Sierra Club report says ATVs have disproportional access to national forests

PORTLAND, Ore. - The Sierra Club released a report Thursday indicating that national forests and grasslands open nearly half their trails to motorcycle and all-terrain vehicle use in eight states along the route followed by the Lewis and Clark expedition.

''Only one fifth of the wild forest and prairie landscape first experienced by Lewis and Clark two centuries ago is still intact and undeveloped,'' said Jim Young, Sierra Club spokesman. ''Much of what remains is being severely compromised by dirtbikes and ATVs.''

The environmental group said 42 percent of the trails are open to motorized vehicles in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

But a regional spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service said he doubted the number was that high.

''We've got about 21,500 miles of trail in Oregon and Washington,'' said Forest Service spokesman Rex Holloway in Portland.

''Only about 18 percent of that is open to ATVs and motorcycles,'' he said. ''And 30 percent of that trail system is in wilderness so it's not available to motorized vehicles at all.''

Mark Lawler, the report's author, said the Sierra Club is trying to draw attention to crowded trails as the 2002 bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition approaches.

''For too long, it's been a laissez-faire attitude in the Forest Service,'' Lawler said.

''It's 'Oh, somebody wants to ride their dirtbike on these trails, let 'em go,''' he said. ''Government agencies have to start putting limits on it.''

He also said the government spends money improving those trails, even though motorcycles and ATVs just keep tearing them up.

But Holloway said the Forest Service has to maintain all trails, whether they're used by machines, horses or hikers - or all three.

Lawler said motorized vehicles should be treated more strictly because they're noisy and travel farther, and interfere with hikers or horses on combined trails.

''You can go 100 or 150 miles a day on a dirtbike or an ATV, so their disturbance is spread over a wider area,'' Lawler said.

The Forest Service already is considering more restrictions in a number of states.

In Oregon, the agency plans to bar ATVs from roads otherwise closed to motor vehicles in roughly 60 percent of the 452,000-acre La Grande Ranger District in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, an area popular with elk and deer hunters.

In Montana and the Dakotas, the Forest Service had tried to ''fast track'' a proposal to ban cross-country vehicles from millions of acres of federal land but it ran into heavy public opposition.

The proposed ban on cross-country motorized travel on 15.9 million acres of federal land administered by the Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be delayed about a year. It was drafted in response to concerns about erosion, damage to wildlife habitat, weeds carried by dirtbikes and ATVs, and interference with other trail users.

''It's a matter of working with different groups and educating them on land protection,'' Holloway said.

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