Management of All-Terrain Vehicle riding in Minnesota, especially in the north, continues to rev as an environmental and recreational issue.
Despite a compromise law initiated by Governor Tim Pawlenty in 2003, ATV use again became a contentious issue during the 2005 legislative session, where dueling bills worked their way through the Senate and Legislature.
Ultimately, as an attachment to the State Parks funding bill passed during the state government shut down last summer, legislation passed which exempted ATV riders on state forest lands north of US Highway 2 from the requirement to ride on designated trails.
The 2003 law stipulated designated-trail-only riding in all state forest lands, a regulation that still holds south of Highway 2. Now though, riders north of Highway 2 – an area that encompasses 74% of state forest land – are free to ride on any “visible trails” except those specifically marked “closed.”
ATV enthusiasts came to view the 2003 legislation as a de facto restriction of access as the DNR worked through the inventory and designation process. Conservation advocates, however, see the 2005 change as opening the door to ATVs riding roughshod over state land. One rogue rider cutting a new trail across undisturbed land, they point out, opens the door for other riders to ride legally over that trail afterward.
On federally managed Forest Service land, ATVs are allowed only on designated trails and certain roadways. ATVs are not allowed in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of the Superior National Forest.
Despite the most recent legislative activity regarding the popular form of motorized recreation, activists on both sides of the issue expect more ATV controversy at the state capital. Much of it is likely to center on ATV access to portions of the North Shore State Trail which runs from Duluth to Grand Marais, and is a popular snowmobile route in winter.
“We expect [Representative] Dave Dill and [State Senator] Tom Bakk to try to legislate ATVs onto the North Shore State Trail,” Jeff Brown of the Duluth-based Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation forecasts. “The North Shore State Trail parallels and in places crosses and shares treadway with the Superior Hiking Trail, which, according to Backpacker Magazine, is one of three top weekend backpacking destinations in the country.”
Last session the legislature directed the DNR to study the feasibility of adding ATVs to the trail during the snow-free months. In 2004, DNR Commissioner Gene Merriam decided ATVs should not be allowed on the trail, citing the need for route changes and bridge enhancements to protect streams and wetlands from ATV damage. The new study is due in time for the start of the 2006 legislative session.
Brown, who considers the ATV status quo to be “a long way away” from where his organization would like it to be, emphasized the need for public and environmental review of the decisions to open trails to ATVs.
“Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation considers illegitimate, any routes designated without public and environmental review,” Brown said. On the other side of the issue, Ray Bohn, a lobbyist for All-Terrain Vehicle Association of Minnesota, questions just how big an environmental issue ATV use of state lands really is. “I’ve said in hearings that this is much more a land use issue than it is an environmental issue,” Bohn said. “When it gets right down to it, that’s the main crux in my mind. [Our opponents] want the land for themselves; they want it for their own enjoyment even though it’s public land. They want to do their silent sports and motorized is not acceptable to them, and they use environmental issues as a wedge.”
Regarding the North Shore State Trail specifically, Bohn argues that ATVs crossing trout streams along the trail – a point of contention for conservation groups – is insignificant compared to the motorized traffic already crossing those protected watercourses.
“Do you know how many intersections intersect the trout streams,” Bohn asked. “And there are cars and trucks and logging trucks and everything else that cross that a hundred times a day. Our ATV traffic would be nothing compared to that.”
“I think that’s an issue where they don’t want us around,” he added. “There are bridges across everything, number one, we would not go in the water, and there are wings you can put on the bridges so people can’t go around them. There are things you can do to keep people out of the streams.”
– By Charlie Mahler, Wilderness News Contributor
This article appeared in the Fall-Winter 2005 issue of Wilderness News