"TRAIL CLOSED" - We've all seen the signs at one time or another, and sightings seem to have become more frequent in recent years. It's no secret that our public lands (be they parks, monuments, forests, or recreation areas) are under more pressure than ever from a variety of competing interests, including environmental groups seeking to restrict or forbid vehicular access on public lands.
And now, more than ever, it's time to get educated on the subject and get involved in the fight to preserve motorized access to our public lands!
We need every one that loves the outdoors to get involved and join us in the fight to keep public lands open and accessible for all outdoor enthusiasts!
For now, let's start by covering the three biggest pieces of federal legislation that directly affects motorized access to public lands:
The Wilderness Act of 1964 established a framework whereby Congress may permanently protect land that is essentially undisturbed, retains a primeval character, without permanent improvements and generally appears to have been only affected primarily by the forces of nature. The lands become part of the national wilderness preservation system, which now encompasses nearly 110,000,000 acres. A majority of the wilderness areas are in the national parks, while the most of the other lands are within national Forest and fish and wildlife preserves. Lands officially designated as wilderness areas are close to all motorized vehicles and mechanical forms of transportation, including mountain bikes. Wilderness Study Areas or "WSA" are lands that have been designated as having wilderness characteristics, potentially making them eligible for the wilderness designation. Federal agencies manage the lands so as to protect these characteristics until Congress ultimately decides their final status. There is no timeline for making a decision and legislation must be enacted to finalize the process.
"Any public lands designated as "wilderness" are close to motorized recreation, period."
Recent Legislation: on March 30, 2009 Pres. Obama signed in to the law. HR 146, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which designated more than 2,000,000 acres of wilderness in 9 states. The designations include areas in and around Joshua Tree National Park and the Eastern Sierra in California, Owyhee-Bruno Canyonlands in Idaho, Mt. Hood in Oregon, and the Zion National Park in Utah. Some roads and trails were excluded from the wilderness designations and therefore remain available to all off-road enthusiasts, but others did not receive protection.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 is designed to protect threatened and endangered species and the habitats in which they are found. It applies to federal, state and private lands. The US Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a list of about 1, 890 total foreign and domestic species on the "threatened" and "endangered" list, which includes birds, insects, finished reptiles and mammals, crustaceans, flowers, grasses and trees. Given its excess and feathers over the past 36 years. There have been widespread calls to review and revise the ESA to foster more quiet part of efforts and incentive programs between the government, private landowners in conservation organizations.
Recent Legislation: The most recent efforts to revise the ESA died in 2006. The legislation would've overhauled the existing process for designating a day trip species by replacing existing critical habitat requirements (one of the more contentious areas of the existing law and a frequent source of lawsuits) with "recovery habitats". The bill also calls for compensating private property owners for land-use restrictions due to the presence on private property of an endangered species.
The Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 is the baseline federal law used to regulate and control pollution of permanent bodies of water such as oceans, rivers and lakes. The act establishes a permit system under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state environmental agencies to regulate discharges of pollutants by various sources such as mining and energy companies. Agribusiness and certain government agencies and/or facilities. The CWA also authorizes states to establish water quality standards based on specific use (agriculture, recreation, aquaculture, etc.). Later legislation expanded the jurisdiction of the act to include storm water runoff and municipal sewage treatment facilities. Recent Supreme Court decisions have narrowed the scope of the CWA to include only navigable and or interstate bodies of water, as opposed to isolated ponds and watersheds.
Recent Legislation: the clean water restoration act of 2009 seeks to expand the jurisdiction of the CWA to include seasonal non-navigator will and/or isolated interstate waterways such as mud flat sand flats wetland sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows and playa lakes. The bill was reported out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier this year (2010), but had not been scheduled for a vote by the full Senate as of press time.
Federal Agencies Most current land-use concerns relate to federal lands controlled by four federal agencies: Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service (USFA), National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is part of the Department of the Interior and administers the bulk of federal lands. The BLM manages about 262,000,000 acres of federal land. This is about 1/8 of all the land in the United States of America and 42% of all federal lands. The BLM was initially created to manage range lands for use by mining, grazing, oil and gas development. Its role was expanded in 1976 to include recreation and wilderness. It manages 2% of the national wilderness preservation system 161 separate wilderness acres along with a large amount of land that has been reserved as potential wilderness also known as wilderness study areas.
What does all this mean for us? It means that these Acts are being used as litigation tools to limit the activity of off-road vehicles on public lands. In other words, our trails are being closed by anti-off-road advocates, and they're using the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act as tools to get their agendas done.
What can we, as off-road enthusiasts, do about it? We (the off-road community) need to make our voices heard to ensure continued access to public lands and keep them safe for future generations of 4X4 owners and backcountry recreationists. But to make our voices heard, we need to do some work. It doesn't matter if you drive a 4X4, or ride a quad, or ride a mountain bike. We all use the backcountry trails, and we all need to work together to keep them open. Contacting your Congressional representative, Senator, or state legislators is a simple matter of sending them an e-mail or making a phone call. When you call, have a clear outline of the message you want to convey and be as brief as you can. Legislators offices received hundreds of phone calls per day. So your briefness will be appreciated. Be specific! If you're calling about a particular piece of legislation, be sure to mention the bill number, so that your representative is shared to know which legislation you're referring to. If you're not sure who your elected representatives in Washington are, the SEMA Action Network (www.semasan.com) can give you all the necessary information, as well as providing legislative alerts affecting truck, off-road, performance car, and motorcycle enthusiasts across the nation.
"We all need to get involved!"
Here are some general tips for working with your elected representatives:
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