Learning to Live with Off-Highway Vehicles: Lessons Learned from the Dixie National Forest

Abstract

Nationwide, there are an estimated 446,000 miles of road on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands—four times that of any other public land management agency (USDA 2000; Havlick 2002). Most USFS roads were developed as part of a network to access timber on some 192 million acres of forested land during the past century (Forman et al. 2003). In recent years, operators of privately owned off-highway vehicles (OHVs), have adopted many of these roads and adjacent lands for recreational purposes. A 1995 survey revealed that 28 million adults identified OHV driving as one of their preferred recreational activities, a 44 % increase since 1983 (Cordell 1999). The OHV user group includes owners of the ever-increasing number of trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), more than 2.3 million off-road motorcycles, and 3.9 million three- and four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) (Forman et al. 2003). According to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study, OHVs traveled more than 27 billion off-road (unpaved) miles in the U.S. in 1997 (Davis et al. 1999). The trend of increased OHV use is expected to continue, due in part to population growth, advances in recreation equipment technology, expanded availability of information (internet/guidebooks), and increased accessibility to onceremote areas (Flather and Cordell 1995; USDI 2003)

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the Fourth Social Aspects and Recreation Research Symposium: February 4-6, 2004, San Francisco, California

Citation

Divine, Aaron K.; Foti, Pamela E. 2004. Learning to Live with Off-Highway Vehicles: Lessons Learned from the Dixie National Forest. In: Proceedings of the Fourth Social Aspects and Recreation Research Symposium; 2004 February 4-6; San Francisco, California. San Francisco State University. 106-111