Off Highway Vehicles

West End OHV Project Appealed

This project includes 91,000 acres of National Forest System lands located on the west side of the Heppner Ranger District west of Forest Road 22 and consists of portions of the Upper Rock Creek, Wall Creek, and Lower John Day River-Kahler Creek watersheds. The agency has proposed designating 233 miles of roads for OHV use, including 207 miles for Class II vehicles. The Sierra Club has jointly appealed this project to the Forest Supervisor, Umatilla National Forest, jointly with the League of Wilderness Defenders - Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project, Grant County Conservationists, and Oregon Wild. The appeal requests withdrawal and/or significant modification of the decision that authorizes the designation of OHV trail systems The full text of this appeal can be read at West End OHV Project EA Appeal. A summary of this project and the appeal can be read on the Umatilla NF page. (10-14-09)

Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests and Crooked River National Grassland Release Travel Management Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement

The Forest Service and Crooked River National Grasslands have jointly released a Travel Management Project draft Environmental Impact Statement for public comment on October 9, 2009. This Travel Management Project will cover major portions of Deschutes, Jefferson, Crook, Klamath, Lake, Grant and Wheeler Counties in Oregon. The Travel Management Plan implements the 2005 Travel Management Rule reversee the previous rule that allowed off road travel anywhere, unless specifically prohibited, to prohibit off road travel everywhere, unless specifically allowed. Clearly, the content of the travel management Plan will have significant meaning to the forests, deserts, and grasslands of Central Oregon and to its citizens. The Forest Service has posted extensively information on this Travel Management Plan and the draft Environmental Impact Statement on its web site at Planning and Environmental Analysis- Travel Management Project. You are urged to carefully read the Forest Service and Grasslands proposals and provide your comments to Asante Riverwind. The Forest Service is holding a series of Open Houses around the region from October 20th through November 5th to explain the Travel Management Plan from their perspective. The locations and times for these hearing are posted on the Forest Service web site linked above, and are also posted on our Community Events page. (10-16-09)

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest Supervisor Issues Travel Management Plan Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Public Comment

This plan will impact the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest for decades to come, as well as establish a precedent for travel management plans that must be issued for every National Forest District in Oregon and throughout the Northwest. The comment period expired (September 17th), so thank all of you who commented to the Forest Service. You can read the joint comments of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, The Wilderness Society, American Hiking Society, The Lands Council, Oregon Wild, Wildlands CPR, Oregon Chapter Sierra Club, Oregon Natural Desert Association, and Gifford Pinchot Task Force at the link Wallowa-Whitman Travel Management Plan DEIS Comments, September 17, 2009. We'll keep you posted when we learn the Forest Service response to the comments submitted. (10-03-09)

Motorized Mayhem or Wild Nature?

by Asante Riverwind, March 2009

National forests across Oregon’s eastside are magnificent in natural wonders and beauty. From the tumbled geology of eastern Oregon’s weathered Blue Mountains, to the volcanic wonderlands of the Cascade’s rain-shadow, our forests are home to a wealth of biodiversity. Alive and vibrant with gorgeous wildflowers, birdsongs and canid howls, cascading streams and falls, deep incised canyons, towering weather carved rocks, and Cheshire wildlife, the region’s complex ancient forest mosaics are sculpted by fire, climate, moisture, and time. Many people in the region, from transitory visitors to long-time residents, come to these forest to enjoy and experience the serenity and inspiration of untrammeled nature.

In our increasingly mechanized society, public wildlands are among the only remaining places where people can get away from the incessant noise and intrusions of industrial machines. Yet a small percentage of the visitors to our wondrous forests cannot seem to leave their treasured machines behind. Called by a variety of names including Off Highway Vehicles (OHVs) and All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs), the widespread intrusion of these machines into our last remaining natural lands destroys the serenity, and severely harms the wildlife, plants, soils, and waterways of our region.

McKay Creek Trail, photo by Marilyn Miller McKay Creek OHV Ruts, photo by Asante Riverwind McKay Creek Mud Bog, photo by Asante Riverwind McKay Creek Mud Bog Pit, photo by Asante Riverwind For years public forests have been largely open to OHV travel, including random user-created cross-country routes. As a consequence widespread OHV damage and disturbance has significantly increased. While the Forest Service has basic regulations prohibiting OHV-caused natural resource degradation, and has varied requirements in OHV trail system areas, they lack the enforcement personnel to prevent OHV harms, and lack funding and resources to restore OHV damaged waterways and forests.

