Defenders Magazine

Biodiversity: Off-Road Rampage

By Susan Cerulean

Thrill-seeking operators of snowmobiles, swamp buggies and personal watercraft are trammeling our last silent spaces on ever more powerful breeds of off-road recreational vehicles (ORVs), impairing habitat and wildlife populations from California to the Florida Keys. You probably can't name a public landscape that doesn't have a species compromised by this newest bully on the block. ORVs are out of control, which is exactly what they are designed and marketed to be. In the name of extreme sport or adventure "play," including mudbogging, mudslinging, winching and enduro-racing, ORV users pit their machines against the living landscape and wreak significant, severe havoc.

In the few decades since ORVs have been on the market and at our disposal, they have motored far out in front of our collective ability to implement sensible protective measures, or even to fully catalog the damage they inflict.

Twenty-eight million Americans ride ORVs roughly 685 million times per year; in 1960, so few people used these machines, they were not even addressed in a National Park Service survey on outdoor recreation. In addition, more than 1.3 million personal watercraft are currently in use in the United States, accounting for the fastest growing segment of the recreational boating industry, according to a report published by the Izaak Walton League of America.

Numerous reports demonstrate that ORVs directly kill individual wild animals, disturb species' critical life processes, and fragment and damage habitat, undermining ecosystem function at microscopic levels scientists are just beginning to understand. ORV activity can increase wind and water erosion, which in turn removes soil nutrients and destabilizes soil structure. Moreover, these vehicles often alter the configuration of the ground surface, thus affecting water runoff patterns.

Desert tortoises offer a good case study of a species at odds with ORVs. These elephantine-limbed creatures possess traits -- including a long life span, late maturity and unique physical adaptations to their desert environment — that have allowed them to outlive dinosaurs. But they are ill-prepared to adapt to rapid, human-induced changes in habitat. Desert tortoises were listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1990, just about the same time that off-road vehicle use came to the desert with a vengeance. The species was already suffering from impacts of urbanization and development, road mortality, illegal collection for the pet trade, disease and predation. Like many of these threats, ORV activities may affect desert tortoise populations in multiple ways: direct mortality by crushing the animals on the ground's surface or in their burrows, or indirectly, through habitat alterations from soil compaction and erosion, vegetation destruction or toxins from exhaust. Many studies have shown greatly reduced desert tortoise densities inside and outside ORV areas, as well as significantly fewer burrows. Studies have also shown that they may suffer permanent hearing loss from repeated long-term exposure to loud sounds such as ORV traffic.

The habitat preference of desert tortoises and ORV enthusiasts is responsible for much of the conflicts between the two. Tortoises have been found to spend significantly more time traveling in desert washes and on small hills, where preferred food plants abound. A 1997 study of off-road recreationists names these same habitats as preferred by ORV enthusiasts, perhaps due to the challenging aspects of maneuvering in this rougher terrain. Equally destructive are personal watercraft (PWCs), high performance machines designed to be used aggressively at speeds of up to 70 mph. In addition to their extreme maneuverability, they produce an unparalleled level of air, water and noise pollution, spilling 15 times more oil into bodies of water each year than the Exxon Valdez, the largest tanker spill in U.S. history. Their extremely shallow draft and light weight allows them to penetrate tidally inundated sandbars, seagrass beds, beaches and other prime wildlife nesting and foraging areas not accessible to conventional motorized boats. Scientists have documented a wide range of effects on wildlife, including interruption of normal feeding activity, displacement from habitat, decreased reproduction rates and increased mortality.

Studies in Florida demonstrate, not surprisingly, that nesting birds and waterfowl are especially affected by PWCs. Jim Rodgers, a wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, has found that these conveyances flush birds from much greater distances than other motorized boats. He has documented nesting shore and wading birds forced to abandon eggs and reduce their mating and feeding frequencies. Another recent study found that PWC traffic drove almost 200 birds into the air at a time, more than six times the numbers flushed by ordinary motorboats. Marine mammal experts in California are concerned that PWC activity near seals and sea lions disturbs normal rest and social interaction and causes stampedes that can separate seal pups from their mothers. PWCs near shallow, shoreline waters also impede upon critical feeding and calf-rearing areas for dolphins.

After almost three decades of rampant ORV use, Big Cypress National Preserve — an expansive wetland that sprawls across much of southwest Florida — has been gouged by more than 23,000 miles of ORV trails, enough to encircle the planet. The preserve encompasses a significant portion of the headwaters of the adjacent Everglades National Park and some of the last undeveloped habitat for the critically endangered Florida panther. But unlike the park, the preserve has a long history of ORV use, and the practice of running swamp buggies, all-terrain motorbikes, four-wheel-drive trucks and airboats through the area's seagrass marshes and cypress swamps dates to the 1920s, long before the preserve had been designated. The National Park Service has called the area the worst example of overuse in the national system of parks and preserves, citing behavioral changes in Florida panthers and other wildlife, alteration of natural water flow, soil erosion and the destruction of natural vegetation.

In the early 1990s, the nonprofit Florida Biodiversity Project sued the federal government, contending Big Cypress managers were letting ORV users tear up a national treasure. By 2000, the managing agency completed an off-road management plan that would limit ORVs to 400 miles of primary routes and 15 access points. The off-road vehicle community sued to reverse the plan and a court decision is expected this spring.

