BuzzH
Well-known member
Looks like the ATV mentality stays consistant across the U.S....
Talk of Maine
By Jeff Clark
The ATV Menace
Rogue riders tearing up the Maine countryside are giving the rollicking four-wheelers a bad name.
Harlan Brown, of South Gardiner, always swore he would never post his 100 acres of field and woodland in Chelsea. "I never had a problem with other people enjoying it, hunting on it or hiking or whatever," he explains. Then three years ago he found an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) trail along a power line right-of-way that crosses his property. Then he found another trail that had been cut through his woods. Then he found parts of his land so rutted by ATVs he couldn't walk across it without tripping and falling.
"That's when I put up the No Trespassing signs," he says. "The ATVers came through anyway. So I dropped a couple of trees across the trail. They cut the trees up and pushed them aside. I put up a steel cable between two oak trees. They cut down one of the oaks. That's when it became a war for me." These days Brown has his property studded with cameras hooked up to motion sensors.
Harlan Brown is only one of the hundreds, and perhaps thousands of landowners in Maine who are fed up with the damage and danger posed by ATVs. "Last year I went up to the legislature to testify about an ATV bill and there were three or four people there," Brown recalls. "This year I went up and there were more than 200 people there -- so many they couldn't all get into the hearing room. This thing has just exploded."
ATVs have become the fastest growing -- and most controversial -- recreational pastime in Maine. ATV registrations have increased by 90 percent in the past five years to 55,660 in 2001, with perhaps as many as 10,000 more unregistered vehicles. Dealers say ATVs are outselling snowmobiles by two and three to one despite the state's weak economy. Maine has ninety ATV clubs and 2,200 miles of designated ATV trails. And the state has suddenly become a magnet for ATVers from all over New England.
The popularity of ATVs, though, has not come to Maine without a cost. Landowners across the state, outraged over the destruction caused by the machines, have posted thousands of acres of land, closed long-established snowmobile and hiking trails, and even set traps to catch trespassing ATVs. Safety experts gasp at the rapid increase in injuries and deaths among ATV users. Farmers fear ATVs could become the next vehicle for spreading plant diseases from one field to the next. And legislators are responding with a raft of bills aimed at tightening rules, increasing fees, and toughening enforcement.
Widespread ATV resentment could even trigger a resurgence of efforts to require a presumption that all private land is closed unless posted as open to the public -- a radical notion in Maine and a historic reversal of the age-old tradition of public access.
"People are angry to a point that I've never seen before," Scruggs adds. "The Number One landowner problem is ATVs."
Talk of Maine
By Jeff Clark
The ATV Menace
Rogue riders tearing up the Maine countryside are giving the rollicking four-wheelers a bad name.
Harlan Brown, of South Gardiner, always swore he would never post his 100 acres of field and woodland in Chelsea. "I never had a problem with other people enjoying it, hunting on it or hiking or whatever," he explains. Then three years ago he found an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) trail along a power line right-of-way that crosses his property. Then he found another trail that had been cut through his woods. Then he found parts of his land so rutted by ATVs he couldn't walk across it without tripping and falling.
"That's when I put up the No Trespassing signs," he says. "The ATVers came through anyway. So I dropped a couple of trees across the trail. They cut the trees up and pushed them aside. I put up a steel cable between two oak trees. They cut down one of the oaks. That's when it became a war for me." These days Brown has his property studded with cameras hooked up to motion sensors.
Harlan Brown is only one of the hundreds, and perhaps thousands of landowners in Maine who are fed up with the damage and danger posed by ATVs. "Last year I went up to the legislature to testify about an ATV bill and there were three or four people there," Brown recalls. "This year I went up and there were more than 200 people there -- so many they couldn't all get into the hearing room. This thing has just exploded."
ATVs have become the fastest growing -- and most controversial -- recreational pastime in Maine. ATV registrations have increased by 90 percent in the past five years to 55,660 in 2001, with perhaps as many as 10,000 more unregistered vehicles. Dealers say ATVs are outselling snowmobiles by two and three to one despite the state's weak economy. Maine has ninety ATV clubs and 2,200 miles of designated ATV trails. And the state has suddenly become a magnet for ATVers from all over New England.
The popularity of ATVs, though, has not come to Maine without a cost. Landowners across the state, outraged over the destruction caused by the machines, have posted thousands of acres of land, closed long-established snowmobile and hiking trails, and even set traps to catch trespassing ATVs. Safety experts gasp at the rapid increase in injuries and deaths among ATV users. Farmers fear ATVs could become the next vehicle for spreading plant diseases from one field to the next. And legislators are responding with a raft of bills aimed at tightening rules, increasing fees, and toughening enforcement.
Widespread ATV resentment could even trigger a resurgence of efforts to require a presumption that all private land is closed unless posted as open to the public -- a radical notion in Maine and a historic reversal of the age-old tradition of public access.
"People are angry to a point that I've never seen before," Scruggs adds. "The Number One landowner problem is ATVs."
