The White House Council on Environmental Quality has recognized that off-road vehicles such as dirt bikes, jet skis, four-wheelers, dune buggies, and snowmobiles have damaged every kind of ecosystem found in the United States: sand dunes covered with American beach grass on Cape Cod; pine and cyprus woodlands in Florida; hardwood forests in Indiana; prairie grasslands in Montana; chaparral and sagebrush hills in Arizona; alpine meadows in Colorado; conifer forests in Washington; arctic tundras in Alaska.
The Wilderness Society is concerned about the growing impacts that dirt bikes, jet skis, four-wheelers, snowmobiles, and other off-road vehicles are having on fish and wildlife, vegetation, streams, the wild character of the backcountry and the quality of other recreationists' experiences. The impacts are well documented and include displaced wildlife and habitat degradation, polluted waterways and fouled fresh air, compacted and eroded soil and crushed vegetation, damaged vistas, vandalized ancient cultural and fossilized ruins, jeopardized public health and safety, displaced quiet recreational users, and tranquility lost. Learn more about the deleterious effects that unmanaged motorized recreation has on our natural and cultural heritage by following the links below.
Effects on...
Wildlife
Vegetation
Soil and Streams
Water Quality
Quiet RecreationistsAir
Public Safety and HealthCultural and Paleontological Resources
Effects on Wildlife
Whether bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian, or fish, the effects from off-road vehicles are broad and include mortality, injury, habitat degradation, destruction, and displacing animals from their homes. From birds, bears and big-horn sheep to moose, mountain lions, tortoise and trout, the impacts are significant and well documented. Wildlife can be directly harmed by off-road vehicles when they are run over and killed or injured, which has been documented in such species as the desert tortoise, leopard lizard, or the nests, eggs, and young of shorebirds. Direct harm from these vehicles also includes a variety of physiological effects such as increased stress, metabolic failure, and reproductive failure.
Soil erosion, introduction of non-native species, and habitat fragmentation all lead to significant habitat degradation, which is a tremendous indirect impact that off-road vehicles have on wildlife. The sight, sound, and smell of off-road vehicles will result in a range of impacts for a number or species including disrupted nesting activities and causing wildlife to avoid or even permanently abandoned critical winter, mating, and foraging areas as well as important migration corridors. When animals flee their primary habitat, they are forced to inhabit less ideal areas, which can adversely impact animal health and population numbers.
For more information about the impacts off-road vehicles have on wildlife, check out the following sources:
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Effects on Vegetation
All plants, whether found in wetlands, prairies, meadows, or mountains, are vulnerable to dirt bikes, four-wheelers, and other off-road vehicles. Often weighing several hundred pounds, off-road vehicles can easily flatten vegetation and crush the root system under the weight of the tires. Damage to vegetation can reduce the overall plant cover and density in a given area. In fact, it has been found that several sensitive plant species can potentially go locally extinct in areas of high off-road vehicle use. Once damage occurs, plant recovery of disturbed areas can take many years.
In addition, off-road vehicles commonly transport non-native seeds into native ecosystems. Off-road vehicles have actually been identified as a key link in the spread of invasive or noxious plants, which displace native plants and animals thereby disrupting functioning ecosystems and reducing biological diversity. Even roadless areas, which provide important refuge to native species, are threatened by the invasion of exotic weeds from off-road vehicles.
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Effects on Soil and Streams
The use of off-road vehicles on public lands can cause ecologic damage through erosion and compaction and can spoil beautiful vistas and landscape aesthetics by scarring the land. Under the weight of the vehicle and the force of rolling wheels, soils become compressed and compacted causing serious and long-lasting effects including reduced water infiltration, increased runoff and severe erosion. This can alter how streams function, resulting in flooding, loss of riparian soils, downcutting, water table lowering, and damaged fish and amphibian habitat.
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Effects on Water Quality
Use of dirt bikes, jet skis, four-wheelers and other off-road vehicles near streams, rivers, and lakes can cause extensive water pollution. When off-road vehicles ford streams, they cause important vegetation loss along the stream bank, stir up bottom sediment, and increase erosion, nutrient loads, and turbidity. Loss in vegetation in and around streams can, in turn, impact fish and other aquatic species. Stream bottom sediment that is stirred up can settle over eggs and fish nests, resulting in lower reproductive rates and disrupt the food base of insects such as dragon-flies.
