“ATVs give off sparks. You could start a wildfire,” Smokey tells them. As the young men apologize and push their vehicles away, a narrator warns that nine out of 10 wildfires are caused by humans.

Calling the ad “misleading and unfair,” the BlueRibbon Coalition, an Idaho-based group that advocates for ever more motorized access to public lands, demanded that the USFS pull the ad and apologize for its release.

“Smokey Bear is inappropriately telling members of the motorized trail community that the best way for them to prevent wildfires is to just stay home,” BRC representative Don Amador said, according to news reports.

The BRC’s complaints were widely reported on Tuesday. By today, the 30-second spot, produced by the Ad Council, was no longer available for viewing on the U.S. Forest Service website or YouTube.

In an e-mail to Silent Sports, USFS spokeswoman Allison Steward wrote, “It appears that the Ad Council’s ‘ATV’ PSA has not resonated with a target audience of key recreational users of the National Forest System and the Ad Council has requested that media companies discontinue airing the PSA.”

The campaign against the PSA included videos critical of it, including one that depicts a mountain biker confronting ATVers before the biker lights up a cigarette and carelessly discards her lit match.

That video and the BRC argue that ATVs equipped with USFS-approved spark arresters do not start fires.

– Joel Patenaude

Two miles into my 13-mile loop, a light rain graduated to a downpour. Gambling that the intensity of the storm would subside, I kept running, fruitlessly wiping the blinding droplets from my glasses and wringing the edge of my shirt onto my soaked shoes.

On a rural road six miles west of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, I couldn’t see to avoid the deepest puddles or the water rushing across the patched pavement. In a way, I was grateful because I was spared the soul crushing view up the unrelentingly but familiar climb past the outdoor museum Little Norway, where I worked summers as a teenager.

But then came the lightening. It lit up the sky and the wooded canopy over the road ahead. And deafening thunder quickly followed, indicating that first strike was not far off. That’s when I felt most foolish and frightened. I thought about a former 20-something reporting colleague who, while on vacation in Florida a few years back, was struck by lightening and killed. It was a freakish, tragic end that he did not seek. By purposely running in a thunderstorm, I felt like I was actually asking for a similar fate.

At that point, however, I had nowhere to go but onward, so I stepped up the pace. By the time I reached the sloppy surface of the Military Ridge State Trail three miles from my mother-in-law’s house, my wife and kids pulled up in our van to offer me a ride. Since the thunderstorm had largely passed and I was so close to finishing (and I couldn’t get any wetter), I waved them off.

Only later, upon telling my father about my risky run, did he recall running up the Little Norway hill under similar conditions. “It was the worst storm I’ve ever been in,” he said. “Later that night much of Barneveld disappeared.” While my run was June 8, Dad’s was exactly 24 years earlier when, six miles west of that hill, a tornado struck and killed nine people, injured 200 more and left standing little more than the water tower. (Boneheadedness runs in the family, apparently.)

The rain in which I ran didn’t stop for at least another week, flooding wide swaths of southern Wisconsin and Iowa (visited by tornadoes, too), Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska. As of press time, three people had died and thousands were forced from their homes – 24,000 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alone before the Cedar River had crested.

Given all the property damage – lost homes, businesses, crops, breached levees and commerce disrupted due to the closure of sections of many state highways and interstates – no one should be selectively upset to see flooding shut down state parks and bike trails (in Wisconsin, that included Devil’s Lake State Park, Elroy-Sparta State Trail and 400 State Trail).

Lake Delton pushed through an earthen barrier and drained completely into the Wisconsin River. Yet local tourism officials were quick to note that 93 percent of the nearby Wisconsin Dells attractions – ironically the waterparks, if not the Tommy Bartlett Show’s water skiers – were open and welcoming visitors.

In Des Moines, Iowa, high water and concern for E. coli contamination at Gray’s Lake Park would force the June 21-22 Hy-Vee Triathlon to be held seven miles west and truncated to a duathlon (run-bike-run). Whether a handful of elite athletes would be able to race the event to secure spots on the U.S. Olympic Triathlon Team – a story that made The New York Times – was still in doubt at press time.

