The Problem. Off Road vehicles (ORVs) have become one of the greatest threat to America’s public lands. They destroy habitat, damage riparian areas, degrade water quality, pollute the air and disturb both wildlife and humans who prefer quiet in the outdoors.

In Utah, our few remaining wild places and intact ecosystems are increasingly being used by a rapidly growing number of ORV users with few restrictions on where they can travel. ORV sales are rising quickly in Utah, with state registration for ORVs and dirt bikes up a startling 300% in just five years. The augmented power of the machines themselves is giving users access to previously inaccessible backcountry.
While ORV management is an acknowledged priority for federal land management agencies, overburdened staff lack effective ORV monitoring procedures and have not allocated sufficient resources to collecting data on ORV use and impacts. For example, the Forest Service has only anecdotal management data for ongoing ORV use. At the same time, the agency fails to respond to or catalogue new routes that are illegally created by users. These routes are continually blazed across more and more vulnerable lands. As a result, land managers have little hard data on ORV use and its impacts and no firm policy for handling ORV abuses. Where regulations do exist, the agency often does not have the resources to follow its own rules and policies. In short, Utah’s inability to manage and monitor ORV use is having unacceptable effects on natural places.

The Opportunity and Our Solution. The Utah Quiet Forests Coalition, recently established by Wild Utah Project, Bear River Watershed Council, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Red Rock Forests, the Utah Chapter of Sierra Club, Western Resources Advocates, and Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads, has developed a four-pronged strategy to address the growing ORV threat to Utah’s National Forests. The first approach is utilizing an existing, effective citizen-activist ORV field monitoring protocol to present the Forest Service with critical on-the-ground information concerning ORV damage and to identify areas for targeted legal campaigns and restoration efforts.

The second track, the scientific arm, is incorporating sound science into the monitoring protocol and our legal campaign, as well as developing “Best Management Practices” for ORVs – something the agencies have not done. We are using GIS (computer mapping) analysis, combined with the citizen-gathered field data, to scientifically assess both compatible and incompatible ORV uses on specific ranger districts and presenting this analysis to both the agency and the public.

The best scientific analysis means little in terms of land-use decisions unless that message comes with political clout. The third prong of our strategy is to develop an integrated media and public outreach operation that is building support among a diverse set of land users, private land owners, ranchers, elected leaders and the media in ways that give our recommendations increased weight in the Forest Service decision-making process.

The fourth track, the legal component, is concentrating on the permanent closure of illegal, user-created routes that are causing the most ecosystem damage, including those that intrude on wilderness areas. We are also contesting the Forest Service’s official designation of ORV trail networks when the designation takes place without adequate environmental consideration. The legal team relies on both the on-the-ground data delivered by the citizen monitors and the data and analysis provided by the science team.

The campaign is focusing on two pilot project areas in Utah. The experience we gain from these pilot projects will allow us to apply our model to other sites in Utah and, indeed, other western states. The Utah Quiet Forests Coalition’s Campaign is initially concentrating on (1) the Fishlake National Forest and the Abajo Mountains in southeastern Utah and (2) the Bear River Range and Wasatch Mountains in northern-most section of the State. These areas present an ideal opportunity for advancing the goal of protecting public land ecosystems and wildlife. They contain particularly important wildlife habitat including habitat for endangered species; have seen exponential growth of ORV use; are well known by local activist groups that have already organized to address ORV abuse; are characterized by lax Forest Service monitoring and environmental analysis of the impacts of ORVs; and are now, or will soon be the subjects of Forest Service travel planning processes.