By Bethany Kohoutek

Dan Kleen hates the way stories like this one begin. His sport, he says, is already saddled with the stereotype of being dangerous and destructive. As head of Iowa's Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Association, Kleen has heard all of the accusations: Four-wheelers and dirt bikes are loud. They're risky for kids. They spew toxins into the air and the water. They hog the trails, and they're a turn-off to hikers, bicyclists, horseback riders, anglers and skiers. They cause soil erosion, clog streams with sediment, scare off wildlife and crush animal habitat.

Fifty-thousand ATVs are currently registered in the state of Iowa, up by more than 20,000 from two years ago, and plenty more machines are unregistered. Of all of these riders, Kleen estimates that 99.5 percent respect nature and others around them, and obey laws.

"The small percentage is giving us a black eye," Kleen says. "When you've got 50,000 registered ATVs... even half of 1 percent is a lot of machines that can give you a bad name. Just like any user group - hikers, mountain bikers, walkers - the ones that are going about it properly don't leave an image or a bad taste in your mouth. The one that does, that's what you remember. Unfortunately, we have that stereotype. A few are ruining it for the rest of us."

But the difference with motorized vehicles, as opposed to horseback riders and joggers, is that a tiny percentage of ATVs or dirt bikes is capable of wreaking a disproportionate amount of damage to Iowa's trails, waterways, native plants and animals, and overall ecosystem, say local environmentalists.

The evidence, they say, is everywhere, from the Sycamore Bike Trail on the East Side of Des Moines, where four-wheelers' tires have cut deep ravines into the once-grassy areas alongside the path; to the intersection of 63rd Street and the Raccoon River near West Des Moines, where ATVs have shredded acres along the riverbed; to certain sections of the Des Moines River, where the telltale parallel tire tracks crisscross nearly every mile of the landscape.

"At one time, several years ago, I participated in an aerial deer count," says Loren Lown, a natural resource specialist for the Polk County Conservation Board, "As we flew over in January... there was not one federal, state or local natural area that did not have some ATV traffic."

That's one of the reasons why area conservationists, state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials, federal land managers - and even ATV enthusiasts like Kleen - have been ramping up efforts to combat illegal off-roading in Iowa. ATVs are not street legal, Lown says, and the only places where people are allowed to operate them are on private land (with the consent of the property owner) and in designated riding parks.

Still, the drastically increasing number of ATVs poses questions for the state that ranks 49th in the nation in terms of its amount of publicly owned land. And much of that challenge falls on the shoulders of the DNR, a state agency charged both with protecting Iowa's natural resources and with providing recreational opportunities for diverse, and often divergent, groups, from bird watchers to dirt bikers. A recent DNR survey found that ATV riding is among the top three outdoor pursuits in which Iowans participate. At the same time, just one-tenth of 1 percent of Iowa's native prairie lands remain intact.

"Iowa is unique in that way. It is the most biologically disturbed state in the nation, and it's also toward the bottom in publicly owned lands," says Diane Ford-Shivvers, the DNR's deputy division administrator for conservation and recreation. "Because we don't have very many places of publicly owned land, there is a lot of pressure for all sorts of recreation on that land. Balancing that is a challenge for the department.

"When we have that environmental devastation from illegal riding on public areas, it just compounds the problems. ... That's why it's doubly important to maintain the integrity of those natural areas."

On a muggy Tuesday afternoon, Danielle Wirth picks her way through thick, wet, waist-high vegetation, her walking stick sinking into the damp earth with each step. A pair of barrel-chested black Labs bound ahead of her. She hikes with her eyes to the ground, pausing every few moments to part the foliage and point out a wildflower or a species of prairie grass. She's visibly excited to find yellow coneflower, bee balm and, especially, oak tree saplings struggling skyward in the midst of overgrown, invasive species like crown vetch and yellow sweet clover.

"A lot of natives are trying to hold on here," she murmurs.

Although diminutive in stature, she is formidable when it comes to her knowledge about this swath of prairie in southern Boone County, not far from the Des Moines River bottom. With a master's degree in resource management and a Ph.D. in environmental ethics, she spent several years as a specialist with the Iowa DNR, and several more as a federal park ranger.

She now devotes her time to teaching classes at DMACC and at Iowa State, including an innovative prairie-restoration course in which students spend class time repairing prairies in Dallas, Boone and Polk counties. Wirth teaches her pupils about the fragility of Iowa's native prairies and oak savannas - the clothing Iowa once wore almost exclusively, before agriculture and industrial development bestowed upon it the title of 49th most altered state in the nation. Each semester, she demonstrates the correct way to harvest seeds, and how to identify and eliminate non-native plants.

And she shows students how to mitigate the damage caused by the ATVs that routinely tear through the delicate areas they are working to restore. A study by the Montana State University Extension Service found that a single dirt bike or ATV can spread 2,000 seeds over a 10-mile radius. In one weekend of riding, Wirth says, a single ATV can negate hundreds of hours of painstaking restoration work.

Today, Wirth makes her way toward one of her most prized sites. Near the unofficial entrance to the area, she is not surprised to see that a DNR-issued sign that proclaims "No Motorized Vehicles" has been sawed off at the base and cast into a patch of weeds. Nearby, ATV tracks slice across what was once a barely visible footpath that Wirth and her students use to access the remote prairie.

In Iowa, the fine for illegal ATV riding is a mere $20 - such a miniscule amount, Wirth says, that it is often treated as a challenge by some rogue riders. Add to that the difficulty of actually catching a rider in the midst of unlawful act, and very few are ever punished.

"If they catch a vandal, [the perpetrator] laughs and says it's a cheap price to pay to ride," she says.

