Throughout the Southern Rockies, unregulated use of off-road vehicles (ORVs) -- including dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, four-wheel drive vehicles, snowmobiles, and personal watercraft such as Jetskis -- are posing serious threats to the tranquility, wildlife, and wild landscapes of our cherished public lands. Vast, user-created motorized trail systems have invaded the region's prized roadless areas, and have extended human influence into virtually all wildlands not protected by wilderness designation.
To address this proliferation of unchecked motorized recreation and its resultant impacts, SRCA's Responsible Motorized Recreation Committee works to promote balanced and ecologically sound management of ORVs on public lands in the Greater Southern Rockies (see detailed Policy Position paper). We do not seek to remove ORVs from all public lands. We do, however, aim to achieve balance in how our federal lands are managed by working through local, regional and national partnerships to:
Raise public awareness of problems caused by unchecked ORV use, and build public support for responsible ORV use policies and behavior;
Establish a mandatory "closed unless posted open" designated trail system, developed with thorough scientific environmental analysis and public input;
Ensure reasonable protection of wilderness-quality lands and other sensitive landscapes, including such places as roadless areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Research Natural Areas, riparian zones, sensitive plant and animal habitat, wildlife travel corridors, and areas with important concentrations of archaeological and historic resources; and
Provide resources for federal land management agencies to monitor natural resource conditions and enforce sensible ORV restrictions to protect against irresponsible resource damage, and work to obtain the necessary congressional funding to effectively do so.
RS2477
Our most treasured national parks and public lands are in the cross hairs of a plan to allow counties and states to bulldoze and pave thousands of miles of new roads, and to open these lands to development and off-road vehicle interests. The tool of choice to damage and degrade our national treasures is a loophole in an obscure, repealed, Civil War-era law (Revised Statute 2477) originally intended to facilitate settlement of the West by granting rights-of-ways across public lands. Although R.S. 2477 was repealed in 1976, existing road claims were grandfathered, and now anti-wilderness forces are arguing that long-forgotten or little-used foot and animal tracks, or illegal off-road vehicle ruts, are "constructed highways" that should be under the control of state and local governments. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration just issued a new directive that would facilitate those illegitimate claims -- and the destruction of our nation's greatest landscapes.
Now, several states are claiming thousands of routes across every type of public land units, including National Parks and existing and proposed wilderness areas. Here in Colorado in January 2003, Moffat County claimed a spaghetti-network of over 2,00 miles of R.S. 2477 right-of-way claims -- including pedestrian trails, cow paths, dirtbike routes, and even non-existent routes -- across the county, including through Dinosaur National Monument, Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge and numerous proposed wilderness areas. If these "phantom roads" were bulldozed by the county, they would carve up some of the wildest and most precious lands in the northwest corner of our state.Click here to see a map and photos of Moffat County's outrageous proposal.
