Environmental groups and off-road vehicle advocates plan to square off Thursday in the U.S. Senate on the three-year-old U.S. Forest Service effort to restrict where motorcycles, four-wheelers and other backcountry vehicles can drive on public land.

The Wilderness Society says the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., will help underscore how an increasing number of powerful machines encroach ever farther into unsuitable territory.

The Blue Ribbon Coalition, an Idaho Falls-based group for motorized public land access, fears the committee chairman, New Mexico Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman, will use the occasion as a springboard for more restrictions following the 2008 congressional elections.

Scott Miller, the committee staffer who organized the oversight hearing, says the event will help inform senators about the debate and will be similar to a March 13 House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on the subject, adding that there’s no pending new legislation.

National forests across America have been updating travel plans on 193 million acres of public lands since 2005, when the Forest Service changed its policy requiring all forests be closed unless posted open to off-road vehicles. That’s after ORVs rose to an estimated 43 million, according to the Blue Ribbon Coalition, from only about five million in the 1970s.

So far, 36 national forests in 24 states have published new travel plans, according to the Forest Service, leaving the bulk still to be completed in 2008 and 2009. There are 155 national forests and 22 national grasslands. The hearing will also include discussion of travel planning on the Bureau of Land Management’s 264 million acres.

Brad Brooks, a Wilderness Society advocate in Boise, said conflicts in states including Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Arizona and Nevada point up the need to rein in off-road vehicle riders who stray from trails for the challenge of riding up steep slopes, exposing those slopes to erosion, weeds and other problems. Other groups on the agenda are the Nevada Sheriffs and Chiefs Association, the American Motorcyclist Association, Trout Unlimited and the Blue Ribbon Coalition.
(AP)