Posted by David Sheman on Saturday, September 20, 2003 at 6:58PM :
In Reply to: Be Careful and Stay Cool posted by Paul(in NY) on Saturday, September 20, 2003 at 5:43PM :
We're going through a big round of this in N Idaho, with the USFS trying to close lots of roads and the ATV and dirt bike people (especially NITRO) trying to keep them open. Unfortunately the "compromise" often seems to be to turn good 4WD roads into ATV trails, which means they're closed to me because I don't ride ATVs or dirt bikes. And then we have the "hospitality industry" that promotes "1000 miles of ATV trails" and brings hordes of people in from all over the country to ride on them, causing lots of overuse that wouldn't happen if it was just the locals.
The big problem I see is that the FS managers think that they have to designate special spots for each kind of activity in order to avoid "user conflicts". The truth is that most of us can get along just fine with each other in the woods no matter what kind of transportation each of us likes to use, but the FS likes to keep careful records of the complaints it gets by one kind of users about the others rather than notice that the vast majority of people get along fine.
I have seen plenty of times, however, when motorized users have deliberately done the very destructive things that the environmentalists like to accuse us all of doing. I've seen where somebody decided to have a hill-climbing contest with their pickup on a steep hillside full of springs and moss and flowers and tore it all into a big mud wallow. I've seen bikers using a steep alpine meadow like a motocross track, going up and down and up and down and apparently having fun getting stuck partway up and throwing dirt all over. If they want to do that, they should go to the tailings piles in Mullan. And of course anybody, regardless of their vehicle or no vehicle can be an idiot and throw trash all over, shoot in camp, pollute the creek, hack up green timber, etc.
I don't think it's right for the FS to close roads just because some people are idiots, but it's also not right for that one group out of 100 to be idiots and give the FS an excuse to close things down.
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