All terrain vehicles (ATVs) are causing major damage to hiking trails in the Long Island Pine Barrens as riders bring them onto the trails despite the fact that it is illegal to do so. Damage to trails by ATVs is also a problem in many other natural areas.
Trail Damage by ATVs. Photographed in the Long Island Pine Barrens on March 8, 2009. Click photo for Flickr photo page.
Two ATVs on Paumanok Path, a trail designated for hiking only, in the Long Island Pine Barrens. Photographed on March 8, 2009. Click photo for Flickr photo page.
A section of the Paumanok Path that has been largely spared from ATV damage, in the Long Island Pine Barrens - March 8, 2009. Click photo for Flickr photo page.
A fence designed to allow hikers onto a trail, while excluding ATVs, in the Long Island Pine Barrens - March 8, 2009. Click photo for Flickr photo page.
According to an article in the New York Times
Outlaws Ride the Range on Four Wheels by John Rather, published January 4, 2004:
BUT for his 9-millimeter pistol and leather police jacket, Sgt. Arthur Pendzick of the Suffolk County park police could have been mistaken for a salesman pitching all-terrain vehicles.
"Look at this baby right here," said Sergeant Pendzick, pointing out a gleaming black Suzuki Quad Runner impounded and stored last week in a crammed virtual showroom of A.T.V.'s at a location the police would rather keep secret. "This is a $10,000 piece of equipment, totally digital. Got a little computer on it and everything."
The Suzuki, with a 500-cubic-centimeter engine, capable of speeds of more than 60 miles an hour and in this case barely two days out of a real showroom, was not even mud-splattered when its hapless owner ran into police on A.T.V. patrol in the backwoods of Suffolk's expanses of pine barrens and other open spaces.
The patrols, with officers riding their own A.T.V.'s, are often mounted by the interagency Pine Barrens Law Enforcement Council. County park police, deputy sheriffs, state forest rangers, State Department of Environmental Conservation officers and sometimes town and Suffolk County police sweep through areas illegal A.T.V. riders are known to frequent.
The goal of the get-tough policy is to protect woods and fields, and particularly core areas of the 100,000-acre Long Island Pine Barrens Preserve, from dangerous and self-endangering riders, and to curb the damage caused by the four-wheel A.T.V.'s, and to a lesser extent by the off-road motorcycles known as dirt bikes. Authorities say they are also deluged with noise complaints from residents living near illegal riding areas.
In Suffolk, county law bars A.T.V.'s from all public lands and allows them on private land only if riders are carrying written permission from the landowner.
If he is like most riders the police encounter, the A.T.V. owner will also have been cited for state vehicle and traffic violations for not being registered, failing to display a license plate, not having insurance and not wearing a helmet.
The riders complain that there are no areas where they can ride legally. One group, the Long Island Off-Road Vehicle Organization, is urging Suffolk officials to create a legal riding ground.
Thomas Riker of Miller Place, a group member who said he had been riding a dirt bike for over 35 years, said his group opposed illegal riding and believed a legal trail-circuit riding area would help limit it. "If they put half the effort they put into enforcement into finding a place to operate legally, they would see the pressure alleviated," he said.
Mr. Riker said the group, which has about 1,000 members, was asking for the same accommodations hikers, equestrians, mountain bikers and other user groups had on county and state lands. "We are not looking for an environmentally sensitive parcel of land," he said. "Obviously that's not suitable for what we are talking about. We are trying to do the right thing and show the county there is a need."
But others said A.T.V.'s were so damaging to the landscape that there was no good place for riding in Suffolk. "The ecosystem quite frankly cannot handle it," said George Fernandez, the chairman of the trails committee for the Ridge Civic Association and the pine barrens trail maintenance coordinator for the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference.
is a hotline for reporting illegal activity in the Long Island Pine Barrens.
A group of women have formed
Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a non-profit, public lands organization that uses the voices and activism of elders to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. From their web site:
Great Old Broads has recorded evidence of illegal ATV trail construction (cut trees, bladed trails, culverts, bridges, rock cribbing, ATV width gates and stiles over fences, etc.) on BLM land in San Juan County, Utah. Of particular concern is the Recapture Wash Trail, which has over 30 documented archaeological sites. Prior to the construction of this trail, vehicular access was very difficult, but it is now easily accessed by ATVs and dirt bikes, and the trail actually runs through several archaeological sites. Another area of concern is the Hole-In-The-Rock Trail, a steep dugway over Comb Ridge, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Some of their work is described in an article
AARP: Tattle Trails: Great Old Broads for Wilderness by Beth Baker, March & April 2009. Quoting from the article, which includes statements by leaders Ronni Egan and Rose Chilcoat:
Egan, 63, and Chilcoat, 50, lead Great Old Broads for Wilderness (970-385-9577): 3,600 women (and a few hundred men) who put hiking boots to the ground and take a stand for Mother Nature by monitoring abuses of public lands. Recapture Wash in southeastern Utah is one area they watch. There, using Global Positioning System devices and digital cameras, the group has been documenting damage to vegetation and streambeds by all-terrain vehicles. The pictures have paid off: the Bureau of Land Management closed a trail that ATV enthusiasts had dynamited out of rock perilously close to 800-year-old cliff dwellings.
"We're not against off-road vehiclesor grazing cattle or oil derricks," says Egan, the group's executive director. "There's enough room for everybody. But some of these things are just so destructive, they shouldn't be allowed in certain environments." The Broads have worked to limit snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park and to establish Wild Sky Wilderness in Washington State.
Also see the paper
All-Terrain Vehicles in the Adirondacks: Issues and Options by Leslie N. Karasin for the Wildlife Conservation Society: Working Paper no. 21, April, 2003. The article discusses ATV issues in the Adirondacks and other regions of the United States. Quoting from this paper:
In the Adirondacks, environmental damage by ATVs often takes place on wet sections of trail designed for winter snowmobile use. Depending on the amount of illegal use, the trail gets wider and wider as the trail becomes increasingly muddy. Future users circumvent the wet areas, in many cases creating new trails, damaging vegetation and opening up new areas to abuse. Little funding is available for trail maintenance to arrest the problem. Often, environmentally sensitive areas like streams and wetlands are affected. These problems occur in both low-lying areas and upland regions.
ATV use has been associated, in some instances, with other egregious violations and cases of environmental damage, including tree cutting, wetland fills and illegal trail creation, according to DEC staff. These occurrences are not the norm, but they are taking place and thus are a concern.
Impacts on soils, wetlands and water in all likelihood have impacts on wildlife populations in the Adirondacks. The other factors that can impact wildlifestress, noise, and direct mortality--discussed in Part Two of this report may also impact wildlife in the forest preserve, but these impacts are less visible and have not been studied intensively in this region.
Previous Topic
Index
