Parks board endorses plan to monitor off-highway vehicle use

Bobby Magill

The Colorado State Parks Board last week endorsed a plan that will send more law enforcement officers into Colorado's backcountry this summer to keep tabs on reckless off-highway vehicle, or OHV, drivers.

The state's off-highway vehicle trails program provides grant funding to both state and federal lands and parks agencies to develop and maintain OHV trails statewide.

But after hearing many reports of errant OHV drivers taking their rigs off-trail and damaging sensitive wildlands, Colorado State Parks officials are beginning a fact-finding law enforcement mission to determine how serious reckless off-highway vehicle drivers' damage is and whether more rangers need to be permanently deployed to the backcountry.

The law enforcement pilot program will begin by midsummer and continue through the summer of 2011, said

Tom Morrissey, Colorado State Parks Trails Program manager.

The program will send law enforcement rangers into areas of Colorado's backcountry rumored to be hot spots of unlawful OHV use.

While those rangers are writing tickets, they'll assess how badly the errant off-roaders have damaged the land, Morrissey said.

"We're going to try to get to as many hot spots areas reported to us as we can," he said.

--

Source: http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20100511/NEWS01/5110331/Parks-board-endorses-plan-to-monitor-off-highway-vehicle-use

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites