Archived Story

Current management locks out off-highway vehicle users
By WALTER GRANT

With the help of the Missoulian’s big, bold type, I’m guessing the recent guest columns by Tim Lydon (Jan. 24) and George Wuerthner (Jan. 27) likely had the desired effect of rallying the troops against off-highway vehicle use on our national forest lands. What Lydon, Wuerthner and their ilk fail to grasp is the frustration the OHV community and citizens who would just like to get out for a drive to visit their public forest, feel toward federal land managers in the West.

Unelected bureaucrats have had their way with us for far too long. Being largely unorganized as a group, we have not had the clout of well-funded outfits such as the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club. Numerous organizations such as these, which falsely align us with logging and mining interests as threats to virgin public lands, have armies of paid lobbyists and misinformed members eager to push their agenda on a receptive audience of Western public land managers and Eastern politicians. An agenda which almost always represents a vocal minority viewpoint in the rural West, as was witnessed in Darby.

The current public lands management trend is to lock out the citizens who choose an OHV as their mode of forest travel where there may be a conflict between user groups. The effect of crowding more and more people on continually shrinking OHV legal riding areas is predictable, while easily avoidable, and totally irresponsible as a management technique.

No one is suggesting we need to ride OHVs in designated wilderness, truly “sensitive areas” or places where there is historically heavy use by other user groups. However, by invoking Revised Statute 2477, citizens may well be within their rights to travel where there is an established path, trail or road on public land that existed before 1976. The statute states “the right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.” Congress repealed RS 2477 in 1976 as part of its enactment of the FLPMA, but expressly preserved RS 2477 rights-of-way that already had been established before 1976. The statute is seen as self-enacting and does not require government approval or public recording of title. To date, the statute has not been entirely struck down in the courts much to the chagrin of many special interest groups.

Most environmentalists see this statute as a dangerous threat because of the potential it gives to citizenry at the local and state level to access their public lands for OHV recreation. OHV users tend see it as a right granted by a far sighted congress to ensure that all would be able to enjoy the natural beauty of this country without being limited by special interests.

We are fortunate to have a vast amount of public land available for those who desire quiet cross-country skiing, hiking, backpacking, horse-packing, bicycling or a rafting trip without interruption by OHV users. It may come as a surprise to Wuerthner and Lydon that most OHV users enjoy one or more of these activities also. The “lack of respect for other people’s property and their outdoor experience” cited by Wuerthner comes off as petty and selfish in light of the outdoor recreational opportunities available to him. The dubious, unsubstantiated land “abuse” claims levied by Wuerthner cannot repudiate the fact that too much is never enough for some extremists.

Lydon cannot deny that responsible riders do no significant, permanent harm to public land in Montana, and I would be more than happy to accompany him to one of the sites he wrote of to see the destruction firsthand.

Walter Grant is a longtime OHV rider. He writes from Missoula.
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)
Current Word Count:
   

|

Subscribe to the Missoulian today — get 2 weeks free!