http://www.detnews.com/2004/metro/0408/23/b03-249364.htm

Sunday, August 22, 2004

This Week's Issue

Off-road ride ban proposed on federal land

By Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News

How to get involved

To comment on proposed national policy restricting motorized vehicle use in U.S. national forests:

* Send an e-mail to trvman@fs.fed.us

* Mail to: Proposed Rule for Designated Routes and Areas for Motor Vehicle Use, c/o Content Analysis Team, P.O. Box 221150, Salt Lake City, Utah 84122-1150

Comments will be taken until Sept. 13.

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The U.S. Forest Service is taking public comment on proposed rules that would restrict the use of motorized vehicles to designated trails on all federal land, including forests in Michigan.

National forests are prime destination spots for those who snowmobile and ride off-road vehicles. But with the growing popularity of motorized vehicles comes a concern for the land they traverse.

The proposed guidelines are designed to protect forests and grasslands from damage by the vehicles. But off-roaders, who enjoy a wide use of land, fear the proposal will further limit where they can play.

Motorcycles, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles have been restricted to designated trails in the 970,000-acre Huron-Manistee national forests in Michigan’s lower peninsula since the 1980s. But in other federally managed forests, including the Hiawatha and Ottawa national forests of the Upper Peninsula, they are allowed everywhere except where postings prohibit their use.

“As the impact of these vehicles becomes more and more apparent, the movement is toward designated trail systems,” said Kenneth Arborgast, spokesman for Huron-Manistee National Forest managers in Cadillac. “In a sense, this proposal brings all other forests in line with the policies we adopted long ago.”

Located close to Michigan’s population centers, an estimated three million people each year visit the Huron-Manistee National Forests in the northern Lower Peninsula. Arborgast said lessons were learned early there about the damage off-road vehicles can do to fragile ecosystems.

Pat Kinne, president of the Great Lakes Four Wheel Drive Association, said his organization is all for protecting the environment, but the key is whether enough public land is left open for motorized recreational use.

“I’m torn and our association is too,” Kinne said. “Saying they all will go the way they have in Michigan will lead to a lot of closures.

“I’m all for closing stuff that is detrimental to the environment. But when we agree with closing stuff, there’s always the fear of where does it stop?”

Officials in the Huron-Manistee National Forests are considering another change involving non-motorized trails to reflect the growing popularity of off-road bicycles.

Fall Means Changes

By Brad Ullrich, Off-Road.com Land Use Editor

Unreal. Somehow fall is here again! No matter what, it seems that my favorite season here in the southwest just rolls around every year. With fall, the high desert where I live in the four corners area becomes a different place than it was a few weeks ago. The leaves will start turning very shortly in the San Juans, the evenings and mornings are almost cool enough to need a jacket, and wheeling on the rocks will once again be bearable.

Yesterday, late afternoon, I was out in the hills behind my house, and I noticed that almost indefinable something that indicates fall is creeping in. I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on that late August/early September thing, something about the sky, the sunlight, the feeling in the air…they all combine to make that subtle change that one day you just notice.

With fall, it seems every year we have some important issues brewing in the land use/OHV arena. This year is no exception. There are three very important nationwide rule makings in the comment stages that will impact OHV use in the future. And with the Bush administration’s attitude toward common sense land management instead of the former administration’s junk science approach, your comments will be listened to and can make a difference.

The first issue is one that has been on the table since the 90’s, the Klinton Roadless Initiative, otherwise known as the Roadless Conspiracy due to the environmental vacuum in which it was formulated (For more on this subject see A Preliminary Staff Report of the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health of the House of Representatives Committee on Resources, http://www.off-road.com/land/hrroadless.html). The Bush administration was saddled with this mistake, there has been quite a bit of litigation on the issue, and finally there is a common sense proposal that will hopefully put the whole thing to rest. The proposal is one that many put forth during the original comment period for the initiative back in the late 90’s, that is to give the individual states the power and authority to manage these areas instead of a one size fits all top down approach from Washington. The new proposal, Special Areas; State Petitions for Inventoried Roadless Area Management (http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-16191.htm) , has a comment deadline of September 14, 2004. It is up to the wise use movement to make sure that common sense will manage the millions of acres this rule will affect.

Next up is a proposed rule that will affect travel, OHV and otherwise, on every acre of National Forest land. The Travel Management; Designated Routes and Areas for Motor Vehicle Use (http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-15775.htm) proposed rule has a comment deadline of September 13, 2004. To those of you who use our national forests for motorized recreation this is your chance to say something about how those forests will be managed in the future. It includes the designation of routes and trails, and would totally eliminate the “open” designation from the national forests. The elimination of the “open” designation is a movement gathering strength in both the USFS and the BLM, allegedly to make management of these lands easier on the agencies and reduce resource damage, but the end result for OHVers is we are being pushed into smaller and smaller areas on which to enjoy motorized recreation.

The last issue with a comment deadline this September is the proposed modification to the BLM land use planning regulations (http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/21jul20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-16224.htm). From the Federal Register posting: “This proposed rule would modify the BLM's planning regulations for three reasons. It defines cooperating agency and cooperating agency status. It clarifies the responsibility of managers to offer this
status to qualified agencies and governments and to respond to requests for this status. Finally, it makes clear the rule of cooperating agencies in the various steps of BLM's planning process.” The comment deadline for this proposed rule is September 20, 2004.

Not only is the season changing, the management of our public lands is going though dramatic changes, too. The radical environmental community is all over the three previously mentioned proposed rules, especially the first two. The OHV community needs to be proactive on these as well, we may not be as organized as the ecos, but we very possibly outnumber them. YOUR voice needs to be heard, if enough of our voices are heard we can make a difference in spite of the very vocal radical environmental community. Enjoy the cooler weather and the turning leaves, and by commenting on the proposed rules you can make it possible to enjoy those things on your OHV.


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