The dust that binds
Fighting impacts of off-road recreation on communities and health
In 2007 the Sierra Club's California/Nevada Desert Committee established an ORV Issues Subcommittee to raise awareness about ORV impacts and to campaign for state and federal action to remedy them.
Some examples of the problem
On June 24, 2009, Stanislaus National Forest Service researchers arrived at a high-elevation mountain meadow undergoing a five-year study in time to see a pick-up truck being loaded up with motorcycles and beating a hasty retreat. Advancing on foot, the researchers found the meadow badly scarred with deep wheel ruts from spins and zigzags. Protective fencing wire had been cut.
In May 2009, roughly 500 off-roaders rallied in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to protest the closure in 2000 by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Paria River to motorized vehicles. Hundreds drove their machines up the muddy river in deliberate mass violation of federal law.
On state-park land, in the Desert Cahuilla Prehistoric Area in Imperial County, riders in jeeps and on dirt bikes blaze new trails up fragile, colorful sandstone hills, damage 10,000-year-old desert pavement (desert soil surfaces), crush petrified wood, and jeopardize ancient Native American sacred sites.
During the 2008 - 09 off-roading season at the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area in San Diego and Imperial Counties, dozens of injured children and adults were airlifted to distant hospitals. On holiday weekends the entire desert basin around this 80,000 acre "open area" is filled with a purple haze of mixed air pollution, dust, and vehicle-exhaust particulates, which, when winds blow east, affects air quality in the adjacent Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the town of Borrego Springs.
A Kern County ranch-owner who has tried to work with the county to craft an ORV ordinance suffers at all hours of the day and night from noise, fumes, and dust from off-roaders tearing up the road that she pays to maintain. The Kern County district attorney's office formally refuses to prosecute any misdemeanors and citations against illegal off-roaders. The county sheriff has promised not to enforce the laws on trespass on privately maintained dirt roads to which the public has access, even though his department had obtained a grant from state off-highway-vehicle funds specifically for enforcing ORV violations. What did he intend to do with the money?
Gaining support
As Sierra Club advocates for our natural and cultural resources, we need to connect to less conservation-oriented California citizens. The Kern County situation is far from unique. In many rural areas, public lands are interspersed with private parcels, and rural residents are increasingly besieged by ORV noise, dust, trespass, and harassment.
The ORV Issues Subcommittee, with a dozen active members meeting monthly via conference calls, is working to gain support among conservation leaders in each of the Sierra Club's 13 California and Nevada chapters. We are building relationships and forming alliances with grassroots community groups and property-owner groups. To this end, the Desert Committee has been working with the Alliance for Responsible Recreation (ARR), a vigorous association of property-owner and conservation groups dedicated to protecting public and private lands from irresponsible ORV recreation. We plan to engage with ranchers, hunters, equestrians, mountain bikers, and other non-traditional allies. We also assist all five BLM field offices in the Desert District in monitoring intrusions and impacts of ORVs on wilderness and other protected areas.
The subcommittee drafted two ORV-related resolutions approved by the Club's California-Nevada Conservation Committee in September 2008. One supports legislation to create more-meaningful enforcement tools such as higher fines for ORV violations. The second urges the California Air Resources Board to explicitly include recreational off-road-vehicle emissions in its plan for reducing global-warming gases.
We also publicize problems of ORV recreation in broader contexts. ORV use contributes to the depletion of fossil fuels. Airborne dust from ORVs reduces the reflectivity of the snow pack, causing earlier melting and seasonal water shortages. Damaged desert soil loses its ability to absorb carbon. Children (and adults) are injured. Riding an ATV with helmet and noise and air pollution is not the way to foster a healthy connection with nature.
For a thorough analysis of these issues, see Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation by George Wuerthner
For an example of ORV problems in a very different, non-desert winter situation, see Water Board orders changes in ORV use for Rubicon Trail.
Please work with us to move the public and our legislators to support stronger ORV legislation that can reduce the multi-faceted, expensive, and often-irreparable impacts of off-road recreation on our private and public lands, including those designated as wilderness. To work with the ORV Subcommittee, contact Terry Weiner at terryweiner@sbcglobal.net or (619) 342-5524.