Phantom
NYR Friends
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No Training Wheels!
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« on: June 03, 2008, 09:15:10 AM » |
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On the willingness of ATV riders to help their own sport.
The snowmobile community mobilized and had thousands of letters and signatures on petitions when the state took their money.
ATV riders decide to do nothing but complain and wait for someone else to do something. Wait and complain and pretty soon the sport will be outlawed by virtue of having no legal places left to ride. I wonder how many businesses that rely on ATV traffic to get them through the Summer wrote letters?
FIVE E-mails or letters???? Come on people get active or lose your riding privileges!!!
I don't know where this news article is from it was sent to me via E-mail.
DEC receives very few replies
ROAD CLOSINGS: Written response to ruling on ATVs lags behind phone calls
By NANCY MADSEN
TIMES STAFF WRITER
MONDAY, JUNE 2, 2008
After a large chorus of voices weighed in on the decision by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to close roads on reforested state lands to all-terrain vehicle traffic, only a few members of the public wrote or e-mailed the department expressing their displeasure.
Five such e-mails were sent to the Region 6 office in the week following the decision. The correspondence was obtained through a Freedom of Information request.
"The closure to ATVs is based on erroneous factual and legal assumptions that the routes qualify as public highways for purposes of motor vehicle travel," Glenfield resident Floyd J. Rivers wrote in a four-page response.
"I don't understand how they can say it's a state road when it doesn't even qualify as a road under highway law," he said Friday.
The April 15 decision closed 52 roads, known as truck trails, to ATV use based on Vehicle and Traffic law that highw ays can be opened for travel by ATVs only to provide access to an otherwise inaccessible trail. The definition of highway under the law is, "The entire width between the boundary lines of every way publicly maintained when any part thereof is open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel."
Others opposing the decision wrote, "PA welcomes us, so do most any other state in the US" and "This is an absolute, total outrage."
Three e-mails were sent to the office supporting the decision. Their authors wrote things such as:
"There is a place in the world for these things but not on public lands!"
"ATV use is incompatible with good wildlife management practices and is particularly damaging to avian nesting species."
Some of the e-mails were from local residents, but others were from different parts of the state, such as Madison, Cortland and Monroe counties.
While the e-mails were fairly evenly distributed, people who called the department expressed more disapproval of the decision.
"I think many people concerned in a negative way called in," Region 6 state Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman Stephen W. Litwhiler said. "The e-mails we had coming in were fairly evenly distributed and those were fairly immediate."
Mr. Litwhiler said he received many phone calls with questions on particular roads. "And some of those questions are unanswered," he said.
Some did not understand that this ruling affected only DEC roads, not town or county roads.
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