Off-road vehicles (ORVs, also known as ATVs--all-terrain vehicles and OHVs--off-highway vehicles) are dangerous to riders and wildlife, disruptive to habitat, quiet recreation, soils, fish, and both watershed and ecosystem health.

Under our present system of environmental laws and land management, public lands have become key refuges for species imperiled by intensive use of industrial and private lands. Our public lands are the central hope both for the recovery of many species and for the continuation of the natural processes necessary to their survival. The species depend on ecosystems, but the ecosystems also depend on species: both set real limits on the impacts we can ask public lands to absorb. ORVs can exceed these limits with a twist of the wrist.

Management of the current ORV trail system is failing to protect our public resources and ensure the balance of multiple uses. Law enforcement resources are now, and are likely to remain for the foreseeable future, inadequate to the task of even monitoring ORV use on our public lands. In addition, irresponsible fractions of ORV riders consistently fail to remain on designated trails, observe speed and noise limits, or take proactive steps to recognize and prevent resource damage.

By their nature, ORVs become a dominant use wherever permitted. We strongly believe that if ORVs are to be permitted the privilege of using public lands, their use must be tightly restricted to specific areas to insure that their use results in the least possible harm to resources including water, soils, wildlife habitat, and quiet recreation.

Policy Recommendations
Because of the inescapable impacts of ORV use on other, more fundamental values of public lands, ORV use--and particularly "vehicle play" or purely recreational use--should generally be restricted to private lands.

The burden must be on the proponents of ORV use on public lands to create a no-harm management plan which can and will be fully implemented, and to ensure that those programs are adequately staffed and funded to prevent degradation of public resources. Where the will to enforce ORV restrictions is lacking, or resources are insufficient to properly regulate their use, ORVs must be restricted from public lands.

EPIC recommends that the ORV route system be compact, closed-loop, and economically as well as ecologically sustainable. There must be sufficient design and enforcement to ensure that off-system use will not occur. Enforcement and monitoring of the ORV system may be aided by the implementation of a purchased permit system and/or a GPS-based monitoring program.

Off-system routes are trails created by ORV use. Such routes should not have been developed and are illegal to use now. These routes have not gone through NEPA analysis or any other environmental review prior to this inventory. Any off-system routes should be closed immediately and should not be included in route designation or inventory consideration. Instead, off-system routes should be considered for additions to route designation ONLY after the designation process is near completion. Even then, their inclusion should be on a route by route basis and should first avoid, then minimize, and then mitigate, any forseeable adverse environmental impacts.

For a Fact Sheet on ORV impacts, see:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PROGRAMS/forests/ORV_Fact_Sheet.pdf