"It's reached a level in my opinion that we can no longer allow motorized
vehicles to go wherever they want to go," he said after delivering a speech
to all-terrain vehicle dealers at the Kentucky International Convention Center.
Half the national forests currently have no limits for ATVs, he said. The
Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky limits off-road use to 140 miles of
trails, but has authority to expand that by about 60 miles.
The Land between the Lakes, also managed by the Forest Service, limits vehicles
to 100 miles of trails.
In all, the Forest Service oversees 191 million acres of land in the United
States.
Rick Campbell, producer of the convention in Louisville, said most people who
use all-terrain vehicles recognize the need to tread lightly on public lands,
and will accept trail limits.
If they don't, they understand there's a potential for serious conflicts among
different groups of people vying for use of national forests, he added.
Bosworth told the Courier-Journal unmanaged recreation, including unchecked
use of all-terrain vehicles, is one of four threats to national forests.
He said the other threats include dangerous buildups of woody materials which
can fuel massive fires; invasive species, from tree-killing insects to invading
plants, such as kudzu; and loss of open-space buffer zones next to national
forests.
Bosworth warned that if not addressed, the consequences to forest resources
and neighboring communities could be serious. If forests aren't thinned and
other steps aren't taken to reduce fire threats, firefighting costs will continue
to climb, and more fires will threaten homes near forests, he said.
Invading insects and plants can threaten the ecological systems of entire
forests, he said. And as more people subdivide properties and build homes on
smaller lots near federal forests, wildlife that depends on both private and
public land has a harder time surviving, he said.
Bosworth acknowledged that some of the Bush administration's forest policies
have been controversial, such as its rejection of a Clinton administration
rule that protected about 58 million acres of roadless areas.
But he said he doesn't believe all areas of national forests should be either
wilderness or developed; there's room for something in the middle.
The agency is no longer in an aggressive timber-cutting mode, as it was during
the post-World War II housing boom, he said.
