http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...1,130287.story

EDITORIAL
Off-Roading Loses Its Way

Motorized off-road vehicles, from inexpensive dirt bikes to $100,000 Hummers, provide a sort of unfettered outdoor thrill ride, often in competitive mode. Groups representing off-roaders say their numbers now top 2 million. Families head out to the deserts or mountains for an activity that keeps even the teenagers in the family. For others it's a guy thing, with big toys and great scenery.

The knobby-tired vehicles also rip into wild areas, tearing up native plants and sometimes stripping soil to bedrock. Their engines shred the peace of hikers and campers and frighten animals into remote corners. The question is whether it's still possible to balance motorized fun and environmental preservation.
Many off-roaders spurn the park roads — after all, the name of the pursuit is off-road — to carve an estimated 60,000 miles of renegade trails in national forests. Last month, rangers in Northern California closed 300 acres of the Eldorado National Forest because human feces deposited by off-roaders were a public health hazard.
Off-roaders' visits to national forests have increased sevenfold in less than 30 years, and public land managers haven't kept up. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service finally gave official recognition to the damage caused by off-roading and proposed a rule to keep the vehicles on designated trails.

It was a start, but a weak one. Simple as the task sounds, the Forest Service first must inventory and map existing roads — both official ones and those blazed by off-roaders — then decide which to leave open. Many off-roaders applaud this as well; those who want to do the right thing have little way of knowing which trails are sanctioned or environmentally wise. But the Forest Service has no money for the task and has set itself no deadline. By contrast, California last year funded a five-year effort, joined by conservationists and responsible off-roaders, to help the Forest Service map routes in the state's national forests. But preserving national forest land shouldn't be the states' burden.

The attitude of many off-roaders is that, as their numbers grow, they deserve more trails and access within the finite acreage of state and federal lands. The Bureau of Land Management wrongly complied last month, giving more than 1.3 million acres and 90% of the trails in the northern and eastern Mojave Desert, home to the endangered California desert tortoise. Off-roaders say they'll police themselves. Such self-regulation was a failure in the the Eldorado forest.

Given the toll of off-roading on public resources, this pastime is ripe for serious regulation, including lids on unmuffled noise, along with fees that reflect what off-roading costs the public. Right now, an off-roader pays the same $5 per day as a hiker to use a national forest in Southern California. A rule limiting riders to designated routes will mean nothing if the financially emaciated Forest Service lacks the staff to enforce it.

 

Sad to see yet another biased article.... I wish people would check their facts before something like that gets published.

 

Well the article was an editorial (as marked). As such, they are biased. Though, like many newspaper editorials, the actual writer isn't named.

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I'm sure that the LA Times was more than happy to print this. They are one of the most liberal newpapers in the country.

 

just FYI, from kerry's official biography ... tell me what you think it means

http://www.lcv.org/Files/OpenFile.cfm?id=1960

National Parks
Kerry has pledged to protect parks from snowmobile, jet ski and off-road vehicle use and to boost funding for the National Park System. “While funding to address the maintenance [backlog] should remain a priority,” he says, “I believe those budget needs must be balanced with additional resources for the operating budget in order to enhance resource protection and visitor education.”35



i wonder what he means by "additional resources ... to enhance resource protection" ... i'll tell you ... he wants to protect your public land from YOU ! i guess you could always make a nice planter out of that new sport quad ... cause if he's elected, he wants to make sure that you wont have anywhere to ride it. i think "visitor education" means convincing people that OHV's are tools of the devil.

 

The L.A. Times has, and continues to be way out to the left. The article above talks about the 300 acres that were closed along the Rubicon Jeep Trial. What it doesn't mention is that the closure comes with the blessing of local off-roading groups who tried, but were unable (due to the remote location) to provide porta-potties, etc. to clean up the place. The local group, Friends of the Rubicon, has worked with environmentalists to address complaints and maintain proper drainage to avoid erosion, and keep the trail open.

I would invite one of those tie-died, Birkenstock wearing journalists to come up to my mountains, and we could take a ride and just see how many hikers walk along black diamond off-road trails.

Papers like the L.A. Times can and do shape public opinion for the ignorant. Please, everyone, make sure you vote come November. My state is probably a lost cause, but even I'll be out voting.

 

Yep. A lot of the so-called "science" involved in all the environmental scare stories is junk science - no real basis, no adequate documentation, a lack of duplicability in experimentation, agenda-driven, etc., etc., etc..

Intrepid Explorers

 

I live in Southern California, so I get a number pain in the a$$ phone calls from the LA Times trying to sell me their rag. The last
time I told them:

"Hmmmm...the LA Times huh? Seems to me it'd be exceedingly appropriate to print the LA Times on a roll...like Charmen and Quilted Northern. Then....at least they'd be providing a product the public actually needs."

This didn't go over big with them. But you know how when someone is stating fact they sometimes say they "got it straight from the horses mouth"? Clearly the LA Times is filling their "newspaper" from the horse's other end!

Moo,
WheelCow