In 2005, then U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth identified off-road vehicles/all-terrain vehicles (ORVs and ATVs) as among the top four threats to the national forest system. “I could show you slide after slide,” wrote Bosworth, “tire tracks running through wetlands, riparian areas churned into mud, banks collapsed and bleeding into  streams, ruts in trails so deep you can literally fall in, meadows turned into dustbowls. Water quality deteriorates, soil erodes and native plant communities decline, partly because invasive weeds are spread by tires going where they shouldn’t be going. Such use also threatens habitat for threatened, endangered and sensitive species.”

Likewise, if less eloquently, the Bureau of Land Management recently has proclaimed that “implementing a comprehensive approach to managing travel, ORVs, and public access across the West” as its “most pressing challenge.”

The dramatic increase in ORV numbers in recent years, together with the availability of increasingly powerful machines capable of accessing previously remote areas, and the growing wealth and political power of the ORV user/industry coalition, have created urgent and difficult problems for public-lands fish and wildlife resources in Colorado and beyond. While the Forest Service has a network of “system” roads that’s six times longer than the entire national Interstate highway system, the additional mileage of illegal, user-created, un-engineered motorized routes is even more worrisome, having massive negative impacts on watersheds, wildlife and aquatic habitat, and traditional quiet-use recreational opportunities.

Among the many benefits to hunting and angling that motor-free backcountry provides are the following:

1. Keeps game on public lands: Where they haven’t habituated to human disturbance, elk readily flee from motorized disturbance. Research shows that while elk flee from all human intrusion, including hikers, bicyclists, and horses, they flee the sound of motors at far greater distances, run rather that walk away, and travel farther before stopping. Every time an elk is driven out of its preferred seasonal habitat by human disturbance, it’s forced to vacate select foraging and hiding cover and waste energy searching for alternatives, which often are inferior wintering grounds on lower private land, where few hunters can access them. Additionally, during rut, which coincides with early hunting seasons in Colorado, habitat abandonment due to motorized disturbance complicates and can prolong the breeding period and lead to unbalanced, unhealthy herds in the long run.

2. Improves herd health: Roadless, motor-free backcountry provides a place for elk to escape crowds of hunters during fall without totally abandoning their preferred seasonal habitat. This allows cows to roam freely in search of the fittest mature males to father their young, while bulls are not fearful to advertise for cows by bugling during daylight hours.

3. Enhances hunter satisfaction: In Colorado, more than a quarter-million people hunt big game annually, many coming from out of state and bringing significant income to rural communities at an otherwise economically flat time of year. Happily, Colorado has a lot of public land — plenty to provide opportunity and access for every persuasion of hunter, from those who prefer backpacks or panniers and true hard hunting, to those who come in motor homes pulling trailers stacked two-deep with ATVs. But in order to maximize majority hunter satisfaction and assure dispersed hunting opportunities — and given the huge reach of motorized vehicles and their sound disturbance — our remaining motor-free roadless areas must be maintained as designated quiet use zones.

4. Serves as “Trophy pumps”: The opportunity to bag a bull elk or deer with bragging-quality antlers is a major draw to many hunters, especially nonresidents, and an attractive possibility to almost all hunters. While most hunters happily settle for any legal animal after a few days of hunting, trophy opportunity and availability are vital to hunter satisfaction. Roadless, motor-free backcountry areas are so important to trophy production that we call them “trophy pumps.” Here is how it works:

Motor-free backcountry maximizes all three essential ingredients of trophy production: good genetics, good nutrition, and longevity. Of these three, the most immediately important is longevity. To maximize its genetic potential, a bull elk needs to live to be at least six years old. Today, this rarely happens. As ease of access increases, hunting pressure increases. And with most hunters gunning for big bulls, they are selectively culled. Motor-free backcountry allows resident bulls and bucks to reach their genetic prime. This benefits roadside hunters as well as backcountry hunters, because elk and deer move around a lot, especially during hunting seasons when they’re pushed. Occasionally, one of these wilderness-bred monarchs strays close to a road and becomes someone’s unearned trophy.

Take away these roadless, motor-free backcountry trophy-pumps, and everybody loses. Having mature bulls available for breeding also enhances the long-term genetic and social health of the herds.

But quiet, natural, motor-free backcountry is getting harder to find, even in roadless areas. Motorized lawlessness, rudeness, and even violence are on the rise.

Increasingly, the choice comes down to (a) unsustainable motorized access for an increasingly unappreciative and demanding minority, or (b) fair, equitable, and sustainable access for all. CO BHA is working for meaningful motorized vehicle reforms at all levels — county, state, and national — to assure a future filled with healthy watersheds, big game herds, natural fisheries, and traditional quiet-use access. To read our official CO BHA policy covering motorized use on our public lands, Click Here.