The wide-open spaces of our state aren't what they once were: A growing urban-suburban population pours out of our cities nearly every weekend to get in touch with Nature. Most of them do it in genteel fashion — but then there are the blockheads who treat ownership of monster-tired trucks and increasingly powerful all-terrain vehicles as license to let 'em rip.

The extent of their damage to public lands is debatable — but it's plenty noticeable the closer that land is to town. Glorieta Mesa, near Pecos, has taken a terrific beating; so have several stretches of the Jemez Mountains, easily accessible to Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Albuquerque.

It isn't just the makeshift roads they carve across the grasslands, sage and chamisa; it's the headwater erosion they leave in their wake that's got state Environment Secretary Ron Curry calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to exercise enforcement powers separate from those of the thin-spread Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

For years, the federal agencies have realized that they've got to draw tougher rules — and clearer maps — to tell folks where it is and isn't OK to go motoring in the boonies.

BLM last week was collecting comment on its updated resource-management plan for 600,000-odd acres in Río Arriba and Taos counties, while the Santa Fe National Forest is airing a travel-management plan — the stricter versions of which could close half the 5,000-plus miles of roads and trails now used by motor vehicles of one kind or another.

Ahh — the return of peace and quiet to the woods? Restrictions on often-obnoxious ATVs and mud-boggers? Restoration of streams, wildflowers and shrubbery? Secure habitat for wildlife? It's a tree-hugger's dream.

But it could also amount to wholesale closing of public land to all but the hardiest of hikers. For every thoughtless motorhead, there are hundreds of people who respect the great outdoors — and they're not all enviro-elitists with the good health and leisure to emulate John Muir or Aldo Leopold.

Many a Northern New Mexico family has long had favorite little spots for family reunions, picnics, camp-outs and privacy; some of them places with special meaning, others scouted out over the years as somewhere to gather piñon or cut a few latillas. The woods might be the main — maybe the only — source of recreation.

Some of the better-off families might bring more than their pick-up trucks — but, more often than not, the ATVs they roll off the beds are being driven along two-track trails or roads; they don't travel that well over brush, bushes, fallen trees or boulders, and their beachball tires don't do much damage anyway.

Are dirt-bikers similarly harmless? No — and they're a leading reason for so much official attention to backwoods travel. Within a couple of weeks, there'll be public meetings on the Santa Fe forest's travel plans — including a morning one Aug. 14 at forest headquarters. Those who can't make the meetings should consider e-mailing to sftravelmgt@fs.fed.us; your advocacy of keeping open or closing one stretch or another could be crucial to the forest supervisor's final decisions.

Whatever limitations are issued, enforcement will remain a problem; thus foresters' plans to issue maps of what's open and closed, relying on citizens' consciences being their guides. But where rangers' boots are on the ground, there could be lots of resentment from the public; lose them as constituents, and how much will they care if or when — perish the thought — the next wave of privatizers washes over Washington?

While federal alternatives always include no-change, it's pretty clear there will be changes to the woodland-motoring rules; some are definitely needed. But officials should find ways of curtailing the worst of the abuse while resisting the urge to close off terrain so many New Mexicans properly consider public property.