Expansion of OHV Access in Tahoe National Forest Denied

On November 22, the US District Court for the Eastern District of California, ruled in favor of the “US Department of Agriculture, which oversees the forest service, and denying Friends of Tahoe Forest Access in its attempt to preserve and expand access for off-highway vehicles” according to a recent Sierra Sun article.  “The Tahoe National Forest is crisscrossed by almost 3,700 miles of roads and trails. Many routes were neither planned nor engineered, but instead were created over time by repeated cross-country vehicle use” as stated on the web site of Earthjustice, a public interest law firm, representing The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, Forest Issues Group, Sierra Foothills Audubon Society and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.  In the Sierra Sun article Earthjustice argues “that there is no way to adequately protect a forest while allowing motor vehicles to trammel all over the forest with no restrictions or limits.  On their web site Earthjustice states “off-road vehicles destroy the vegetation, compact the soil, erode the stream beds, and threaten wildlife in sensitive areas of the Tahoe National Forest. . .The impact of off-road traffic is felt far beyond the borders of the national forest. When motorbikes and all-terrain vehicles carve ruts in hillsides, erosion is inevitable. Heavy rains wash sediment into streams and rivers, destroying habitat for fish and animals.  Those critical waterways provide the chief source of drinking water not just for wildlife, but also for millions of Californians.”

“In September 2010, the Tahoe National Forest approved a final Travel Management Rule and environmental impact report that provided about 2,000 miles of roads, 385 miles of trails, and 244 acres of play areas open to motor vehicles” as indicated on the Earthjustice web site.  In response to the new plan , the Pacific Legal Foundation, representing a consortium of off-highway vehicle users, claimed that “the Forest Service has engaged in a ‘draconian denial of public lands access.’” Further, according to the Sierra Sun, the Foundation alleged that the Forest Service “illegally closed more than 800 miles of roads and trails the public has used for years in the Tahoe National Forest.”  In July 2012 several off-road clubs sued USFS to overturn this management plan and to keep all existing user-created trails open to traffic.  The Pacific Legal Foundation claimed, in an article in the Sierra Sun, that “we [filed] the lawsuit to stop the US Forest Service from illegally padlocking vast areas of the Tahoe National Forest and blocking the public from enjoying responsible recreational use of public lands.”

Leo Drumm, travel and transportation coordinator for the Nevada BLM office, told the Reno-Gazette Journal that “people care about this. As soon as you mention there could be a [road] closure, people get angry because they are used to being able to go where they want to go. When you mention opening new areas, people get angry because they think we’re trashing the environment.” In 2005 Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth described “unrestricted use of off-highway vehicles as one of the four biggest threats to national forest land along with wildfire, loss of open space and invasive species. . .OHVs should be restricted to designation roads and trails.”

In response to the decision Greg Loarie, attorney for the environmental groups, said  “One thing both sides of this case agree on: Tahoe National Forest is a stunning, special place.  With millions of people visiting each year and the rapid increase of motor vehicles throughout the forest, we need some basic limits on motor vehicle use to make sure that we don’t love this place to death,”  quoted in Sandy Steinman’s Blog.  Karen Schambach of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is quoted in the same blog saying  “This decision sends a clear message: The days of allowing destruction of our National Forests from uncontrolled and unregulated off-road vehicles are at an end.  We all have a right to enjoy our public lands, but no one has a right to destroy them.”

Check out the following websites to read the complete articles:

• Sierra Sun (recent article)
• Earthjustice
• Sierra Sun (earlier article)
• Sandy Steinman’s Blog