Their view: Congress to consider ORVs on public lands

Dee Blanco and Tom Brady |

3/9/2008 - 3/9/08

An industrial psychologist predicted in 1950 that, thanks to technology, the problem confronting workers in the 21st century would be how to cope with too much leisure time. Well, the problem we are actually dealing with in 2008 is obviously quite different: How to maintain some degree of sanity despite the relentless accelerating-acceleration of our emerging global techno-culture.

Our Santa Fe National Forest is a blessed reminder that the world still houses something more than machines, noise and pollution. But now technology is encroaching on our forest in a way that is threatening not only its value as a respite, but its basic health and sustainability as well.

The immediate threat is the abuse being perpetrated on the soil, water, air, vegetation and wildlife of the forest by off-road vehicles. Forest Service officials believe they can contain the damage by restricting ORVs to designated roads and trails. But their proposed solution — known as the Travel Management Rule — focuses only on symptoms, not on causes.

In addition, with budgets being cut, their plan is dangerously unenforceable because their modeling of the situation is way too static. By arguing that the problem is really just a "few bad apples in the woods who need a little education," they tragically underestimate the disastrous long-range implications of their technologically-naïve guiding policy — just as a cat, intent on the mouse, fails to notice the skulking coyote.

So what is the real threat to our forest? It's precisely this kind of self-absorbed "ignorance" — in the sense of ignoring the big picture. We see it in the ORV-users who refuse to recognize the injury they are perpetrating; or who, absorbed in a cyborg fantasy of man and machine, simply do not care. Riders who claim their supposed "right" to a sport that maybe, once upon a time, and at a very low level of intensity, the forest could actually sustain, but that is now, because of its steepening growth curve, is clearly abusive.

We see it in the corporations that — abuse be damned — profit from unapologetic exploitation; in the entrepreneurs whose bottom-lines depend on free access to our public lands and who are pushing the growth curve with aggressive marketing strategies; from industry-funded advocacy groups; and in virulent "pro-recreation" propaganda.

Dysfunction passes from generation to generation. How will we ever free the forest from our ignorance if children spend their time in the forest walled off from it in gloves, helmets and body suits? Because we have ignored the big picture with regard to our planet, we now must deal with the consequences of global climate change. Curious what our future looks like if we ignore the big picture in our forest? Next time you take your kids to Disneyland, drop by what's left of the Angeles National Forest and see for yourself.

A significant first step in redressing ORV ignorance locally was just taken by the 2008 New Mexico Legislature when it authorized an in-depth study of the true economic impact of motorized recreation. On March 13 — thanks largely to Rep. Tom Udall and Sen. Jeff Bingaman — congressional hearings will hopefully increase public awareness of the national problem.

So, what do we really want, a forest, or an amusement park? Motorized recreation might have a place in our culture, but its place is not on public land. There is precedent. The entire Hoosier National Forest in Indiana, for example, is completely closed to all ORVs. We are asking the motorized recreation community — our politicians and our governor — to all do the right thing. Please! Remove this "sport" to private land.

Dee Blanco and Tom Brady lare members of Watershed Watch, a group of Santa Fe residents actively concerned about the damage to the forest and all public lands being done by ORVs.