Currently any adult with an OHV, and children with adult accompaniment, can drive OHVs willy-nilly across our national by Roberta Vandehey forests, to the detriment of wildlife, and the natural experience of us all.

In a beginning effort to rectify rampant OHV abuse of public lands, the Deschutes, Ochoco, and Umatilla National Forests are conducting environmental analysis, with plans to close the forest to cross country OHV travel by late 2009 or 2010, while designating additional OHV trail systems throughout large areas.

In the Deschutes, the agency has proposed expanding from the East Fort Rock OHV systems. Under their new Lava Rock OHV Trails Project, OHVs will circumnavigate Newberry National Volcanic Monument, with a number of play areas and trails that cross through and loop into the Monument between Lava Cast Forest and Lava Cave, and create play loops at the edge of the Monument in a number of locations. Plans call for seven new OHV staging areas. For more on this project, see the Deschutes NF page.

The agency claims that their OHV trail plans are the result of a year-long collaborative process among "stakeholders" and have the consensus support of all participants of their Travel Management Working Group. Participants included a number of OHV club representatives, current and retired Forest Service employees, an OHV dealer, interested regional residents, and conservation representatives, including a volunteer from the Juniper Group Sierra Club. Our representative recalls quite differently than the Forest Service, saying instead that many members of the working group have serious objections to OHVs anywhere near the Monument. They recommended that there be no loop trails or play areas, that OHVs not be permitted in the Western and Northern areas outside the Monument, and that trails and staging areas be limited to existing roads far south and east of the Monument. Conservation participants are adamantly opposed to OHV circumnavigation of the Monument, and the proposed trail systems, staging, and loop play areas given the alarming disturbance and environmental harms this would inflict upon both wildlife and the natural qualities of this treasured recreational hiking area.

Hikers in the greater Monument area discovered ongoing unchecked violations of East Fort Rock OHV regulations, with harmful OHV incursions well into the Monument. The agency response thus far has been to simply state that the Monument is not well-posted, and OHV riders may have mistakenly crossed its boundary. Yet the responsibility to protect the Monument, and prevent OHV caused resource degradation is the agency’s. It’s current inability to enforce its regulations and protect the region’s natural forests irrefutably evidences that the agency would be even more hard pressed to enforce regulations and prevent harms if their proposed OHV systems were expanded.

Instead of expanding OHV systems, the agency should disclose the full extent of OHV depredations, and acknowledge their enforcement limitations. If trail systems are to exist at all on public lands forests, these must be reduced in size and extent so the agency can effectively ensure natural resources are protected, and capably enforce regulations. Trails must be kept far from treasured Monument areas, and ecologically significant areas including essential wildlife habitat, water systems, old growth and roadless areas, and areas treasured by recreationists for natural serenity and beauty.

OHV systems are also incompatible with residential areas bordering public lands, whether these be populated communities or remote rural locations. Most people live near public lands forests for the natural qualities and peace inherent in nature. OHV impacts, from incessant loud noise, to airborne dusts, exhaust fumes, and severe environmental damage to soils, waterways and vegetation irrevocably destroy the natural qualities of our forests for all. As OHV abuse continues to grow across the region, Sierra Club led citizen efforts continue to help protect our wildlands forests.

Annes Butte OHV Trail, photo by Asante Riverwind Annes Butte Erosion, photo by Asante Riverwind Across Highway 97 to the west of the proposed Lava Rock OHV systems, OHV abuse in the Anne’s Butte area had reached outrageous levels. Working with the Sierra Club, local residents bordering the Deschutes National Forest formed the Friends of Anne’s Buttes to address rampant OHV harms (see Fall 2008 Conifer Reigning in OHV Abuse). In January 2009 volunteer conservation efforts succeeded in achieving a closure of Anne’s Butte forests to OHVs.

Previously, in June of 2008, volunteers in the Ochoco succeeded after two years of efforts in finally closing the McKay Creek area to OHVs due to widespread egregious abuse including mud bogging, erosive user-created trails, severe damage to this steelhead spawning creek at a time when millions were being spent to restore fish to the area, and related shooting, vandalism, fires, and trash dumping. (See the fall 2008 issue of the Conifer McKay Creek Off-Highway Vehicle Closure.)