Not that Wirth and her posse of college students and other volunteer environmentalists don't employ guerilla tactics of their own. They drag piles of dead limbs and undergrowth into the well-worn paths of illegal riders. More often than not, however, the riders simply blaze a new route, in some places prompting entire hillsides of once-pristine prairie to erode into washouts of mud and noxious weeds.

Lown, of the Polk County Conservation Board, says angry landowners and conservationists routinely send him photos of ATV damage to both private property and public lands. One photo that he pulls up on the computer in his Jester Park office shows four-wheeler tracks cutting up and down Native American burial mounds.

"One of the hardest things to take when you're in natural resources is when you find out that so many people just don't care," Lown says.

"There are so few parks, open lands and natural areas remaining in the state," he says. "If you drive an ATV through a wetland, you destroy it. If you ride on a steep hillside on a prairie, you destroy it. A lot of the things they are destroying are impossible to replace. ... If these ATVs were routinely tearing up golf courses, the cry would be loud and deep."

Dan Kleen, of the OHV Association, says he is just as appalled by the environmental devastation caused by ATVs. That's why he convinced scores of ATV dealers and aficionados to support upping the $20 fine for illegal riding to $100. Last session, local environmental activists and the OHV Association found themselves on the same side of the fence when they joined forces to lobby the state Legislature to stiffen penalties for unlawful ATV use.

Although the bill passed the Senate, it died in a House of Representatives committee, where some lawmakers said increased fines amount to extra taxation for ATV enthusiasts. (Environmentalists blamed this mentality on what they see as a pervasive "good ol' boys club" in the Legislature, where several lawmakers are themselves ATV riders.)

Kleen says the group will try again next session. In the meantime, he says, conscientious riders should not have to suffer from the illegal actions of a few. Kleen is a wheelchair-bound paraplegic who uses his Yamaha 660 Grizzly four-wheeler in order to hunt. He says grandparents use ATVs to enjoy nature with their grandchildren.

Most notably, he says, ATV riding is user-supported, which means that no money from the state's general fund is dedicated to the sport, despite its burgeoning popularity. An ATV registration costs $15 per year - a pittance, Kleen says, compared with the $5,000 to $8,000 price tag of most ATVs - and those fees cover salaries for extra DNR law-enforcement officers and for the purchase of legal riding parks.

"We're one of the few user groups that pay their own way," Kleen says.

Currently, Iowa is home to eight riding parks for off-highway vehicles. In the areas where these parks have been established (Ely, Marshalltown, Plano, Independence, Council Bluffs, Tama, Bussey and, most recently, Fort Dodge), ATV accidents, environmental impairment and general illegal activity have decreased drastically, says David Downing, ATV and snowmobile program manager for the Iowa DNR.

"We need to provide a legal place for people who want to register and do it right, and work with local jurisdictions to find ways to combat the people who do not want to do it right," he says.

Still, plenty of environmentalists believe the DNR should completely wash its hands of ATV, dirt bike and snowmobile riders - regardless of whether they pay their own way.

"The state should not accommodate them," Wirth says. "The DNR is a de facto promoting agent. ... A wildlife biologist should do habitat and prairie work. It's ridiculous that he has to take days to find ATV damage or to post a sign. It's not an appropriate use of his time."

She questions how the DNR can effectively safeguard public lands and resources, and simultaneously help the owners of inherently destructive machines find places to ride.

"It initially looks like a conflict for the DNR," Downing admits. "But [the DNR] is the absolute best place for it, because of the nature of the activity."

"The DNR's role is to manage it as a recreation and to find places to help facilitate legal riding, because illegal riding is a huge problem," adds Ford-Shivvers, of the DNR. "We really have an initiative to reduce illegal activities... and to step up enforcement and education so people know where it's legal to ride."

Those inside and outside the agency were shocked when the DNR survey found that ATVing had become so popular. Downing says that realization has "huge implications" for the department.

"Historically, what the agency has to do to protect the environment and our natural resources changes. ... We need to be willing to look to the future and realize the things we need to do to adapt," he says.

Last summer, the DNR used money from registration fees to hire four seasonal ATV enforcement officers. This year, there was enough money in the pot to pay the salaries of seven fulltime officers, who patrol ATV parks, as well as pursue those riders who insist upon riding illegally on public lands.

Both Downing and Ford-Shivvers agree that some local law-enforcement agencies are "behind the curve" when it comes to taking ATV damage seriously.

"There are some local jurisdictions where the sheriff will wave at people as they ride by and thinks its no big deal," Downing says. "It's something that takes a full-pronged approach from everyone, otherwise the ATVs will be in natural areas and parks."

Last month, the DNR and the OHV Association opened the state's newest AVT park in Fort Dodge. Ford-Shivvers says the park's early success is proof that DNR's approach is working.

"It's an area that otherwise wouldn't be used, and it's not harming our beautiful, fragile natural areas," she says.

Both the OHV group and the DNR have their sights set on Polk County as the next potential location for an off-roading park, thanks to the significant damage in and around Des Moines, as well as the number of residents here who own off-highway vehicles.

As he does with most ATV-related decisions, however, Downing will convene a task force, comprised of Sierra Club and Audubon Society members, ATV dealers and proponents like Kleen, and government conservation experts like Lown, to study more carefully the siting and environmental impacts of such a park.

Lown says he sits on the OHV task force in order to advocate for the areas that are most often ignored during the process: those prairies and savannas that cannot be replaced. When asked what would happen if the problem of illegal ATV riding went unexamined, he shakes his head.

"I can't imagine that happening. I can't imagine that we won't get a handle on this. Because you can't take a motor vehicle over every square inch of the earth. It's got to stop somewhere. Everybody, whether they be enthusiasts who support the sport, or environmentalists, needs to get together and demand changes and accountability." CV

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