Lucky just to be alive was another group of recreationists canoeing the still-swollen Milwaukee River in the town of Saukville, Wisconsin, on June 15. Several boats capsized, sending up to 10 people into fast-moving water, escaping with only minor injuries. (Mike Svob, on page 38, has something to say about that kind of behavior.)

Suffice to say, we outdoor enthusiasts need to keep things in perspective. No one, myself included, ought to risk their lives for sport. And before we rebuild our flooded trails, we should look to help others recover from much greater loss. Their misery has yet to crest.

– Joel Patenaude

But I closed with this:

“I advocated earlier that you go places that make you uncomfortable. That kind of discomfort, the kind that teaches you how to adapt, is not just found some place far away. It is that whisper of self doubt that is within each of us that we ought to visit and take on.

– Joel Patenaude

Bunnell writes:

Back in March, you couldn’t swing a cat in this town without hitting a silent sports enthusiast. Now that the decision has made by the Outagamie County Board to restrict all-terrain vehicles from the Seymour-New London Trail, the hikers and bikers have vanished.

Perhaps the county supervisors who voted against a multi-use trail shouldn’t have listened to the squeakiest wheels, but instead should have voted for common sense. If I made that horrible of a decision, I would resign.

Bravo, Mr. Bunnell. Bravo.

Seriously, I’m impressed with his latest salvo, coming as it does after so much sparring through the media as Bunnell and I did. Had I wound up on the losing side, I, too, would have been tempted to take a cheap at him. It is odd, however, Bunnell chose to be so adversarial just three weeks after I asked him if he would be interested in helping organize a Friends of the Seymour-New London Trail group. This was the response he posted (writing as PuppyChow II) on the Silent Sports messageboard:

“I will probably have a tough time spearheading something that I didn’t believe in. Will I contribute? Of, course, but I’m not going to be the driving force.”

Bunnell didn’t mention his plans to shoot spitballs at those actually interested in getting the trail developed.

As a local watchdog – if not a constructive contributor – I suppose his goading serves a purpose. We do need to start identifying and securing the funds necessary to develop the trail (how much of that could have been completed in just three months … well, Bunnell’s the expert, I guess). Unbeknowst to Bunnell – only because he didn’t bother to call me or Vickie before firing off his letter attacking us by name – personal issues have kept Vicki and I from getting the Friends group ball rolling.

Vickie has been in North Dakota since early May when her elderly father fell and broke his neck. She and her siblings are there helping their parents through the surgery and a change of residence.

Despite dealing with all that, Vickie emailed me asking that I “inform Gary that we have not forgotten about our committment to the trail.”

Thanks, Mr. Bunnell, for reminding us what our priorities really ought to be.

– Joel Patenaude

Actually, it was one paragraph found to be insulting to the reader – a self-described 13-time Boston Marathon charity runner and eight-time Ironman. Although the majority of the column was about my own desire to qualify to run Boston and admiration for those who do, along the way I managed to diss Boston runners like him:

I wrote, “Even though Boston attracts thousands of non-registered ‘bandits’ and charity fund-raising joggers who don’t bother to meet the time standards, runners like me still insist on working hard to earn our place at the starting line.”

Although it was not my intention, that statement does suggest charity runners are neither qualified to be there (they are entirely welcome under Boston Athletic Association rules) nor work hard to get there.

That was unfair of me, and I apologize.

As the reader pointed out, many Boston marathoners like him have found fund-raising for medical research to motivate their training. They run for a purpose greater than themselves. And some happen to be fast enough to meet the qualifying time standards, too – such as the reader’s wife.

I will look toward running a “BQ” myself at Grandma’s Marathon on June 21 with a greater appreciation for what Boston means to other runners, and what the fund-raising there means for so many others unable to run.

– Joel Patenaude

Still, it’s amazing to pull into a full parking lot at Standing Rocks and then not encounter another soul over more than an hour of trail riding. We’re out there in force but yet able to enjoy the sport in relative isolation and at our own speed.

