You're correct, Brian. And I agree; ATV misuse should be points against a driver's license. The whole ATV thing is getting way out of hand and tearing up even the existing roads seems to be an advertising talking point for these things.
We had a sad incident a while back here in Arizona where the two issues---thoughtless mining and ATV use---collided with terrible results. Some kids were riding an ATV off the dirt roads and fell down an abandoned mine shaft. One was killed. Ok, so the mine shaft was from the late 1800s-early 1900s back when they weren't required to fill them back in. But there's an example of what happens when you have a totally unregulated mining free-for-all. They left behind several thousand abandoned mines without a thought to people and animals falling into them since they're unmarked. Then on the other hand, we have these kids riding off the given roads. The dirt roads there don't have mine shafts in them. So, the parents are leading this charge to have every mine shaft in the state filled in or fenced off. Uh, excuse me, but what happened to teaching your kids some common sense, respect for Nature, and the law in riding the ATV? We don't have the money to fill in every mine shaft in this state. And there are hundreds that are on no existing map at all and the claims were never registered. But, no one stopped to say, hey, why were the kids riding the ATV off the roads? Hey parents, what, you just handed them the keys and said have at totally unsupervised? Would they do that with a car? They're both motor vehicles.
Now the old mines are "historical" but they're gigantic blights on the landscape and many of the sites are full of cyanide and mercury that they used to extract the gold. This is a great example of what happens when mines are just allowed to do as they please. And here in Northern Arizona, we're still trying to recover from unrestricted logging that went on in the late 1800s-early 1900s. They went through and cut down huge swathes of Ponderosa pines and put out every fire that started. So, the ones that grew back were all spindly little pines growing too close together in "doghair thickets" that no natural fire was allowed to checkmate. They've spent the last few decades trying to clear those doghair thickets because the doghair thickets are what creates catastrophic wildfires and provides the "Perfect Storm" for bark beetles. In the end, the logging companies made the money and the taxpayers are footing the bill to clean up the mess. The same with the mines.
And most of the dirt roads in the forest here are old logging roads. They're not maintained. So it only takes three guys on ATVs to turn a dirt road into a giant mud bog that just gets bigger and bigger with rain, snow, freeze, thaw, and then snowmelt. And the whole time, more and more people are mudwomping through it with ATVs. After a while, the mud bog is quite a bit bigger than the width of the road and guys are coming on ATVs specifically to mudwomp in it. This is ugly. You find this all over the forest here. The forest service has closed some roads by dragging boulders across and putting up signs. Often, too late, because the damage is done and will take a hundred years or more to go away. Some ecosystems are very fragile and there are still ruts from wagons that passed in 1860 still very visible. When ATVs run over these ecosystems, those tracks will be there for at least a couple hundred years.
Massive public image problem is people see some ATVs with gun cases on them and go, "AHA! It's those darn hunters tearing up the woods with those!" And the users of the ATVs, hunters or no, don't care a fig for their own safety, so why should they care about the forest? We've had other kids killed on ATVs here and several adults, too. This within the past 4 years. Mostly due to a lack of proper training and people taking incredible risks, or handing these to kids like they're Tonka toys and not motor vehicles. Some people are riding these things drunk. Kids need to be strictly supervised with these. When this kind of thing is normal, then we can see how it is the woods are being ruined by these things. It's a total free-for-all and the woods suffer.
Topic: How to stop access closures (Read 4401 times)
