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As any boots-on-the-ground hunter knows from firsthand experience, too many roads and ATV trails impair big-game habitat, often resulting in shorter hunting seasons and reduced hunter opportunity. They also degrade spawning habitat and result in less-productive fisheries. Consequently, I’m writing to support the White River National Forest’s proposed travel management plan, which wisely decreases the number of ATV routes in the forest.
This is particularly good news for big-game hunters because, as access on already overly accessible public land increases (oftentimes via the proliferation of illegal ATV trails), the health of wildlife habitat deteriorates, wildlife numbers decrease, and hunting opportunities fade away. A Journal of Forestry article reported that two miles of roads per square mile can cut elk populations in half. Six miles of roads per square mile can nearly destroy an entire elk population, and more than 94 percent of Colorado’s roadless areas are already within two miles of a road.
According to John Ellenberger, former big game manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, “The more we encroach on roadless lands, the more pressure we put on elk and deer in Colorado to find new habitat. They’ll eventually be pushed off of public land onto private land … The more this happens, the harder it becomes to find quality hunting.”
And Keith Goddard (owner of Magnum Outfitters and chairman of the Rifle chapter of the Colorado Mule Deer Association) says: “If our kids are going to have mule deer and elk to hunt and trout streams to fish, we have to take care of the habitat.” Taking care of habitat means ensuring that habitat-damaging ATVs are limited to manageable and maintainable (and enforceable) routes within our national forests. The White River National Forest’s proposed Travel Management Plan is a welcome step in the right direction.
DAVID LIEN
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
Colorado Springs
4 Responses to “More ATVs means less big game”
Posted May 28th, 2009 at 1:16 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
as a former big game hunter, i logged several trips of hoofing it when i was younger. thanks to a medical condition in midlife which inhibited my ability to walk i bought 2 atv’s for me & my hunting partner. we always stayed to roads/trails, would park & situate ourselves high up so we could overlook valleys. we always treated our environment with respect and there’s the rub. too many people have a “me, me, me” attitude that they don’t respect the rules of nature. it doesn’t matter to them, they are the “sportmen” who may shoot from the road at night, harvest an animal without a valid license, or pack in their trash & don’t pack it out. the only way to stop this is severe penalties for infractions. just don’t lump all of us atv users together as being harmful to hunting & the environment, it’s the only way we can still participate. one last thought, i would certainly like to see licensing for the right to drive an atv. make these people get some education & proficiency in driving an atv.
Posted May 28th, 2009 at 2:12 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Really hard to believe that the daily sentinel has deleted my previous comment pointing out the falsehood of the letterwriter. I simply pointed out that he was obviously just another environmental mouth with no real knowledge of the White River Forest Plan or ATVs and was obviously not in the company of the mainstream hunters and fishers.
I pointed out that the forest plan was primarily closing many miles of gravel road to ATVs as a safety measure due to being unsafe to share such a road with full size vehicles even though they deemed it safe for those same full size vehicles to travel on the same road as mountain bikes. I pointed out that the majority of closures were not backcountry trails as the letter writer would have us believe, therefore the closures did not effect the hunt what-so-ever.
I also pointed out that the real problem is in the way of damage to trails from being used in wet conditions and I quoted the DOW as saying ATVs were here to stay!
Now if this kind of comment is deleted then the liberal mouths on this site should have every post deleted.
Posted May 28th, 2009 at 2:19 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Well, I have not had crow for sometime until now.
Seems as though in my haste I jumped the gun. For some reason the letter writers letter appears twice and my original comment is with one of them.
My apologies!
Posted May 29th, 2009 at 8:15 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
I find it interesting that both Mr. Lien and Mr. Goddard are professional outfitters. Could it be that their hatred of ATV’s is based simply on a desire to “keep it all for themselves”? I happened across an abandoned outfitters camp once. They left behind mattresses, their latrine, and mounds of trash. I’ve also encountered outfitters who were rude, even hostile, all because I was out there hunting on foot and not paying them to guide me. There are bad apples in every barrel, but to attack ATV users as the root of all evil is unfair. Most ATV users are responsible, considerate people who simply have their own chosen mode of transportation. To blame one group is self-serving and accomplishes nothing.
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