Contrast that scene with the average mass motorcycle rally, such as the one Garrison Keillor encountered in Washington, D.C., this past Memorial Day weekend :

“A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti; the patriotism somehow gets lost in the sheer irritation of the thing. … No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he’d just ‘choppered in’ and saw the horde ‘cranking up their machines’ and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them.”

Read the rest of Keillor’s column here.

If you want to read more expressions of displeasure with the exhaust fumes, violence and lewd behavior that tend to accompany motorcycle rallies, check out this story from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Many of the posted comments are from local residents as sick of these events as the city council.

Don’t worry: Posting this is not an indication I’m branching out from bashing quad riders of public trails to tsk-tsking hog riders on city streets (let alone straying well outside the upper Midwest). The latter group have more than enough of their own foes. I’ll stick primarily to defending quieter, self-propelled forest folk ’round these parts.

But I can’t help but add to the din of protest against obnoxious motorheads whereever they raise their … er … motorheads.

– Joel Patenaude

Since the Natural Resources Board (NRB) on April 23 voted unanimously not to allow ATVs in the Northern-Highland American Legion (NH-AL) State Forest, Wisconsin ATV Association (WATVA) President Randy Harden has tried to portray himself and fellow quad members as victims of discrimination.

Having moved on (geographically but not psychologically) to try to keep ATVs running through the Black River State Forest, Harden and cohort Rob McConnell on April 28 sent a screed to several DNR officials blaming unspecified “anti-motorized zealots” and “anti-access advocacy groups” for their organization’s inability to convince anyone of the righteousness of ATV riding on more and more public land.

(The letter linked above and dated May 2 is the same letter Pat Murphy, Black River State Forest Master Plan Team Leader, confirmed she received on April 28.)

In its letter, WATVA also scapegoats DNR officials who understand that birdwatchers and bicyclists need their own paths because they stay away from trails open to ATVers. WATVA dismisses this fact with a truly bizarre, and vaguely threatening assertion:

“The Black River State Forest should be extremely cautious about enthusiastically embracing segregation of this type; it wasn’t good for this country in regards to race relations and certainly is not good public policy for all land management decisions.”

So let’s get this straight. According to WATVA, to argue that safety dictates motorized and nonmotorized trail users have seperate trails is tantamount to supporting racial segregation.

Well, that’s a radical and highly offensive analogy.

To suggest that ATVers suffer daily indignities and violence like racial minorities have in this country is simply outrageous. Far from being forced to sit “at the back of the bus,” ATVers are free to ride their $5,000-plus machines on private land and 8,000 miles of public routes and trails throughout this state.

Segregation of motorized and nonmotorized folks is not only justified, it is necessary. (Does WATVA not believe in sidewalks?) If we agree the health of nonsmokers should not be compromised by smokers, then why should hikers and bicyclists have their lives and enjoyment of parks and trails threatened by ATV speed, noise, dust and damage?

Harden and McConnell are clearly desperate if they’re willing to play the proverbial race card. But they’re probably just voicing what many of WATVA’s good-old-boy members are muttering in frustration.

Still, the organization’s leadership needs a reality check.

Only after the NRB rejected a proposal to develop more than 78 miles of ATV trails in the NH-AL at a cost of up to $14 million did Harden claim that WATVA wasn’t supportive of the project either. If the NRB had actually done the opposite and OK’d the ATV trails, Harden claimed his organization would have “battl(ed) to get it stopped.” This from a guy who served on the stakeholders group which recommended the very trails that were rejected.

So if WATVA’s head honchos aren’t trying to rewrite history, they’re painting thelmselves as victims of Jim Crow like policies. Either way, they’re excuses and vitriol should be rejected as sad and pathetic.

– Joel Patenaude

Here’s what I wrote:

It was sad to see Regional Editor Sara Bredesen fall victim to the ATV industry’s chief spin doctor in her April 29 coverage of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board’s decision not to permit ATV trails in the Northern Highland-American Legion (NH-AL) State Forest.

