Parks board to consider changes to OHV Program

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.

"This is how we maintain and develop the trails in Colorado because the Forest Service really doesn't have the money to do it properly," said Iley, a member of the Northern Colorado Trail Riders and the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition, which advocates for motorized vehicle rights to many areas of Colorado's backcountry.

"This is a program that's been working really, really well for years and years," he said.

But Iley is concerned things might soon change as the Colorado State Parks Board considers changes to the program at its meeting Thursday and Friday in Woodland Park.

"There's a ton of anecdotal evidence, mainly from conservation groups, claiming that some irresponsible OHV riders are taking their rigs off the trail and tearing up the land in wild areas all over Colorado," said Tom Morrissey, trails program manager for Colorado State Parks.

"There were allegations that suggested that there wasn't enough being done with law enforcement and remediation of (unauthorized OHV use)," Morrissey said.

The State Parks Board, he said, could soon decide to authorize a fact-finding mission this summer to figure out how much land has been torn up by errant OHVs going off trail statewide.

If there is sufficient evidence that a problem exists, the OHV Program could highlight state parks grants available to federal and local agencies to pay for law enforcement officers to rove the backcountry to clamp down on irresponsible riders.

Conservation groups say the problem of irresponsible riders is huge, but OHV groups say the problem is overstated, Morrissey said.

"I want to get documentation one way or the other," he said.

David Lien, chairman of the Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said in a statement last month that "reckless riders" are damaging watersheds and fish and wildlife habitat, and much more OHV Program grant money needs to be allocated for law enforcement officers to crack down on four-wheeled offenders.

Iley said he doesn't see much of a problem, particularly in Larimer County.

"You do see it," he said, "but nowhere near the out-of-control situation that's being portrayed. I don't know where they're hearing that from, but they're not riding the same trails and seeing the same Colorado backcountry I'm seeing."

One place that doesn't have much of a problem with reckless OHVs is Colorado State Forest State Park north of Cameron Pass, which has about 80 miles of trails that will be maintained this summer courtesy of a $65,000 OHV Program grant.

"Well over 90 percent (of the park's trail riders) stay on the designated trails at the park," State Forest State Park manager Kent Minor said.

He said the problem is so small there because he has officers patrolling the park's trails constantly.

Iley said the OHV Program and its grants have been working well for more than a decade, and paying for more officers to rove the backcountry will address a problem that doesn't exist.

"It's not broken," he said, "so don't try to fix it."

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Source: http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20100503/NEWS01/5030325/Parks+board+to+consider+changes+to+OHV+Program

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