Dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and other off-road vehicles continue to damage Georgia's National Forests and their numbers increase every year. Evidence of their largely unmanaged passage includes eroded streambeds, silted trout streams and deep erosion gullies.
Those who seek quiet and natural sounds in their National Forests also know what off-road vehicle noise can do to a quiet outing. By law and regulation, dirt bikes and other all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) may not enter Wilderness. But they intrude illegally, and with apparent impunity, into many designated Wilderness Areas.
It is not as though they have nowhere else to ride legally. Since the late 1980s, the Forest Service has designated 133 miles of trails in the Oconee and Chattahoochee National Forests. More recently, the agency opened to ATVs 400 miles on the Chattahoochee National Forest to ATVs. Worse, the Forest Service now seeks to open another 90-plus miles of Forest Service roads to all-terrain vehicles by using a device called a "categorical exclusion," the main purpose of which is to avoid environmental analysis of the action and to block public participation in it.
Meanwhile, though, ATV riders have plowed out 550 miles of illegal ATV trail in these National Forests, including some meant for hikers, such as the popular Benton Mackaye Trail
For More Information
The problem of dirt bike and other ATV abuse is national in scope and so is the response of conservationists. To learn more about the problem, and what you can do to be part of the solution, contact:
