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Comments Are Due By August 31, 2000

An OHV letter generator is located at http://www.outdooridaho.com/idatv/letter_gen/blm_gen.htm or follow the directions below to compose your own.

These are the comments submitted by the Coalition on BLM OHV Program. Anyone may use these as a start point for their own comments. They can be submitted electronically at http://www.blm.gov/ohv/mailer.htm. Follow the directions for your name and address. Then simply copy the numbered comments in the font Times New Roman, 12pt and paste them into the appropriate boxes. When all of the boxes have been filled with your comments, click MAIL NOW at the bottom of the page or print out, sign and mail to the address below.

U.S. Department of the Interior

Bureau of Land Management

1849 C. Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20240

RE: OHV Use on Public Lands

Dear Sirs and Madams,

A.  Land Use Concerns -- Providing recreation opportunities that are high quality, have adequate access and are environmentally responsible is part of the BLM’s multiple-use mission.  How can we best accommodate OHV users while providing for other public uses and protecting resources?  Consider such concerns as visitor safety, maintenance, cross-country travel, game retrieval, types of OHV uses, accessibility, recreation conflicts, winter access, and adjacent land uses and trespass, or any other areas where you have experience.

Land Use Concerns:

1. Since the mission is multiple-use the BLM should make an effort to emphasize the need for all users to respect the other uses taking place on the land. This can be best accomplished through education and a mechanism to resolve use conflicts.

2. The BLM should keep the OHV use issue at the Area Level Planning to insure that local needs and issues are properly addressed.

3. Trespass and access have common problems usually associated with intermingled private and federal lands. Proper signing would go a long way towards preventing conflicts. Educational information should be made available at the start of BLM land access points to avoid trespass on private lands.

4. A computerized private land permitting system is in development that should resolve many problems. This system will allow an individual to log on an internet web site, locate an area they wish to visit and make arrangements to secure permission to enter the private lands.

5. The BLM should make every effort to resist concentrating OHV use. The greater the dispersion the less impact overall.

B.  Resource Concerns -- We must manage and monitor motorized vehicle use properly to protect our natural, cultural, and historic resources.  What techniques or direction would you suggest we use to better protect these resources now and into the future?  Consider such concerns as wildlife, vegetation, soil, water and air, cultural and historic sites, spread of noxious weeds, the potential for wildfires, sound levels, scenic vistas, land rehabilitation, and special management areas such as wilderness, wilderness study areas, national monuments and national conservation areas.

Resource Concerns:

1. Resource protection begins with education. Most OHV users are not on the land to destroy resources. Their primary interest is to experience the outdoors. Again, proper signing, mapping and information are the key elements.

2. The primary responsibility for this effort should the Area Manager through the use of Area Planning. This will insure that local concerns and issues are properly addressed.

C.  Management Tools -- BLM has a number of approaches used in OHV management.  These include education, planning, public participation, partnerships, and law enforcement.  These techniques are used to provide environmentally responsible recreation and ensure compliance with management decisions that allow or prohibit motorized vehicle use to varying degrees.   In your answer, consider such items as ways we involve the public in decision-making, monitoring use and impacts, program funding, trail construction and maintenance, OHV designations, mapping and signing, inventories, partnerships, interpretation, law enforcement, and appropriate uses of fences, gates or natural barriers to help contain OHV use within authorized areas.

Management Tools:

1. Education should receive the primary emphasis. Again, proper signing and information distribution will take care of a majority of problems. It is the failure of educational efforts that leads to the need of law enforcement.

2. Should law enforcement be necessary, the BLM should rely on contracting with state and local law enforcement.

D.  Legal Considerations -- Given the complexities of public land management, BLM recognizes that there are unresolved issues, including legal rights, claims, or assertions on parts of the public lands.  As stewards of these lands, we are committed to managing them in an environmentally responsible manner.  What ideas do you have for addressing environmentally responsible OHV management now and into the future, if there is no short-term answer to a legal question?  For example, there may be rights-of-way or easements on public land, such as those reserved for specific uses or subsistence rights to hunt, gather or collect on public lands by rural Alaska residents and some Native American tribes.  Others include legal access or differing interpretations of terminology used in OHV regulations.

Legal Considerations:

1. All OHV use considerations by the BLM should recognize the State’s and Local Government’s jurisdiction over many of these roads under the RS-2477 grant of right-of-way.