Take Utah back from outlaw ORV riders

Tom Patton

I attended the recent Take Back Utah rally at the Utah Capitol, not so much to support the idea but to see what other off-road-vehicle users meant with this movement and to see if any concerns of mine might be addressed.

If ever there was a category of people who fit the remark "we have met the enemy and he is us," it is the ORV riders of Utah. The continued widespread abuse of public lands by ORV users could result in further restrictions unless immediate and firm measures of self control are put in place.

My guess is that the majority of the folks attending the rally care enough that they are, in fact, not the abusive riders, but those sorts certainly do exist. The increasing controls on ORV use is not a knee-jerk reaction by authorities succumbing to pressure from far away land-use advocates, it is rather a reflex reaction to the astounding destruction of resources verified by widespread studies.

Preliminary studies done by the Bureau of Land Management of virtually every resource unit showed both widespread resource damage by ORV use and a significant increase in conflicts between ORV users and all others.

Admittedly, even one of the increasingly larger and more powerful ORVs can cause a lot of destruction, but the land abuse is so widespread that it surely involves a fairly large number of riders.

The public lands abuse is not limited to BLM lands. Both the U.S. Forest Service and state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration have also noted increasingly extensive damage to the lands they are charged with managing, especially during hunting season. SITLA recently asked the Grand County Council for assistance in managing parcels in the scenic LaSal Mountains outside of Moab, citing "rampant off-highway abuse."

It is likely that some of the restrictions and closures that have recently come about are because those challenged with management of public lands are overwhelmed. In fact the three agencies mentioned above, along with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, have formed the Natural Resources Coordinating Council to identify ways to manage rapidly expanding ORV use in the state, while protecting Utah's natural resources. On the NRCC Web site --http://www.utahohv.org -- there is a statement saying that continued irresponsible behavior will lead to further pressure to limit ORV use during hunting season, something many hunters are already pushing for.

Upon researching ORV clubs and other groups involved in either the rally or discussion of it, I found a universal tenet written into the by-laws or philosophies of both the clubs and the blog sites: responsible use of public lands. This is good, but more than lip service needs to happen, especially considering overwhelmed regulatory agencies now further impacted by the economic downturn.

Instead of fighting the regulatory agencies, let's "take back" Utah from the abusive elements of the ORV community. More (and more frequent) citizen patrols and taking the initiative to educate and advise abusers informally would help.

The history of the West is filled with stories of citizens working with authorities to corral outlaws; let's take our lands back from outlaw OHV riders.

Tom Patton, a former ski resort professional, is now a freelance writer living in Salt Lake City. He has ridden OHVs on Western public lands for more than 20 years. 

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Source: http://www.sltrib.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=13100109&siteId=297

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