Chris Freiberg

FAIRBANKS — A Fort Yukon man faces a felony assault charge after an apparent road rage incident in the Interior Alaska village where many people get around on its unpaved roads using ATVs and snowmachines.

Jacob D. Savage, 32, has been charged with one count of second-degree assault, a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

California's 278 state parks are part of our collective inheritance. Yet as The Bee's continuing series on state parks illustrated Sunday, it's an inheritance we could easily squander by abusing our parks and failing to ensure they are properly patrolled.

Reported by McClatchy Newspapers' five California papers, Sunday's story notes that crimes in state parks have more than doubled on a daily basis since 1999, to 170 per day last year.

The county and state are embarking on what appears to be a promising first step in reducing dust pollution linked to the Oceano Dunes off-road recreation area. The state has already signed a formal agreement that lays out a detailed work program to test various strategies and develop a long-term plan for curbing particulate releases.

The county Air Pollution Control District board is expected to vote on the agreement today, and the Board of Supervisors will consider it Aug. 3.

NEW LEBANON – Four state troopers became involved in an incident that saw two of them injured and an East Chatham man in jail. The officers were investigating a home burglary on Cemetery Road in New Lebanon at the time.

Matthew Trainor, 28, was riding an ATV on Cemetery Road when troopers spotted him. He was ordered to stop, but as a trooper approached, he tried to drive away. The officer, who tried to pull Trainor of the vehicle, was dragged a short distance, causing injuries to his hand and shoulder.

Marcus Schneck

Everything from the 30-year-old mowing tractor to the 140,000-mile, AC-impaired pick-up truck seemed to be working fine today, so Steve Bernardi and his team of MacGyvers could concentrate on their core mission of developing and maintaining wildlife habitat.

Bernardi is a land management group supervisor and his team includes three crews of food and cover workers, who regularly double as mechanics and even inventors. They're all with the cash-tight Pennsylvania Game Commission and are familiar with jerry-rigging and repairing equipment.

Mike Cruz

A Hesperia parolee who rode a three-wheel ATV on Sunday was arrested after he reportedly ran over a resident who had asked him to slow down.

Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of a hit-and-run at 11 a.m. in the 9200 block of Glendale Avenue, in Hesperia. James Allen Bogdan, 29, was arrested and booked into Victor Valley Jail, in Victorville, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

Mary Wozniak

World-famous photographer and environmental activist Clyde Butcher is rallying residents to attend a Collier County commission meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday to protest a proposed off-road vehicle park in the Big Cypress National Preserve.

The park is proposed by Miami-Dade County on 1,600 acres in the eastern end of the preserve. Since some of the land is in Collier County, Collier also has to approve it.

It was like a scene from a big-city television crime drama. But this was a state park.

Karen Sackowitz

With summer in full swing, 9-year-old Julia Matos is spending her vacation playing with friends and swimming in her pool. The relaxation is well-deserved, following a school year that included plenty of class work and some serious manual labor.

Matos is one of 40 fourth-grade students from Bagnall Elementary School in Groveland who worked to spruce up more than a mile and a half of hiking trails that run through Meadow Pond, an open-space area located off of Uptack Road. The trail work was part of a larger, yearlong service learning project created by teacher Hilary Seager.

Allen Best

DURANGO, Colo. -- Oh, those rogue riders. While most motorized users have been circumspect about following rules, some of them insist on going where none have gone before, at least with internal-combustion engines.

The Durango Telegraph reports that two years ago the U.S. Forest Service opened 52 miles of roads and trails to motorized travel north of Durango. The idea was that by providing access to dedicated trails, motorized users wouldn't go where they weren't wanted.