Breseden’s reporting was so lazy, her primary source, Wisconsin ATV Association President Randy Harden, was allowed to redefine the issue – an issue that in reality was decided after a two-year process that included many more persuasive points of view rooted in environmental science, recreational trend analyses and fairness to the public at large.

In addition to handing Harden the reins to her story, Breseden made one particularly large error: The DNR proposed a 30-foot-wide ATV trail corridor, not a 60-foot-wide one as she reported. The fact is many of the service roads the ATVs would have followed are already 30 feet wide.

It is dishonest of Mr. Harden to claim to be surprised by the trail widths and estimated costs provided by the DNR for 78.6 miles of the ATV trails recommended by a stakeholders group on which Mr. Harden served.

NH-AL Superintendent Steve Peterson said he told Harden and the other stakeholders early in the process that the ATV trails would need to be wide enough for two-way motor vehicle traffic. “I remember walking the possible routes with them and talking about the need to ditch and crown the trails, which would have to be shared with trucks,” Peterson said.

ADDED: The fact that wetlands, lakes and streams constitute as much as 30 percent of the NH-AL, many lengthy boardwalks and bridges would have been required to accomodate ATV travel, the most expensive aspect of the now rejected project.

The problem is, Harden’s ATV organization is not in the business of building sustainable ATV trails; in fact, he does very little to promote accepted development standards. Harden is primarily in the business of demanding ATV access to public land – any and all public land – regardless of how much ATVs cause environmental damage, noise and air pollution and displace the majority of visitors who prefer nonmotorized recreation.

It was irresponsible of Breseden to allow Harden to claim, without proof or challenge, that the process determining whether ATVs belonged in the NH-AL was “hijacked by silent sport people” and dismiss legitimate concerns for ATVers straying off trail. “He said that might have been the problem 25 years ago in the early days of the sport, but it is not true now,” Breseden reported.

Surely Breseden knows that the number of ATVs registered in Wisconsin has nearly tripled just in the past 10 years, suggesting that there is likely more conflict between their riders and hikers, bicyclists and other nonmotorized recreationists.

All she needed to read was the DNR’s 2005-2010 Wisconsin Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) which states, “It is evident that ATV riding is incompatible with every other land-based activity but snowmobiling.” The SCORP also points out that 85 percent of outdoor enthusiasts in Wisconsin prefer nonmotorized activities.

For further proof that ATVers are very much inclined to stray off trail and trespass, Breseden could have cited a 2007 survey of Wisconsin ATVers by Bob Smail, a graduate student in the UW-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources. Smail found 65 percent of trail-riding ATVers admitting they prefer to ride off of maintained trails designed specifically for them. “While this does not indicate that (the majority of ATV) users will disobey trail rules, it does suggest that by staying on-trail, users will be suppressing a preference for riding off-trail,” Smail warned.

It could be argued that Breseden presented both sides in her story. But while the overwhelming opposition to ATV trails in the NH-AL was given one paragraph and a partial quote, Harden got the lede and an additional 11 paragraphs devoted to his POV, however misleading and dishonest it was.

While there was no evidence of independent research or critical thinking on Breseden’s part, it is fortunate the DNR and Natural Resources Board did not take the same approach to the ATV issue in the NH-AL. The state’s largest forest has been spared for those who value safe and serene wild places. Thank goodness.

If you wish to comment on this issue, you can do so here. Registration to view and use the messageboard is quick and easy.

– Joel Patenaude

Of the 27 people who testified, only Jane Severt and Mike Peterson, representing the Wisconsin County Forests Association, questioned the DNR’s recommendation against ATV trails in the NH-AL.

Peterson said the state agency’s NHAL ATV Trail Feasibility/Suitability Study “infers there are ATV riding opportunities elsewhere. That’s a transparent statement that the county forests must provide the trails.”

While there are nearly 8,000 miles of legal ATV trails and routes through 32 mostly northern Wisconsin counties, many of the trails cross state land. The DNR is also “committed” to recreational ATV riding through its ATV registration and trail maintenance grant programs, according to Paul DeLong, administrator of the DNR’s Forestry Division.

