Use these facts in your letters to the Forest Service to object to their plan to open at least 280 more miles of trails to Off Road Vehicles:
- The Tahoe National Forest transportation system includes approximately 2,640 miles of roads and 760 miles of motorized trails. Additionally, there are nearly 2,500 miles of new unauthorized routes on the Tahoe National Forest.
- High density of roads and motorized trails reduces the opportunities for other users to experience the naturalness, solitude and scenery.
- In areas with extensive and heavily used ORV trail networks, sedimentation effects may influence entire watersheds.
- Approximately 70% of the 387 vertebrate species occurring on the Tahoe National Forest either live exclusively in riparian areas or are frequently found there.
- ORV access to sensitive wild lands increases the vulnerability of threatened wildlife like the American marten, Pacific fisher, and wolverine.
- ORV use has been shown to cause stress in many animal species and often results in major changes in animal behavior and reduced reproductive success or survival.
- On an individual basis, recreational motor vehicles have very high pollution rates. A two-stroke all-terrain vehicle or motorcycle can emit as much pollution (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides) in one hour as more than 30 automobiles operating for one hour.
- ORVs have carved more that 2,500 miles of user-created routes on the Tahoe National Forest, which contribute to soil erosion and alter natural water flows.
- A study in Montana demonstrated that a single ATV can disperse more than 2,000 invasive knapweed seeds over a 10-mile radius.
Click on the Proposed Plan page to get even more facts!
Click here to write NOW to the Forest Service to Just Say No to expanded ORV use in the Tahoe National Forest
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John
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent description of the problems with ORV planning and trail designation in the TNF. Major issues from my point of view include: the lack of consideration, modeling, and planning for ORV noise effects on birds and mammals; the lack of trail removal in the plans (as if all trails lacked environmental harm); the lack of consideration and resolutions of conflicts among recreation types (when TNF's own surveys tell them of ample conflict); the lack of planning of a rational, affordable, environmentally-sound trail network, when the rule requiring this planning clearly calls for such a planned system, etc.
Fraser Shilling