The explosion of all-terrain vehicles in Utah has left managers of the public lands scrambling to keep up with the stampede. They're trailing badly, and that pleases neither the riders nor the environmentalists who warn of the damage that off-highway joyrides inflict upon the land.
The solution seems simple enough. Designate trails, then persuade riders to stay on them. Enforce the law against those who don't.
But, as usual, it's not that simple. The federal land agencies - the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service - don't have the money or the people to create a trail system overnight and enforce it. Instead, they've got to rely on Utahns to cooperate, to stay on trails and generally behave themselves.
Many riders do that. Some don't. They tear up signs and destroy other facilities. They blaze new trails that others invariably follow, leading to soil erosion and disturbance of wildlife habitat.
Riders groups are doing their part to encourage others to obey the rules and follow a conservation ethic. But Utah law doesn't require adults with driver licenses to have any special training before they hop on an ATV. For both safety and the environment, it should.
Meanwhile, the conscientious riders have some legitimate beefs of their own. Maps of approved trails often are hard to come by. Bureaucratic due process means that it takes years for managers to decide on routes and closures.
If land managers had more money, they could be more responsive. To that end, the Legislature increased the registration fees on ATVs from $10 to $17 in 2004 to raise money for off-highway vehicle facilities, mitigation and safety education. But those state funds don't help federal agencies much.
Nevertheless, we applaud the BLM and the Forest Service for designating trails as part of their management plans. They also are working with the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation to create a common Web site for ATV information.
There is no magic bullet. Convincing the owners of the roughly 200,000 ATVs registered in Utah - about one for every 10 people - to respect Mother Nature is the only solution. Otherwise, those unscarred western vistas will be lost forever.
