Ursidae69
Expedition Leader
The proposed map for the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico is due out for public comment in April.
I'll post up a link to the draft when it posts. From the dealings I've had with the forest, this should be a good compromise for all users, in my opinion. At the very least I can say that all user groups have been heavily involved.
The New Mexican just ran a front page article on this today in their Sunday edition detailing the conflicts between the ranchers, woodcutters, hikers, four-wheelers, dirt bikers, horseback riders, hunters and mountain bikers.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local News/30-OHV-main
I'll post up a link to the draft when it posts. From the dealings I've had with the forest, this should be a good compromise for all users, in my opinion. At the very least I can say that all user groups have been heavily involved.
The New Mexican just ran a front page article on this today in their Sunday edition detailing the conflicts between the ranchers, woodcutters, hikers, four-wheelers, dirt bikers, horseback riders, hunters and mountain bikers.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local News/30-OHV-main
National forests: Reining in off-roaders
Cross-country enthusiasts, ranchers and hikers await travel restrictions on national forestland
Staci Matlock | The New Mexican
3/29/2008 - 3/30/08
Dirt biker Philip Apodaca and rancher Richard Montoya share something in common: public land on Glorieta Mesa.
The mesa southeast of Santa Fe is a popular place for a lot of people. Ranchers, woodcutters, hikers, four-wheelers, dirt bikers, horseback riders, hunters and mountain bikers all use the piñon, pine and grassland-covered mesa top that stretches from Glorieta south to beyond Villanueva and west from Rowe to Cañoncito. It is blanketed with cow trails, wildlife trails, dirt bike trails, a ton of rutted roads and a few favorite spots for shooters to target practice.
Philip, 16, says he doesn't mind Montoya's cows grazing on Santa Fe National Forest land on the mesa, but Montoya admits he has problems with the way dirt bikers like Philip and other off-road enthusiasts ride.
The two are among thousands of people waiting to see a proposed map from Santa Fe National Forest on where motorized vehicles will be allowed in the future. The map, due out in April for public comment, is the next step in a multiyear, federally mandated effort to clamp down on cross-country travel by trucks, sport-utility vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes.
Montoya, 66, and other ranchers on the mesa accuse off-roaders of tearing up grazing lands, chasing cows, cutting fences, creating foot-deep muddy ruts and shooting holes in their water tanks. "If they ride on the road and stick to the trails it is not a problem to me," Montoya says, "But I find tracks where they've gone off road and damaged grass. I caught one of them ramping off of a dirt stock tank."
Philip says ranchers are blaming the wrong group. He acknowledges he's one of the dirt bikers Montoya accused of doing jumps off the earthen dam used to collect water for stock, but denies doing it. The dirt bikers he rides with aren't the cause of problems on the mesa, he says. "They're blaming a group that is easy for everyone to get mad at."
The Glorieta Mesa debate over off-road use is magnified across the West as public land managers grapple with the burgeoning number of off-road enthusiasts who enjoy riding on public lands.
Leo Hubbard, an architect and four-wheel enthusiast who lives, mountain bikes and hangs with ranchers on Glorieta Mesa, thinks there are responsible off-roaders and irresponsible ones. "Whether people like it or not, there are going to be off-road vehicles on public lands. The question is: Where is it appropriate and where is it not?" he says.
Big need
The meteoric rise in off-road enthusiasts zooming cross-country on public lands a few years ago prompted then U.S. Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth to call "unmanaged recreation" among the four biggest threats to national forests and grasslands. Fire, exotic weeds and loss of open space were the others.
In 2005, the Forest Service mandated all national forests draw up maps designating where motorized vehicles would be allowed.
Currently, motorized vehicles are permitted anywhere on national forest land except wilderness areas and other places where they are specifically prohibited. About 40 percent of the 1.6 million-acre Santa Fe National Forest is closed to motorized vehicles, but the other 60 percent has about 7,100 miles of official roads and many more miles of unofficial roads created by trucks, dirt bikes and ATVs.
All five national forests in New Mexico are in various stages of regulating motorized travel. Some, like the Lincoln National Forest, grappled with this 20 years ago and designated a vehicle-use trail and road system.
Long a Mecca in the Sacramento district for dirt bikers and ATVers, Lincoln is the only national forest in New Mexico to prohibit off-road travel by any motorized vehicle. The prohibition began in 1987, according to Forest Service engineer Nancy Taylor. Forest staff also worked with environmental groups, off-road users and grazing permitees to decide what existing trails and roads should remain open to motorized use. Out of 532 miles of trail, they ultimately kept 302 miles open for off-highway vehicles. Roughly 1,000 miles of road were closed to motorized vehicles. Another 1,400 were kept open. But today, some of the roads have yet to be posted as "closed," Taylor says.
Glorieta Mesa
Philip has ridden his dirt bike around the mesa east of Santa Fe, also called Rowe Mesa, for the last decade with other local kids and sometimes their parents. He says his group sticks with cow and wildlife trails, dirt roads and about 12 miles of single track trail on the mesa.
Montoya, ironically, used to be a competitive dirt biker, racing at a track in Santa Fe years ago. But he's seen an increase in the number of off-roaders roaring up County Road 51C to Forest Service land and the muddy track evidence that they are going cross-country. It's not just off-roaders. He says woodcutters and stone haulers are causing damage too. "What I'm seeing is that there is no control over anything."
Some people say the fight over off-road use on Glorieta Mesa is conflict between a "traditional" land-based ranching culture versus a new, nonland based culture.
