ORVs

Posted on January 31, 2005 in Conservation

I don’t think I know any whiners as pathetic as those who scream whenever the BLM closes a section of the desert to off-road vehicles. There seem to be two kinds of people: those who know that they share this world and those who have got to have it to themselves. Many off-roaders fall into the latter category. They see any space of open ground on the commons as open to their personal exploitation. They believe in the right to make up rules as you go with no consultation with others about the way they are using the land.

Over at socalgeocachers.com, I have watched them go on and on about one desert closure after another. Out in the dry places, I have seen the tracks they have laid. How many notice, in this green winter, that they run their wheels over habitat, places where water-miserly flowers and lichens hold the desert floor together? Their wheels are death to the environment. They destroy the beauty which the public trust when they insist on leaving the road and taking off on their own trails.

At first there is only one. Then someone else sees the track and follows it. This repeats until there’s a new gouge in the land. It doesn’t take many of the monsters to make a catastrophe.

When I was in college, I lived across the hall from an environmentalist named Garry. Garry called those who wreck the desert ORVs. It’s a powerful word and the people who wreck the ranges don’t apparently like it. The BLM capitulated to them and designated their topsoil demolition machines OHVs for “off-highway vehicles”. I have no problem with Off-Highway running because it implies sticking to a trail. And my words here are not directed at those who keep to the trails and don’t whine about protective closures. The word for these is responsible.

But for the rest, I like the acronym ORVs. ORVs. It sounds like the buzzing of locusts coming down on the land to destroy what is fruitful, what sustains the countryside. Sure it sounds like a biblical plague, but there’s nothing godlike about the attitudes they carry.