This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Are Dixie National Forest managers really "shutting down public access" as a Garfield County official claims? Certainly not. Some context might help.
In 2005, the Forest Service enacted the Travel Management Rule, requiring national forests to limit motorized vehicles to designated roads and trails. Before that, the majority of America's National Forest System was a free-for-all — wide open to vehicle travel. That meant you could strike out in any direction and drive off-road to your heart's content. The only limitations were geology (cliff faces, rocks and boulders), hydrology (lakes and rivers), ecology (thick stands of trees) and your own personal outdoor ethic.
Prior to the 1990s, it took a hardy soul in a customized vehicle to venture off-road, but that changed with the widespread availability and new capability of ATVs. People started using ATVs to get farther out in pristine backcountry, and no public policy existed to limit them. This led to an untenable situation, which I witnessed firsthand riding my own ATV on just about every road on the Dixie from 1999 to 2005. People were abusing the system, and it had a disastrous impact on wildlife and fish habitat, water quality and the natural quiet of Utah's great outdoors.
ATVs became "babysitters" for kids to tear around in the mud and dust without adult supervision. Many riders cut new ATV trails and re-opened old logging, mining and range improvement routes that had not seen tires for decades. Most of these routes dead end. They were designed to cut timber or do livestock work, and, as such, they make for a terrible recreation experience. As a result, people would often blaze their own trails beyond the end of the roads.
Many of the new ATV routes were steep, dangerous and ecologically unsustainable. What began as a single person driving cross-country became a network of motorized trails as more and more people followed the tracks. The trailblazers never knew about or considered wildlife habitat, unstable soils, slope grade, cultural and archaeological resources or safety. We ended up with a vast network of unplanned trails, many leading to no destination of note, and still more supplying two, three or four ways to get from point A to point B.
Resource managers on the Dixie began to recognize the problem — that ATV technology had outrun regulation. They had a travel system that they could not justify, could not maintain and upon which they could not vouch for the public's safety. Beginning in 2004, the Dixie began to study the situation, and I, along with other conservationists, recreationists and elected officials from Kanab and beyond, met for the first time in Panguitch to begin to tackle the problem.
That first meeting led to many more over the next five years, and public participation in the Dixie's travel planning process was robust. Mapping sessions were held all over southern Utah. In the end, nobody got everything they wanted out of the motorized travel plan, including conservationists like myself. Several appealed, including me and that elected official from Kanab, but all of the appeals were resolved without going to court.
The closures on the Dixie had nothing to do with restricting access, and they were decided upon after ample public involvement, careful study and always for a reason. In fact, the Dixie's website allows any internet user to pull up each route report and learn the precise reason for closure. Do people really want to drive to an old timber loading pad in the middle of the forest, or try to retrace an old overgrown route that dead-ends without any payoff? These are the kinds of roads that were closed, certainly not part of a vital "transportation network."
The Dixie's plan goes a long way toward making the public's motorized travel system more sustainable. Is it perfect? Of course not. But the Forest is taking steps to make some routes like camp spurs available to the public again, and other routes that are still doing damage should be closed. Is it true that "you can't get anywhere on the Dixie," as Commissioner Leland Pollock says? Of course it isn't, and with 2,700 miles of open motorized routes, I'd be happy to take you there myself.
A seventh-generation Utahn, Tim Peterson serves as the Grand Canyon Trust's Utah Wildlands Program Director.