Hubbard, son of a farmer and a dirt biker, says he was raised to respect the property of others. But he thinks there's a renegade mentality among off-roaders who make their own roads and trails, chase cows and shoot tanks. "There's a cultural gap that occurs when people don't understand the consequences of their actions," Hubbard says. "Some of it is outright malicious. Others just don't understand. It is a different way of relating to the land and to other people.
"I think it is a growing problem that is going to continue because I see the Forest Service and the BLM having their budgets cut for enforcement at the same time we have an increase in the sale of off-road vehicles."
But Henry Lanman, an Eldorado-area resident who's been riding dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles on Glorieta Mesa and in the Jemez Mountains for decades, says he teaches his son trail etiquette, to turn off his engine or get off the trail when horses and hikers come by.
As for other problems up there like trash dumping and target practicing, plenty of local residents do both, and they aren't on dirt bikes, he says.
Victor Apodaca, Philip's dad and the law enforcement officer for the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District for the past 10 years, says he sees few ATVs and dirt bikes on the mesa except on the weekends and during hunting season. What he sees every day are trucks — used by ranchers and, in season, woodcutters and piñon pickers.
In his experience, piñon pickers cut fences. "You can follow their track through the fence to the trees where they've walked around and around picking piñons," he says.
The biggest damage from ATVs in his district is in Dalton Canyon and on the road to Elk Mountain, both off the road to the Pecos Wilderness, where steep terrain and fragile soils have led to deep erosion.
"What upsets ranchers and off-road opponents about the mesa is that there is going to be a map put out showing where it is legal to ride and where it isn't," Apodaca says.
"They think it will attract people from all over the country here," he adds.
Jemez Mountains
"They are going to devastate our trails," says Gordon Spingler, giving his assessment of what he thinks the Santa Fe National Forest will do to dirt-biking paths he's been riding for more than three decades in the Jemez Mountains. He says 40- to
75-mile single-track loops are what dirt bikers need for a good ride.
Spingler is a member of the Black Feather Club, a longtime dirt-biking group made up of engineers, scientists and state game department rangers, among other professionals. "We've spent 35 years developing and maintaining those trails," says Spingler, a Los Alamos resident.
Spingler and another club member, John O'Malia of Albuquerque, say the last version they saw of the proposed TMP map indicates many of the club's favorite trails would be closed.
Club members went out with Global Positioning Systems and mapped the trails for the Forest Service. Those trails — with names like Horror Show, Paliza Peralta and Lost Jug — aren't used just by dirt bikers, according to O'Malia. They're used by hikers, mountain bikers, equestrians, hunters and ATVers. But Black Feather members say they're the only ones maintaining the trails, clearing out dead fall each year and filling in erosion.
O'Malia says he and a group go out every year to clear the trails of trees downed by wind, snow and lightening. "I'll be damned if I'll go in there and clean trails if I can't use them," he says. And, "I guarantee you within a year, those trails will become impassable to hikers, hunters and equestrians."
Some people, including O'Malia, say ATV riders are causing the most damage. "They take a single track and hammer them, beat them down until they can get through," O'Malia says. "They are the No. 1 reason we are getting kicked out."
But Kevin Stillman, who's been an outspoken opponent of off-roaders in the Jemez, says dirt bikes are also a problem. He's repaired trails in the Jemez with the Forest Service. "Where I live, the trails have been ruined by dirt bikes. These guys were putting in trails without knowing where to put them, and many have become badly eroded," he says. "Once a section of trails gets bad and washed out, they abandon it and reroute it."
Lanman says that's not true. "It's not fun to ride in a big, deep rut, so we go in and try to fix them, fill in with dirt, rocks, put in water bars" to divert water from the trail, he says.
Lanman says motorized vehicles aren't the only ones that damage land, and Julie Bain, National Environmental Policy Act coordinator for the Santa Fe National Forest, agrees. Bicycles, hikers and cattle all disturb soil, sometimes severely, she says. The more people use any area on any form of transportation, the more damage occurs.
"But (the Forest Service) is targeting motorized vehicles," Lanman says. "I think it is biased and unfair. What we want is to keep the trails open that we already have. If the trails erode, we'll work on maintaining them."
Dave Gemeinhart, a project manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an executive committee member for the Pajarito Group of the Sierra Club, says he wants to see the number of open roads reduced in a way that makes sense to motor sports enthusiasts but first protects the environment.
"Whatever comes out of this, the motor sports people will see it as a degradation," says Gemeinhart. "I think they would prefer the status quo. I'm not sure they will be inclined to see very much positive."
Linda Riddle, the Jemez District ranger, says it is a challenge balancing all the needs. "We're doing our best to propose something that is a balanced plan, that balances people's desires for motorized recreation and those desires for no-motorized recreation." she says. "Everybody is probably going to get some things they want, but not everything."
Next step
Human needs are not the only ones the Forest Service has to consider. Archaeological sites, endangered species and streams all have to be protected. "Seven thousand people might want a specific road, but if it goes right through riparian habitat or sensitive species habitat, it might not be good place for a road," Bain says.
People will have 45 days to comment on the Proposed Action map. Whatever the designated system for vehicles looks like when it's finalized next year, it won't yet have physical closures. "All we'll have is a physical map, no gates or rock barriers," Bain says. Before any road is closed, there will be a separate environmental analysis.
Meanwhile, it is likely the debate between off-roaders and other forest users is far from over and could become more rancorous. Norma McCallan, vice chairman of the Northern Group of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club, says she thinks the polarizing off-road debate in the Santa Fe National Forest is symptomatic of a deeper issue: "If we had a bigger sense of community, maybe we wouldn't have this great divide between the groups. Maybe would have sat at table together and figured this out differently."
