OHVS: Lawsuit alleges Idaho forest overrun by motorized vehicles

April Reese

Forest Service managers have allowed off-highway vehicles (OHVs) to extensively damage portions of Idaho's Salmon-Challis National Forest, including cutting deep ruts into riparian areas, wildlife habitat and potential wilderness areas, a new lawsuit filed by environmentalists claims.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court by the Idaho Conservation League and Wilderness Society, seeks to force the Forest Service to tighten restrictions on motorized recreation in roadless areas, reduce OHV impacts to natural resources, and restore "natural peace and quiet" that can be found only in remote areas like Salmon-Challis.

The 4.3 million-acre forest in east-central Idaho issued a new travel management plan last September, including provisions detailing where off-roading and other motorized recreation are allowed. A recent survey by environmentalists of 400 miles of roads and trails in Salmon-Challis National Forest found extensive damage from off-highway vehicle use. Photo courtesy of Brad Smith.

But a survey by environmentalists of 400 miles of roads and trails found extensive damage from OHV use, particularly near Beaver and Winnemucca creeks, both tributaries of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, and in the Swauger Lakes area, said Brad Brooks in the Wilderness Society's Boise, Idaho, office.

"We documented huge deep ruts as long as your arm, and riparian areas being torn up," he said.

Some of the lands are within areas the Forest Service has recommended for possible designation by Congress as protected wilderness, he added. The forest is known for its remote wildlands that provide habitat for lynx, elk, salmon and other prized species.

Registered off-road vehicles in Idaho have skyrocketed from 7,200 in 1988 to 135,300 in 2008, according to the groups, and the Forest Service has failed to keep up with the increase in motorized recreation on forests such as Salmon-Challis, Brooks said.

Brian Hawthorne, public lands director for the BlueRibbon Coalition, a national off-roading group based in Pocatello, Idaho, said recent heavy rains probably made the lands in question more susceptible to rutting and other damage from OHVs, and he said the groups' photographs probably exaggerate the extent of the OHV-caused damage.

Furthermore, he noted, off-roading has long been allowed in the affected areas, presumably without eroding the lands' pristine qualities.

"If the existing and historical uses did not stop the lands from being recommended as wilderness, then why should those activities not be allowed to continue?" he asked.

Kent Fuellenbach, a spokesman for the Salmon-Challis forest, said he could not comment on the lawsuit directly, but many OHV routes were closed during the forest's travel management planning process.

Brooks said that while the Forest Service did close some routes, it opened more and legitimized user-created trails.

Hawthorne said his group supports the forest's travel management plan.

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Source: E&E News

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