In addition to Lava Rock above, other agency OHV plans across the region’s forests include Willamette National Forest OHV links to the Deschutes, which cross the Crest trail and use an historic wagon trail; the "Three Trails" system in the Deschutes Crescent District; the East Ochoco OHV trail system around Big Summit Prairie in the Ochoco National Forest; and the Heppner District Umatilla Forest’s West End OHV trail system which would link a county OHV park with forest lands (see accompanying article).

OHV proponents are jockeying to create systems that link routes throughout the Blue Mountains forests and BLM lands, spanning from the Wallow-Whitman through the Umatilla, Malheur and Ochoco forests in a huge interconnected system of unenforceable dimensions and unfathomable harms. By designating official trail systems, OHV proponents are attempting to establish their noisy damaging impacts to public forests as both acceptable and compatible with natural recreation and environmental values.

As being proven by Sierra Club volunteers across the region, by joining together with friends and neighbors, we can begin to reign in rampant OHV abuse, protecting our public wildlands for today and the generations yet to come. To help in ongoing efforts, please contact us.

Umatilla: Natural Forest or OHV Playground?

by Roberta Vandehey, March 2009

On February 2, 2009 the comment period for the West End Umatilla National Forest’s OHV Travel Plan Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) ended. The "Project" proposes 5 alternative OHV trail systems. Most obviously demonstrated by this approximately 150-page document is the need for it to be replaced by a more thorough analysis in an Environmental Impact Statement. The need for an extensive EIS for this "Project" is indisputably documented in the comments submitted to the Umatilla’s Heppner Ranger District by a coalition of forest users and conservationists, including the American Hiking Society, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, Grant County Conservationists, Oregon Chapter Sierra Club, and Oregon Wild. We need to join them in demanding that Heppner Ranger District of the Umatilla National Forest now prepare an EIS to address the issues that the Draft EA does not address. Additionally, opposition to the use of OHV’s on this West End Forest was mounted through a citizen petition opposing use of OHV’s on Forest Road 2500, which connects with the new Wheeler County Notch Road, on any special trails, and near the Bull Prairie Nature Park. That independent petition garnered upwards of 100 signatures from independent folks from wide areas of Oregon and Washington.

There has been extensive opposition to the use of OHV’s on this and upon other National Forest lands by the general, multi-use public. Experience and the National Dunes areas have sadly demonstrated that OHV use of public lands not only destroys the resources, habitat and wildlife, but also excludes the quiet, peaceful non-intrusive use of those lands by others. The Draft EA fails to include a single trail for the largest unmet demand in non-motorized Trailbased recreation throughout Oregon, including hiking, biking, backpacking, horseback riding and walking/running. OHV playgrounds also do not co-exist with Forest use by photographers, wildlife enthusiasts, or bird watchers. The best way to empty a forest of its creatures is to turn a herd of ATV’s loose in it! West End Umatilla National forest with its variety of recreational experiences should be managed for the benefit of all visitors, instead of current agency plans to open the West End Umatilla to widespread OHV use.

The relationship of the new Wheeler County Notch Road (see Oregon Conifer, Fall 2008) to the Heppner District’s OHV Travel Plan has now become alarmingly clear. After that road’s final approval and construction in December 2007, Wheeler County officials announced that Notch Road was built as an OHV access road into southwest corner of the Forest, then some 20 miles further on Forest Road 2500 to the Morrow County ATV Park on the northeasterly side of the Forest, adjacent to the Bull Prairie Nature Park. This is an alarming situation where a county was allowed to build a road into a formerly small roadless area of a National Forest for the explicit purpose of creating an OHV "Playground". Worse yet is the fact that Heppner District-sponsored Title II funding facilitated the building of this road by a county that otherwise described a fund-deficiency that prevented the maintenance of their already existing county roads. Only after Notch Road was “legalized” and built did the Wheeler County Attorney state on the record that it was built for OHV access into the West End Umatilla National Forest to “access the Morrow County ATV Park.” This results in OHV travel across nearly the entire expanse of the Forest to the Morrow County boundary. Though it’s a Morrow County ATV Park, its only exits lead south into Wheeler County National Forest Land. In an effort to prevent area forests from being converted into an ATV playground, area residents, the Sierra Club, and conservation allies are working to protect the Umatilla’s West End from OHV disturbance and harms.