Furthermore, tens of millions of gallons of gasoline and motor oil likely enter the waters of our public lands each year, as a result of inefficient combustion and emissions of off-road vehicles. The oil, gas and other pollutants that are released from off-road vehicles can poison streams further degrading water quality and harming fish, wildlife, and plant species.
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Effects on Quiet Recreational Users of the Forest
Quiet, traditional recreational uses of public lands include hiking, hunting, fishing, wildlife viewing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and enjoyment of solitude to name a few. The noise and degradation to natural resources caused by off-road vehicles often displaces, or at least substantially interferes with quiet recreational users of our public lands. Natural sounds, natural smells, natural sights, and natural settings: these are the experiences sought by most traditional recreational users and these experiences are easily spoiled by off-road vehicle use.
While demanding an increasing share of the natural and financial resources of our public lands, off-road vehicles use is pursued by a minority of visitors. According to the Forest Service's National Visitor Use Monitoring in 2005, 17 percent visited to ski, 16 percent to hike and backpack, 10 percent to view nature, 8 percent to hunt, 8 percent to fish, but only 3 percent to off-road and 2 percent to snowmobile. In fact, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, more than three out of every four Americans engage in traditional, quiet recreation activities, ranging from fly fishing to hiking. Off-road vehicle use is just one of many forms of recreation, yet, the impact that this use has on our national forests and public lands is out of proportion with the number of users.
To find out more about the disproportionate impact that off-road vehicles have on other users of our national forests and public lands system, check out the following resources:
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Effects on Air
Off-road vehicles often release far greater quantities of toxic air pollutants such as hydrocarbons and unburned oil and gas than do vehicles not intended for off-road use.
Hydrocarbons are volatile compounds that include toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, and benzene (which the EPA has identified as a carcinogen). Furthermore, under a common chemical process, hydrocarbons breakdown to form ground-level ozone, which irritates the eyes, damages the lungs, and aggravates respiratory problems. In fact, the magnitude of the air pollution problem triggered a provision in the Clean Air Act that required the EPA to issue formal emission limits for off-road vehicles. The Agency issued a final rule covering snowmobiles, dirt bikes and ATVs in September 2002.
- The EPA estimates that air pollution from off-road vehicles increased from 17 to 22 percent of the nationwide total produced by mobile sources between 1989 and 1998.
- National health organizations, including the American Cancer Society and Physicians for Social Responsibility, wrote to Yellowstone's Superintendent in 2003 urging that every visitor to the Park be warned of the dangers associated with particulate pollution and offered similar paper masks.
To find out more about the impact that off-road vehicles have on air quality:
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Effects on Public Safety and Health
Today, off-road vehicles rank among the most serious human-made threats to safety and health on public lands and waters. The pollution generated by off-road vehicles also poses a direct threat to visitors and public employees. Newer models of every type of off-road vehicle are becoming more powerful, faster, and capable of reaching further into the backcountry.
- As of recently at the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park, park rangers were wearing respirators and hearing protection in the winter to reduce their exposure to toxic snowmobile exhaust and harmful noise.
- Also in Yellowstone, snowmobiles have been clocked at speeds over 85 mph, nearly twice the legal speed limit in the Park.
- More than 254,000 ATV-related injuries were treated in hospitals and doctors' offices in the year 2000, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
- ATV injuries requiring an emergency room visit increased by over 100 percent from an estimated 52,800 in 1997 to 110,100 in 2001. In 2001, about a third of these victims were under 16 years old.
For more information about the impacts off-road vehicles have on public safety and heath, check out the following sources:
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Effects on Cultural and Paleontological Resources
Cultural and paleontological resources, such as Native American ruins and other archeological sites as well as fossilized remains of plant and animal life, are scattered widely across our public lands. Unmanaged off-road vehicle use near or through these areas can result in damage to ruins and other cultural resources, as well as lead to vandalism. The correlation is simple: the closer an archeological site to a road, the greater the risk from vandalism or inadvertent disturbance.
- Trackways found in the Robledo Mountains, near Las Cruces, New Mexico are considered the most important pre-dinosaurian tracksites in the world. Because of the irresponsible actions related to the disclosure of the tracksites' GPS coordinates on a website managed by an off road vehicle enthusiast, reports of vandalism and destruction are being investigated.
- Recapture Canyon, an area on BLM lands in southern Utah, is a drainage with magnificent Ancetral Puebloan ruins nearly 1,000 years old. Illegal off-road vehicle trails cross several archaeological sites in the area with resulting serious impacts to invaluable irreplaceable ancient ruins.
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