Sportsmen, Forest Service Team Up To Improve ATVTrails
Goals Are Opening More Legal Trails in Hiawatha, Preserving Habitats
By Paul Gingras

Steve DuFresne, president of the Mackinac County Sportsmen’s Off Road Vehicle Association (MCSORVA), points out damage produced by All Terrain Vehicles that were driven off legal trails. MCSORVA has teamed up with the local forest service to repair this kind of damage and to open up more legal trails.

Cooperation between local trail riders and the Hiawatha National Forest will result in restoring areas of the St. Ignace District damaged by sport machines and the simultaneous promotion of the hundreds of miles of forest trails designated for motorized recreation use. Together, the two groups will clarify which trails should be ridden, improve trail conditions, and repair existing offhighway vehicle damage to the forest, fields, dunes, and wetlands.

For the Mackinac County Sportsmen’s Off Road Vehicle Association (MCSORVA), the new partnership will foster its ongoing goal to open up more riding trails in the Upper Peninsula. Communicating with the U.S. Forest Service has been helping the group accomplish this in recent years, and embarking on restoration work will increases the respectability of off-highway riding in general, said the group’s president, Steve DuFresne of St. Ignace.

Off-highway vehicle (OHV) is the catch-all term for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), off-highway motorcycles (OHMs) and off-road vehicles (ORVs), such as 4x4 trucks and Jeeps.

For the Hiawatha, the alliance means gaining needed restoration assistance, and the rehabilitation effort complements another Forest Service project, the creation of detailed maps that describe where OHVs can and cannot be ridden.

“We want people to use these trails,” said Stevan Christiansen, district ranger for the Hiawatha in Mackinac and Chippewa counties. “This provides a good opportunity for folks” to enjoy the Hiawatha.

This is the first time the district has worked with an organized OHV group in Mackinac County, he added. The Hiawatha works with a similar organization in Chippewa, Delta, Schoolcraft, and Alger counties.

Mr. Christiansen said working with groups like MCSORVA could be as beneficial as working with local snowmobile clubs, like the Straits Area Snowmobile Club and the Les Cheneaux Snowmobile Club. These clubs are responsible for maintaining some federal trails and have acquired their own funding, he said.

At MCSORVA’s request, the Forest Service already has opened trails that were formerly closed to riding, Mr. DuFresne said. Now, he plans to coax a handful of MCSORVA volunteers to work with the Forest Service to seal off illegal trails.

D e p u t y Ranger Martie Schramm, who has been involved in forest and prairie restoration projects, said an effective method of restoration is to haul brush and other native materials over trails, sometimes concealing up to oneeighth of a mile. When finished, they are impassible, and “you wouldn’t even know there was ever a trail there,” she said. On other illegal trails, ruts will be filled in to help conceal them. Where this is not possible or appropriate, rock barriers or gates will be installed to prevent riders from continuing to use the trails.

The Forest Service is also in the process of installing signs to make it clear where riding is legal and where it isn’t. If funded, Hiawatha personnel and volunteers will also re-plant damaged wetlands, dunes, and forested areas.

Once illegal trails are sealed off and habitats are restored, the Forest Service will monitor them to ensure they return to a natural state, Ms. Schramm said.

Mr. DuFresne said MCSORVAis interested in helping with all of these activities.

“We’d like to fix as much as we can,” he said. The best way to keep the forest in good condition, however, he noted, is to prevent illegal riding to begin with.

MCSORVA seeks to counteract the effects of what Mr. DuFresne calls the “five percenters,” a minority of OHV riders who deliberately cause damage on public and private land. This makes OHV riding appear negative to the general public, he said, so when MCSORVA members see riders causing damage, they sometimes try to convince them to stop, he said.

“Riders should be out there setting an example,” Mr. DuFresne said.

Such riding ethics are one reason the Hiawatha is eager to work with organized OHV groups, Mr. Christiansen said.

MCSORVA has occasionally repaired trails on the Hiawatha in the past, such as when members repaired a rut in Castle Rock Road. If a rider had hit that rut, he or she could have been seriously hurt, Mr. DuFresne said.

“We don’t just want trails to ride on. We want safe trails,” he explained.

When members join MCSORVA, they agree to follow basic laws, and this includes the federal prohibition against off-trail riding, which is a major source of damage in the Hiawatha. Mr. DuFresne admitted that off-trail riding is tempting, but “if everyone blazed their own trail, the woods would be horrible to look at,” he said.

Mr. Christiansen speculated that many people simply don’t know that riding off designated trails is illegal, and he added that cutting down trees and branches to make new passes for OHVs is also against the law.

The deep treads on ATV tires, Mr. DuFresne said, can dig a rut when ridden off-trail even once. This angers people who use the Hiawatha for other activities, he explained.

Off-trail riding is especially damaging to wetlands, Mr. Christiansen said, and repairing them requires more funding and manpower than the Forest Service has available. This is a problem, Mr. DuFresne agreed, because many ATV enthusiasts take particular pleasure in riding through mud.

In areas the Forest Service cannot afford to repair, closing off illegal trails may be all that can be done, Ms. Schramm said, the wetlands will have to heal themselves.

Restoration grants are available, she said, which can provide the funds for plants, botanists, and hydrologists to repair these fragile ecosystems. Such projects, she noted, are time and labor intensive, and one, awarded by Yamaha, requires a Forest Service partnership with a local organization. So the relationship with MCSORVA, she said, could be especially beneficial.

Mr. Christiansen said foresters have identified terrain that needs attention, including several short spurs connected to Castle Rock Road and ripped and torn passes along sand dunes south of Brevort Dam.

Both Messrs. Christiansen and DuFresne acknowledged that OHV riding could be an economic boon to the area, so to encourage ridership, the Forest Service has created and distributed trail maps, which are available at the district office on West US-2.

“The maps have helped tremendously,” Mr. DuFresne said. Not long ago, no one really knew where they could or couldn’t ride. In fact, MCSORVA was started, in part, to identify legal riding areas, he added.

Mr. Christiansen said the Forest Service is encouraging other organizations, individual riders, and landowners to get involved with the restoration of the Hiawatha.

OHV enthusiasts are always seeking more areas to ride on, Mr. DuFresne said, but it is important to ensure that the entire forest is in good condition.

“The Hiawatha is set up so people have a niche for whatever they want to do,” he said. At one end of the spectrum, the rugged and noisy ATVs have their place, he explained. On the other end are those who seek the serenity of the designated Wilderness areas, where no vehicles, not even a bicycles, can make a track along the forest floor.