The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is currently seeking public input on a project that will determine where and how dirt bikes, ATVs, and other off-road vehicles (ORVs) can go. The decisions in this forest management project will thereby impact the health of the forest ecosystem and decide where you must go to find peace, quiet and experience the natural, backcountry settings on the forest. A Forest Service rule requires the Apache-Sitgreaves to ban cross-country motorized travel in the forest and designate a system of motorized routes where motorized travel would be allowed. The forest is facing a great deal of pressure from ORV groups to add miles and miles of ORV routes to the already overloaded, decaying, costly travel system.

The Wilderness Society is working in partnership with other conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, the Sierra Club, the Arizona Wilderness Coalition and the White Mountain Conservation League to preserve quiet, backcountry experiences and restore this forest to a natural state. We have outlined five important concerns that we want the Forest Service to address.

1. Quiet recreation: The travel plan should ensure that quiet, nature-based recreational activities are available. According to a 2002 survey conducted by the Apache-Sitgreaves, less than 11% of forest visitors participate in motorized recreation, while over 80% participate in activities associated with quiet recreation including hiking, camping, mountain biking, and wildlife viewing.

2. Quality wildlife habitat: The preponderance of scientific research indicates that in order to provide quality habitat for most wildlife species motorized route densities should not exceed 1 mile per square mile. Ask that the Forest analyze the density of motorized routes and that it not include large roadless areas, proposed wilderness areas or wildlife habitat, and quiet, natural areas in its calculations.

3. Open areas for cross-country motorized travel (or sacrifice areas) are being proposed on the Lakeside and Black Mesa Ranger Districts. Public lands should not be sacrificed or be degraded by intensive cross-country travel by motorized vehicles. Indiscriminate cross-country travel degrades wildlife habitat, damages archeological sites, destroys vegetation and promotes soil erosion.

4. Motorized dispersed camping: Management of the Apache-Sitgreaves should be consistent with how motorized dispersed camping opportunities are identified and provided. There is strong consensus among human-powered recreationists and conservationists that a corridor of 300 feet on each side of road is absolutely excessive. This allows for the proliferation of new roads throughout a 1/8th mile wide corridor. The Forest should instead approve stable access routes to established dispersed campsites and limit other motorized access for dispersed camping to parking up to one vehicle length off an open road.

5. Motorized game retrieval: The Forest Service is proposing to allow motorized big game retrieval for up to one mile from an existing road for specific big game and seasonal hunts. Other than allowing some limited provisions for mobility-impaired hunters, motorized game retrieval is unnecessary, unenforceable, and disruptive to wildlife and other hunters. In 2006, Arizona Game and Fish Department conducted a statewide survey of active hunters that found that disruption caused by ORVs was among the top four "barriers to participating in hunting" in Arizona.

Now is the time for you to contact the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest to voice your concerns about off-road vehicle use. You can view maps of where the Forest Service is proposing to allow ORVs at http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/asnf/projects/travel-management.shtml (at the bottom of the web page).