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

Sierra, Jan-Feb, 2003 by David Darlington

* EXPLORE The Club's Outings program has several2003 trips into Utah canyon country: a weeklong hike into the Escalante East in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; a family rafting trip down the San Juan River through the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area; and an activist mountain-biking trip in eastern Utah's Redrock Wilderness. For more information on these outings, see pages 56, 60, and 72, or go to www.sierraclub.org/outings/national.> * MORE INFORMATION Preserving public lands in the future may entail undoing the past. "Road removal can be just as important to American progress as roadbuilding once was, "argues David Havlick, a founder and instructor for the Wild Rockies Field Institute in Missoula, Montana. In No Place Distant: Roads and Motorized Recreation on America's Public Lands (Island Press) Havlick traces the origins of public-lands roads--many once served military purposes--and details the manifold problems they create: In two Idaho national forests, for example, roads were involved in 88 percent of 1,400 landslides studied, and the majority of grizzly bear deaths in Montana occur within one mile of a road. How we deal with these scars on our public lands, he suggests, will ultimately reflect our values as a people.

* TAKE ACTION The best way to protect the San Rafael Swell is to help pass America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which would permanently safeguard 9 million acres in Utah, including half of the Swell. As part of the Utah Wilderness Coalition, Sierra Club activists in 25 states are working to get more congressional cosponsors for the bill; for more information, see www.sierraclub.org/ut.--Andrew Becket