Letter to the Editor - ATV footprint

Written by Kathy Osborne Draper

Friday, May 22, 2009

Kathy Osborne Draper

I am responding to the letter "Reporter bias" (Forum, May 14), which stated that all-terrain-vehicle riders are "people who have a great love and respect of the outdoors." My husband and I often hike with friends in the Cedar Mesa area of southern Utah. We are careful to "take only pictures, and leave only footprints."

We view these places to be living museums to the point that we avoid stepping on cryptobiotic soils, which are living organisms. Everywhere we hike in this incredible, vast and sacred place, we meet ATV tracks. Most are off-trail and have trampled small plants and dug up rocks and soils, even cryptobiotic soil that takes years to repair itself.

The lack of consideration for these special places is pervasive and demonstrates an overall lack of respect for the outdoors by those who operate ATVs. Apparently, leaving only footprints does not apply to ATV tracks that spin in circles, trample and otherwise destroy our fragile wilderness.

I will support the right of ATVs to use Bureau of Land Management lands and other wilderness areas when I no longer see their tracks everywhere I step. "Leave only footprints" applies to them, too!

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_12432627

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Community Voices

“During the past decade, I have personally had six out of seven elk hunts ruined by the careless intrusions of ATV operators. This epidemic has forced me to abandon one prime hunting area after another, only to encounter the same situation elsewhere. The shameful part of this picture is that the overwhelming majority of these ATV’ers are young and healthy, not decrepit or physically challenged. Maybe these riders would be more respectful of other people's outdoor experience if they knew we could ID them."

- Bill Sustrich, Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers