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| COHVCO Sues Forest Service Over Uncompahgre Travel Plan | | Tuesday, February 25, 2003 | Forest Service agents held illegal closed-door meeting in Delta to decide key aspects of plan.
February 25, 2003
DENVER, CO. - Today the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition (COHVCO) filed another lawsuit in federal court in Denver asking the court to force the United States Forest Service to follow the correct procedures in its travel planning. COHVCO’s complaint involves the travel plan for the Uncompahgre National Forest in southwestern Colorado, near Montrose.
The Uncompahgre is a hugely popular place to ride for people from all over the Western Slope, and has been for years. The forest provided relatively wide-open travel opportunities prior to 2000. In 2000 the Forest Service, borrowing unsubstantiated language directly from the anti-access, non-motorized groups about the “explosion of motorized use” in the national forests, issued a travel management decision which more or less shut everything down, but for a few popular trails like the Unaweep Trail (Forest Development Trail (FDT) #601). The decision in 2000 even shut down the Nate Creek Trail (FDT #221), which is an essential connector for the Colorado 500 dirt bike event from Big Cimarron, over Lou Creek Pass, to Owl Creek Pass Road. Apparently, someone mentioned the possibility that the Nate Creek Trail might pass by some elk habitat, and that was enough for the Forest Service to agree to close the trail.
The decision in 2000 to close the forest wasn’t received very well on either side of the motorized vs. non-motorized debate, and the non-motorized contingent succeeded in getting the decision reversed based on a narrow wildlife habitat issue. The Forest Service went back to the drawing board, solved the wildlife habitat issue, and issued another proposal to close the forest in July, 2001. Comments from the public were accepted, and the Forest Service prepared to finalize its new decision.
In December, 2001, just before the new decision was due to be released, Forest Service agents decided to hold one last meeting with representatives of the motorized and non-motorized forest users in Delta before making the final decision. In violation of federal law, the meeting was not announced in the local newspaper or in the Federal Register and was open only by invite to a select few. The meeting lasted all day, and the sides fought trail-by-trail over where to allow motorized use in the forest. When the final travel management decision came out in March of 2002, many of the decisions made at the illegal meeting had become part of official Forest Service documents and decisions.
“We almost hate to file suit over a decision where the Forest Service seemed so cooperative,” says COHVCO Chairman John Martin, “but after sitting through that meeting in Delta and watching the environmentalists dictate closure after closure of some of my favorite places to ride, it really left us no other option. The reason COHVCO exists is to keep the Forest Service and other agencies from illegally closing our public lands to the public.”
Concludes Martin, “the government has yet to account for the fact that off-highway motorized recreation contributes over 300 million dollars annually to the Colorado economy, providing a huge benefit to many small communities. We’ll do everything we can to save our rights of access to public lands and to ensure that these rural communities survive.”
COHVCO is a non-profit corporation formed in 1987 by a group of leaders from the four-wheel drive, motorcycle, snowmobile, and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) communities to work toward the common goals of off highway vehicle (OHV) recreationists in Colorado. COHVCO works closely with federal, state and local governments to promote regulation and legislation favorable to OHV recreation. COHVCO developed, promoted, and assisted in the creation of the Colorado OHV Act registration program, which collects fees and provides grants for local OHV groups and individuals to maintain trails, erect positive signage, and educate motorized users about responsible OHV use on public lands in the state. Since its inception, this program has allocated over $5 million to such local projects.
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