The DNR’s recommendation not to build ATVs in the NH-AL “should not be viewed as a lack of support for ATVs,” DeLong said.

Yet no one from the Wisconsin ATV Association (WATVA) addressed the NRB on Tuesday. Nevertheless, WATVA tried at the 11th hour to get the DNR to change course. (In fact, it was the only outside group thanked for its late input by DNR Secretary Matt Frank in his April 11 memo to the NRB.)

This morning in a phone interview, WATVA President Randy Harden told Silent Sports he didn’t go because the NRB’s decision “was a foregone conclusion.”

While WATVA Vice President Rob McConnell attended the NRB meeting, Harden did not. “Why waste gas driving there like you people?” he cynically asked of this writer and the many other nonmotorized recreation advocates who did go to the meeting.

Harden said his organization decided to rest its case on written comments submitted earlier to the DNR. In an April 10 letter addressed to DeYoung, Harden and McConnell argued against the need for a 30-foot-wide trail corridor for ATVs. They suggested that the ATV trails in the NH-AL be half as wide and include paved and hilly “technical” sections.

While the WATVA officials said “long, straight trails are found to be boring” by ATVers, they conceded the DNR’s plan to have ATV riders follow existing fireroads “does minimize further fragmentation of forestland.”

NH-AL Superintendent Steve Peterson suggested Harden is feigning surprise when he claims he didn’t expect the DNR to map ATV trails wide enough for two-way motor vehicle traffic.

“I remember walking the possible routes with them and talking about the need to ditch and crown the trails, which would have to be shared with trucks,” Peterson said. “Most of the ATV trails would have followed forest roads that are already 30 feet wide.”

Harden and McConnell also expressed doubt the ATV trails would cost $4.8 million to $14.9 million to build, as estimated by the DNR.

In their letter, they suggested eliminating from the plan a 11.6-mile section of trail through what the DNR described as an “ecologically sensitive” peatlands area. Because that trail alone would have required 3,250 feet of boardwalk and cost as much as $5.1 million, it was the least likely alternative to be constructed anyway.

The NRB decision to accept the DNR’s recommendation will likely keep the NH-AL closed to ATVs until at least 2020 when a new master plan for the forest will be due. The master planning process will start in 2018. Only a change in state statute could keep ATVs out of the NH-AL permanently.

– Joel Patenaude

With a unanimous 7-0 vote yesterday afternoon, the board simply replied, “No.”

So with “overall public opposition” cited as one of the reasons, the NH-AL has been spared from the environmental damage and recreational displacement ATV riders would cause.

The NRB’s decision was anticipated only since April 11 when Department of Natural Resources Secretary Matt Frank issued his recommendation to the board that the 78.6 miles of proposed ATV trails through the 230,000-acre forest, Wisconsin’s largest, “not be considered further.”

The NRB accepted Frank’s detailed recommendation, which estimated the ATV trails would cost between $4.8 million and $14.9 million to build through an area 30 percent covered by wetlands, lakes and streams.

NRB members asked few questions of the 27 people who testified (all but two of which opposed ATVs in the NH-AL) and didn’t spend any time discussing the issue amongst themselves before voting.

One board member, anticipating there would be little debate among his colleagues, assured the 75 people present that the board has been considering the ATV trail plan for more than a year.

The vote was met with applause, sighs of relief and congratulations among the many assembled advocates for an ATV-free NH-AL. Sue Drum and her Vilas County-based organization Northwoods Citizens for Responsible Stewardship worked tirelessly on the issue – starting not long after the hard-fought passage of a 2004 referendum against ATVs on Vilas County land. Drum rallied the troops time and again, and the coalition represented at Tuesday’s meeting –including a biologist, geologist, professional wildlife photographer and many nonmotorized recreation advocates – was laregely a culmination of her efforts.

There’s much more to say about the significance of the nonmotorized majority’s victory regarding the NH-AL, not the least of which being the ATV community’s likely response. I have more to report.

Stay tuned.

– Joel Patenaude