court battle over a road-building ban in national forests took its latest twists and turns in Denver yesterday. That's where the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the appeal of a lawsuit filed by the state of Wyoming that seeks to overturn the 2001 Clinton-era roadless ban.

That ban provided blanket protections for some 58 million acres of rugged, forest lands - including more than four million in Colorado.

R. Scott Rappold

Environmentalists and ATV owners, hikers and dirt bike riders — the groups have a long history of being at each other’s throats in Colorado.

At least 180 of them came out Wednesday night for a public meeting on a U.S. Forest Service proposal to limit off-highway vehicle use in the heavily used Rampart Range northwest of Colorado Springs, where 125 miles of illegal trails exist.

Off-road vehicles could be gone from parts of Pike National Forest under a plan by forest managers.

Forest managers say off-road vehicles such as dirt bikes and ATVs are damaging the forest in parts of Douglas County. Especially at risk is owl research in the area.