"We see the Bush administration rolling back or weakening what few protections are in place, and advancing policy proposals that would do much more harm than good," says Scott Kovarovics, director of the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition, a national group of grassroots organizations working to protect public lands and waters from ORV damage. "The case of Yellowstone National Park, established as a refuge for threatened species such as bison, trumpeter swans and gray wolves, is a prime example."

Yellowstone Park first opened its gates to snowmobiles in 1971, and it has since become the hotspot of a national dispute between motorized recreationists and those who prefer keeping public land and water quiet. Snowmobiles cause bison, elk and other wildlife to alter vital behavior during a time of year when they are most stressed by harsh winter weather. High snow depths, cold temperatures and lack of quality food send bison running down road corridors, further depleting the animals' energy reserves.

And it isn't just the wildlife that's suffering: health problems related to air quality plague many park employees. Like personal watercraft, most snowmobiles are powered by gas-guzzling, oil-burning two-stroke engines that produce exponentially more pollution than cars. Two-stroke engines, found on 75 percent of all boats and watercraft, cause 1.1 billion pounds of hydrocarbon emissions per year, according to an Izaak Walton League report. Last September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a final rule setting air pollution standards for snowmobiles, dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and certain industrial equipment. The rule falls short of expectations, although it requires snowmobile manufacturers to reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide pollution across their fleets by approximately 30 percent by 2006 and 50 percent by 2012. Each of the four major snowmobile manufacturers is producing one or more new models equipped with cleaner, four-stroke engines for 2003. At the end of the Clinton administration, the National Park Service announced plans to phase snowmobiles out of the park. After three years of public debate, during which 83 percent of the 46,000 people registering opinions agreed snowmobiles had no place in Yellowstone, the National Park Service declared that on the park's 180 miles of groomed roads, snowmobiles would be replaced by tracked buses called snowcoaches by 2004. But the snowmobile industry objected and sued, and the new Bush administration dropped the plans to rid the park of snowmobiles. In a deal with the industry, Interior Secretary Gale Norton has proposed restoring large numbers of snowmobiles to Yellowstone.

Too many roads, too many ORVs at play and not enough monitoring, supervision and law enforcement add up to serious trouble and specific problems in each of Florida's three national forests, says a new report prepared by Defenders of Wildlife last year. According to the report, The Ocala, Apalachicola and Osceola national forests are popular weekend playgrounds for ORVers; they are also poster places for the ecological damage and trail proliferation that comes with unregulated use. Each bears visible scars of ORV abuse and has an overall road density exceeding the one-mile-per-square-mile limit at which scientists believe quality wildlife habitat can be maintained. The intense ORV pressure on Florida's national forests is especially alarming because they are the core reserves identified in a statewide plan for linking the ecosystems most critical to the long-term biodiversity of the entire state.

The Bush administration is now pushing through several proposals to roll back or eliminate a number of the environmental safeguards that currently protect the nation's forests. For example, a draft Forest Service rule would allow the agency to adopt, revise or amend its management plans without fully considering the environmental consequences — decreasing protection for wildlife, scientific input into decision-making and public comment.

"From the standpoint of ORVs, this proposal provides very strong incentives for Forest Service folks at the local levels to do nothing more than they currently do, on any particular issue," says Kovarovics. "As written, if you as a forest manager don't intend to make changes, in this case, close ORV trails, etc., you'll be exempt from planning processes that can be onerous and time-consuming."

Another Bush travesty with repercussions for effective ORV management, the Disclaimer Rule, was issued by the Department of the Interior and went into effect on February 5. According to the National Trails and Waters Coalition e-newsletter, The Vroom Report, the rule allows the secretary, acting through the Bureau of Land Management, to "disclaim" the public's interest in its land and to open parks, forests, monuments and other public lands to road building, off-road vehicle use and other industrial development. The rule does not allow the public to participate in determining whether or not its land should be given away.

If we can't look to the federal government to curb the effects of off-road vehicles on our public lands and wildlife, what about the states? State advocacy groups such as Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation in the North Star State are digging deep into the status of ORV impacts on their public lands and wildlife and using their staggering data to get on their legislature's radar screen. In Minnesota, the issue has been forced to the front of the legislative agenda, with the appointment of a citizen's commission charged to propose reforms to current ORV policies.

"It's important for folks to flag ORV problems in their own areas," says Kovarovics. "There are practically no units on BLM and national forest lands that are not at risk. But we have got to get to a point where we are not just slogging it out with the ORV industry acre by acre, trail by trail." "Off-road vehicles are really an intractable problem," agrees Laura Hood Watchman, Defenders of Wildlife's vice president for habitat conservation programs. "Minnesota, or even Florida, may come up with great ORV management plans. They can put up as many signs as they want, and designate plenty of trails. But ORVs are built to go off the trails, and that's what many of their users want to do."

Off-road vehicles and personal watercraft have roared onto our public lands, often with people at the throttle who either don't understand or don't care about the effects of their adventuring on the most vulnerable of our wild species and habitats. Beleaguered public land managers, environmentalists and recreationists who prefer a quieter, nature-based experience couldn't have anticipated how all manner of motorized personal craft would boom, both in popularity and in raw power. But the stakes for the living biodiversity of our planet are enormous. It'll be up to us to figure out how to put on the brakes.

Susan Cerulean is a writer living in Tallahassee, Florida. She has published several books on Florida's wildlife and habitat.