Untracked Utah: off-road vehicle sales are booming, but wilderness isn't a drive-thru experience

Sierra, Jan-Feb, 2003 by David Darlington

"What good is a wilderness if nobody sees it?" Williams had asked. But according to the 1964 Wilderness Act, wilderness, in addition to being "untrammeled by man," is supposed to contain "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." Though ATV use is in some ways primitive and certainly unconfined, I doubt that's what the framers of the act had in mind. More than 94 percent of BLM land in Utah is already available for ORV use, and 85 percent of the area in America's Red Rock Wilderness Act lies within two miles of a road. My middle-aged mates and I had just spent a week in it, and the view was just fine. Driving to see wilderness, however, is like driving to see a mirage: When you get there you find it's gone.

DAVID DARLINGTON is frequent contributor to Sierra. He is author of The Mojave: A Portrait of the Definitive American Desert (Henry Holt, 1996).

RELATED ARTICLE: ORVS keep out!

Wild Utah isn't the only place under assault by off-road vehicles. Across the country, ORVs are trashing national forests and parks, turning natural areas into raceways. A survey by the Bluewater Network found ORV damage in 38 national park units--yet the Park Service has no national ORV policy. Here's a snapshot of what the Sierra Club is doing about it:

UTAH: Activists from the Club's Utah Chapter have been building fences in the San Rafael Reef, a potential wilderness area in the San Rafael Swell, to protect sensitive areas from motorized traffic. They're also working with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to press the BLM to protect wilderness study areas, where tire-track scars can last for generations. Last August, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the Club's favor, declaring that the BLM can be held accountable for letting ORVs run rampant. Also at the urging of the Club, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and ten other members of Congress wrote to Bureau of Land Management director Kathleen Clarke, telling her to stop dragging her feet on mandated ORV road and route designations in the Swell and other locations. (The Price, Utah, field office, for example, delayed producing a management plan for 11 years; after promising a federal court to have it done by May 2001, they now expect to complete it in January 2003.)

MONTANA: Working with the Native Forest Network, Club researchers in the Gallatin National Forest documented incursions into critical grizzly bear habitat, wilderness, and wilderness study areas. They concluded that skyrocketing ORV use in Gallatin is "destroying native vegetation, fragmenting wild areas, damaging watersheds, and harassing wildlife." (To obtain the report, "Motorizing Yellowstone," write the Sierra Club's office at P.O. Box 1290, Bozeman, MT 59771.)

FLORIDA: In Big Cypress National Preserve, one of the last refuges for the Florida panther, 22,000 miles of roads carve up vulnerable wetlands and prairies. The Park Service limited ORV use, leading ORV groups to file suit. The Sierra Club and allied organizations have intervened in support of the Park Service.