Forest Service Right To Scale Back Vehicle Use
Editorial from the Albuquerque Journal, 7/30/10

 
It’s not about keeping everyone out of the forest. It’s about keeping the forest healthy for everyone.
 
That’s what the U.S. Forest Service’s Travel Management Plan is — and has to be — about. What current policy and practice is about — a free-for-all that allows damage to watersheds, destruction of wildlife habitats and desecration of cultural resources — isn’t working. The Forest Service considers such “unmanaged recreation” one of the top four threats to its forests.
 
So as part of a 2005 national initiative, Santa Fe National Forest officials are weighing five alternatives to managing motorized-vehicle use. They range from status quo, recognized as a non-option, to various levels of limited access. Surprisingly, many informed hunters and anglers as well as environmentalists and wilderness advocates are rallying around the most restrictive option, No. 3.
 
That option still allows motorized vehicles on almost 2,000 miles of roads and more than 50 miles of trails, but according to the analysis on the Forest Service website, it also does the most to protect wildlife and fish habitats, water and watershed
 
The support for option No. 3 from groups as disparate as hunters and wilderness advocates is in no small part because much of what would be restricted is not only duplicative of other sources of access, but damaging to the forest or disruptive to other users.
 
The changes would not take away any existing opportunities for an elderly or disabled person to spend a weekend camping or for a parent to take a child hunting. They don’t ban groups of friends on all-terrain vehicles or dirt bikes from public lands. Many of the roads and trails being proposed for removal from the approved motorized grid either aren’t now used, were never approved for motorized use or have a better alternative.
 
The biggest change — a blanket ban on all off-road driving that would require on-foot game retrieval — is actually being embraced by hunters who want the watershed protected and say they have spent weeks mapping out a site only to arrive on hunting day to watch someone on an ATV blaze through and scare off all the wildlife.
 
Eight meetings are scheduled next month to give the public another chance to weigh in. Forest users should avoid getting lost in the false drama of “restricted use” and see the changes for what they are — a much needed system for protecting the forest now and for future generations.