DENTRY: State, U.S. raise fines for ATV violations

By Ed Dentry, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 24, 2008 at 10:51 p.m.

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Photo by Ed Dentry / The Rocky

Colorado and the U.S. have raised fines on tickets issued to ATV and dirt-bike operators for riding off limits on federal lands.

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There's one thing wrong with the bill Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law Thursday authorizing state peace officers to issue tickets to people who drive all-terrain vehicles and other motor vehicles off limits on federal lands.

It's the fines. They aren't tough enough.

Even as the state bill was wending its way through the General Assembly, the federal government already had raised its fines for public lands violations, including ATVs running amok.

The new Colorado law authorizes wildlife officers and other state lawmen to enforce federal motorized travel laws on public land.

The law stipulates driving an off-highway vehicle on an unauthorized road or trail would cost the operator $100; the fine for motoring in a wilderness area is $200.

If those sound like slaps on the wrist given to backwoods violators, would new fines more than doubled sound better? Done.

"Yes, the fines have increased, absolutely," said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Janelle Smith.

The federal fines went up in late February. Smith said the penalty for driving a motor vehicle off designated routes on public land is $250. Get caught with a machine in a wilderness area, pay $500.

The higher fines and recruitment of state law officers to help overburdened federal rangers catch culprits won't solve what has become a major problem on public lands in the West.

But they might be a step toward easing grief among public lands visitors, especially hunters, who feel invaded by internal combustion engines.

Virtually everyone who has hunted or hiked on federal public lands recently has felt the pain. ATVs and dirt bikes have been molesting honest hunts and outings in national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands and tearing up terrain as never before.

If you are a big-game hunter who hikes tough and keeps quiet, minding the wind and sounds of nature, you should have everything going for you.

These days, though, chances are that you'll be forced off the trail to let the big-wheel convoy pass on its way to the alpine meadow you had in mind.

Last year, an Izaak Walton League survey reported that 83 percent of state wildlife managers said they have seen resource damage caused by ATVs.

Seventy-two percent of those managers said "disruption of hunters during hunting season" is a serious problem.

In another 2007 survey, 91 percent of federal lands rangers said off-road vehicles are "a significant law enforcement problem."

More than half of rangers surveyed by Rangers for Responsible Recreation checked "off-road vehicle problems in my jurisdiction are out of control."

The motorized carnival has become so troublesome that the Forest Service reversed its old go-anywhere policy with a rule change in 2005.

Motor vehicles now are forbidden on forest roads and trails except for those designated and signed specifically for their use.

The federal rule change is a work in progress while each national forest develops motor vehicle use maps.

In Colorado, preliminary maps are available online for Arapho-Roosevelt; Pike and San Isabel; Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison; and Medicine Bow-Routt national forests. Go to www.FS.Fed.US and select a forest.

It isn't just hunters and hikers who are concerned. The Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition supported the off-highway enforcement bill Ritter signed Thursday.

Supporters also included Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Colorado Wildlife Federation and The Wilderness Society.

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