Off-Road Vehicles in the Northern Wasatch

by Dan Schroeder, Chair, Ogden Sierra Club

An ATV rider negotiates boulders placed to block access to this nonmotorized trail in Willard Basin. The Forest Service has recently proposed opening this trail to ATV's, despite the fragile alpine vegetation in the basin and its popularity among hikers.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed an executive order directing that America's public lands be managed to "minimize damage" from motorized off-road vehicles (ORV's). The President noted that these machines were growing in popularity, and that their use was "in frequent conflict with wise land and resource management practices, environmental values, and other types of recreational activity." The order states that federal agencies must manage ORV use so as to protect natural resources, promote the safety of all land users, and minimize conflicts among various uses. Open routes must be clearly signed and publicized; closures must be enforced; and effects of ORV use must be monitored.

Thirty-two years later, implementation of this executive order remains spotty. In areas that receive plenty of public scrutiny (such as National Parks and designated Wilderness), ORV closures are in place and are generally enforced. Elsewhere, chaos reigns. In this article I'll summarize the current ORV situation in an area that I know well: the Ogden Ranger District of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. This District is an active battleground over ORV use and restrictions, and illustrates the issues that are arising throughout America's public lands.

The Ogden Ranger District: A Case Study

It took 16 years, after Nixon's executive order, for the Ogden Ranger District to adopt its first travel plan. The plan consisted of a map depicting about 130 miles of existing roads and trails in the District that were to be open to summer ORV use. Cross-country motorized travel during the summer was prohibited, except to access dispersed campsites which must lie within 150 feet of a designated route. Since its first publication in 1988, the travel map has been reprinted twice, adding about 20 more miles of open ORV routes. Half of these additions were done without public notice, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Illegal ORV trails scar the slopes of Black Mountain, near the Willard Basin Road.
Today, after another 16 years, most ORV users in the Ogden Ranger District still don't know that an official travel map exists. Instead they generally rely on posted signs, which are inconsistent at best. There are dozens of signed closures, but these are far outnumbered by the many unsigned junctions where an open route crosses one that is closed. Several signs say to stay on "roads," without specifying what constitutes a road; many users interpret the term to include any visible track along the ground. Two routes on the Monte Cristo plateau are signed as open even though they are closed according to the travel map.

Unfortunately, a small minority of ORV users simply disregard signs; fresh ATV tracks going right past a "closed" sign are common during the summer. In recent years, the Forest Service has tried to prevent this activity with physical barriers such as fences, mounds, and boulders. Along one closed trail in the Mollen's Hollow roadless area, more than 40 trees have been felled to discourage motorized travel. Of course, such barriers also discourage nonmotorized travel.

A worse problem, however, is that many of the nonmotorized trails in the District continue to be "managed as open" to motorized travel (in the words of a Forest Service official). These routes have intentionally been left unsigned, in order to appease ORV users. Many of these routes access dispersed campsites (beyond the 150-foot limit), which have become de facto ORV play areas, denuded of vegetation. Others are old horse trails, steep and rugged and prone to erosion, that lure ORV users in search of more "challenge" than is found along properly engineered routes. Cross-country ORV travel also creates new paths, and extends them farther into the forest each season.

Monitoring of ORV use in the Ogden Ranger District consists entirely of anecdotal reports. Nobody has systematically mapped all of the illegal ORV routes, but Forest Service staff estimate that they total at least 100 miles. The environmental problems occuring along these routes include soil erosion, destruction of native plants, invasion of noxious weeds, and harassment of wildlife. There are also problems for humans: disruption of the quiet that many of us seek in our National Forests; trespass onto adjacent private lands; and a disturbing number of vehicular accidents and fatalities. As ORV use has increased over the years, all of these problems have become worse.

A vast network of illegal ORV trails (red) fills much of the roadless area west of the Willard Basin Road (brown), a few miles southeast of Brigham City. The shaded band along the road shows where vehicles may be taken off-road to access dispersed campsites.
Bigger and Badder

Forest Service officials are well aware of these problems, but lack the will (and the political support) to take effective action. Instead, their current strategy is to open even more routes to ORV use. In a meeting last August, Regional Forester Jack Troyer opined that before ORV users will accept the fact that they can't ride anywhere they want, the Forest Service must appease them by opening more motorized routes. In July, the Ogden Ranger District issued a proposal to legally open 25 miles of trails where illegal ORV activity is occurring, and to construct several miles of new ATV trails to create loops. (As Edward Abbey once remarked, loops prevent people from having to look at the same scenery twice.)

Caving in to pressure from the State Parks Department and some local enthusiasts, the Forest Service has also agreed to promote northern Utah as a destination for ORV users. This will be done by establishing and publicizing a 500-mile ORV mega-trail of interconnected routes stretching from Brigham City to Bear Lake. Originally dubbed the Northern Utah Trail System (NUTS), this project was later renamed the Shoshone Trail, inviting comparisons to southern Utah's Paiute ATV mega-trail. Trying to avoid public controversy and an Environmental Impact Statement, public officials are establishing NUTS in small steps. Phase I, which includes only 200 miles of existing, open routes, was quietly signed last fall. (No new signs were installed on adjoining closed routes.) Maps of NUTS have now been printed, new trailhead facilities are planned, and extensions of the system across currently closed routes are being plotted behind closed doors.

A Citizens' Alternative

Over the last two years, the Ogden Sierra Club has taken the lead in challenging the Ogden Ranger District's management of off-road vehicles. Our volunteers have mapped and photographed many of the areas of illegal ORV use, met repeatedly with Forest Service officials, and filed extensive comments and appeals via the NEPA administrative process. In these efforts we have received crucial support from other environmental organizations including Save Our Canyons, The Wilderness Society, Bridgerland Audubon, and Western Resource Advocates.

In place of the policies and practices toward ORV's that are described above, we and our allies have proposed a Citizens' Alternative for the Ogden Ranger District that embodies the following principles:

We believe that these principles are supported not only by the public at large, but also by the numerous ORV users who want to protect the environment and respect the rights of others.

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Last modified on 26 January 2004.