My view: Travel Management Plan must rein in OHVs

Leslie Barnard |

12/29/2007 - 12/30/07

As many of you may have heard by now, there is growing opposition to the draft proposal of roads that the U.S. Forest Service wishes to implement per its Travel Management Plan.

The intention of the TMP is good. There should be designated roads and trails for motorized vehicles to follow and use. However, the spider-web of trails that appear on the Forest Service map (including some that I have inspected and found not to exist on the ground) would be a disaster if they were endorsed as roads and advertised on a Forest Service map for public consumption — particularly if they were to include use by recreational off-highway vehicles, which include all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, monster trucks, etc.

The Glorieta Mesa, unlike most other Santa Fe National Forest lands, is extensively ranched.

The ranchers have grazing permits as well as inholdings on forest land. They have experienced vandalism from OHV users (who have been cutting fences to ride on private land and leaving gates open for cattle and horses to escape onto the roads and shooting holes in cattle tanks and windmills). Ranchers are very concerned about the proposed draft of roads by the Forest Service for the Travel Management Plan on the mesa.

The mesa has been their home and the source of their livelihood for generations, and it is they who have the most to lose personally if this proposal goes through.

Up in the Jemez, members of a motorcycle club ride with chain saws on the back of their bikes cutting down signs and trees, forging new trails even in designated closed areas. They are riding right through the middle of the Río Medio where the endangered native Río Grande cutthroat trout have been re-introduced.

People in these areas are aghast at the Forest Service's complicity by their refusal to make any effort to rein these guys in. In fact, I am being told by the Forest Service volunteers who stopped them and asked why they were cutting through designated closed areas on their motorcycles that the Forest Service provided them with carte blanche access and GPS instruments to map their trails. This is unprecedented and frankly, outrageous.

The New Mexico Tourism Department is promoting OHV/ATV use in our state, welcoming the increase in traffic through our lands. They even have a department dedicated to OHV tourism.

Off-highway vehicle owners represents less than 5 percent of our forest users, yet they cause the most destruction, in the form of soil erosion and pollution.

The OHV Safety Board, consisting of two members who have dealerships, have decided the appropriate minimum age for driving these machines is eight, despite emergency room doctors testifying to the board itself about the severe dangers of children in ATV's and their personal testimony of administering to them in the emergency room.

The 2003 statistics show that children under age 16 receive more serious injuries than any other age group.

Interestingly enough, one of the biggest OHV clubs — the Blue Ribbon Coalition, which lobbies for free access to public land, is funded, not just by dealerships but by big oil and gas, timber and mining companies.

They tout themselves as a grass-roots organization, but they have funding from the big boys to sponsor free and frequent workshops for the Forest Service and anyone else who wishes to attend.

There needs to be real money for real enforcement, higher penalties for those who run roughshod over our national treasures, and trails closed until there is enforcement in place. Abuse of our public lands and national heritage is not to be borne.

Leslie Barnard lives in Santa Fe.