Vehicle for debate Riders, landowners clash over surging ATV use

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Shorty Wade likes nothing better than to spend his weekends exploring the Maine woods on an all-terrain vehicle.

In the spring, the 60-year-old Clifton man tows a kayak behind his four-wheeler and spends hours rolling down mossy hills and splashing through stream beds to find wilderness.

“I used to go out and ride, ride, ride. I like to just go … get out to the back country and see the sights,” he said. “I love the wild.”

ATV exploring has been Wade’s favorite pastime for a quarter century. But each year, his particular style of outdoor recreation is welcome in fewer places.

The vehicles are already banned by Baxter State Park, Acadia National Park and on Maine’s highways. Now, many private landowners are following suit.

Livestock and crop farmers, timber companies and private homeowners complain that ATVs tear up their property. In response, they’re installing gates, no trespassing signs, and in one publicized instance, even motion detectors – moves that strike fear in the hearts of hunters, fishermen and other people who value easy access to private property for outdoor recreation.

The conflict has grown to what Sgt. David Peppard, landowner relations specialist for the Maine

Warden Service, calls a “huge problem.”

“Things really spiked this spring. It’s all coming to a head,” Peppard said. “The sport is growing so fast that demand is ahead of the growth in places to ride.”

All-terrain vehicles, which include three-wheelers, four-wheelers, dune buggies and off-road motorcycles according to Maine state law, are experiencing an unprecedented sales boom. Last year, more than 46,000 ATVs were registered by Maine residents, doubling the number of riders since the early 1990s.

Bangor dealer Tom Bennett said he sells an average of one ATV every day, and has done so steadily for the past few years. Demand among Maine men, particularly in rural areas, shows no sign of slowing, he said.

These new ATV owners don’t purchase the vehicles with the intention of trespassing. In fact, most tell Bennett that they plan to use them on their own land.

But riding around an acre or two of lawn doesn’t satisfy a new rider for long, and many begin traveling on snowmobile trails, timber roads and even their neighbors’ lawns – not out of spite, but because there’s nowhere else to go.

“I’m concerned that there aren’t enough places to ride in this area, and so people are going out and making trails where they shouldn’t be,” Bennett said.

A few respectful ATV riders won’t cause much damage, but landowners cannot limit the number of riders. With the scarcity of available land, many legal routes are overrun, and intensive travel by 500-pound ATVs can cause even the most cooperative landowner to lose patience.

“If you run hundreds of ATVs up and down a woods road, by the end of the season your vegetation is going to be gone, hills will be chewed up, and any wet spots in the road will turn into sizable mud holes,” Peppard said.

“It causes all these problems that the landowner is responsible for,” he said. “What the landowners object to is the fact that no one asks them – that’s the bottom line.”

Aroostook County farmers complain that ATVs appear on their land without permission, ripping up drainage ditches and accelerating erosion, driving through crops, and kicking dust onto young potato plants, which keeps expensive pesticides from adhering to the leaves. Additionally, travel between farms transports soil that farmers fear could be contaminated with disease.

“It’s on our radar screen,” said Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board in Presque Isle, where a handful of farmers call to complain about ATVs each summer.

Timber companies too, complain about environmental damage when ATV riders use their land illegally. Gary Donovan, a wildlife ecologist employed by International Paper in Bucksport, said that heavy ATV use has led to worries over water quality, particularly near Atlantic salmon habitat.

But ironically, Maine’s outdoor recreation enthusiasts may have the most to lose.

“Illegal ATV use is threatening all outdoor recreation in the state. It’s going to have an effect on all of us,” said Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association.

“We’re losing trails on a weekly basis because of unauthorized ATV use,” he said. “We’re putting up signs and trying to educate people, but there’s nothing else we can do.”

Meanwhile, the delicate relationship with private property owners that snowmobile and hunting groups have nurtured over the years, is being destroyed.

“Some landowners have gone as far as to say, ‘We’re going to shut everything down, even walking,'” Peppard said. “Responsible riders have a strike or two against them before they even get started.”

The sport of ATV riding is at a critical juncture, and its future depends on the choices that are made during the next few years. Other motor sports have passed the same crossroads, with very different results.

Snomobilers organized in the 1970s, while the activity was in its infancy, and nurtured a pastime into a million-dollar sport.

“They figured out real quick, that if they didn’t cater to the landowners, they wouldn’t have anywhere to go,” Peppard said.

A decade later, personal watercraft enthusiasts failed to organize, the vehicles were banned from many lakes and ponds and the market for jet-skis and similar vehicles crashed.

“Following in the footsteps” of the snowmobiling industry, with a network of clubs and trails is the only way to guarantee the viability of ATV riding, said Maurice Sargent of Surry, executive director for a new lobbying group called ATV Maine.

“Most people are starting to realize that if we don’t stick to a trail system, we will lose the right to ride,” Sargent said.

Maine currently has about 2,000 miles of legal ATV trails managed by small clubs that have sprung up statewide, said Brian Bronson, ATV coordinator for the state Department of Conservation.

For example, a group of Eastern Maine ATV clubs recently negotiated with International Paper to create a 360-mile trail system along timber roads in exchange for a pledge that efforts would be made to keep rogue riders off other IP lands.

“We’re trying to manage the existing use,” said IP spokesman Gary Donovan. “The objective is to continue to allow the traditional recreation, but to do it in a way that’s safe and environmentally benign.”

But despite recent gains, Maine’s ATV trail system remains miniscule in comparison to the number of riders. If all Maine’s registered ATVs took to the trails on a sunny afternoon, they would create a traffic jam of 23 riders crammed in per mile.

“We clearly need more than we’ve got,” Bronson said. “It’s fast becoming a tourist draw.”

In addition to local crowds, hundreds of ATV riders travel from more urban parts of New England to ride in Maine during summer weekends, he said.

Sargent has faith that as his network of activist-sportsmen fans out across the state, engaging in rider education and trail construction, the full range of ATV growing pains will be eased.

“We’re new, we’re young and we’re just getting started,” he said.

Misty Edgecomb covers outdoor issues for the NEWS, and may be reached at medgecomb@bangordailynews.net.