While it may, in fact, be newsworthy that the U.S. Department of the Interior is enthusiastically urging the use of ORVs in the national forests, the characterization of these users as sportsmen (in the front page headline, December 14, 2006) has me somewhat confused. Sportsmen is a term that ORVists have applied to themselves, a term borrowed from the hunting and fishing promoters.

As reported in the December 14 article, however, these same sportsmen are responsible for extensive damage to the forests they love so much. The Forest Service plan to turn illegal damage into legal damage by redirecting traffic onto a network of wheelworn trails makes one wonder who is determining the policies and setting the priorities concerning the use/abuse of public lands.

In a time of high fuel costs and a global fuel shortage, when the release of burnt fuel is choking our planet, in a nation where obesity is a chronic illness, when budgets for wilderness protection and law enforcement are shrinking and respect for nature is an oxymoron, it seems awfully shortsighted to promote as sport an activity that consumes fuel, pollutes the air, tears up the ground, and disquiets the woods, all for the joy and excitement of those who prefer to take their nature sitting down and making noise.

I suggest that such an activity more closely resembles a disease than it resembles a sport.

Tom Hoogterp

Engadine