OHV Recreation, Tourism, and Land Trusts

Every once in a blue moon, some good news comes to the OHV community. According to a Wall Street Journal article today, a growing number of counties and states are warming to OHV/ATV/UTV tourism and are designating trails and access corridors to facilitate said use.

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Photo is of ATV/UTV Tour Program at

Kipu Ranch in Hawaii - Don and Ellen Amador drove a UTV on this tour

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WSJ Article (quote from BRC)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124831007584074147.html#mod=todays_us_page_one

The General has long believed that managed OHV recreation can bring real dollars to local economies and is an activity that should be encouraged by lawmakers, users, and government officials.

Another concept that should be embraced by the OHV community is the development of
a recreation-oriented land trust that can acquire and/or manage high quality lands that are coming on the market (i.e. surplus timber lands and other properties). The goal of the conservation/recreation land trust would be to acquire/manage lands in a manner that protects resources and critical habitat while allowing some form of recreation (motorized and/or non-motorized as appropriate) and public access to occur. The land trust could also act as a holding entity until a government agency could get legislation passed and monies appropriated to purchase the property.

In the midst of all the gloom, maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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Dual-Sport Riders Win Big Victory in CA

I just wanted to congratulate the dual-sport community and their lobbyists, AMA, ABATE of California, and the California Motorcycle Dealers Assn. for their hard work in fighting the Pavley motorcycle smog bill. Earlier, SB435 (Pavley’s smog bill) was thankfully recognized by state senators with common sense as a proposal that punished the motorcycle recreation community and created another “tax.”

Here is quote from Capitol Weekly
Pavley was also forced to significantly weaken her motorcycle smog check bill, SB 435, because of objections from Wright and other moderate Democrats.
Full news article about SB435 at
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=y12dhpvks3hi6i&xid=y11gl3bydgla74&done=.y12dhpvks42i6i

I know many dual-sport riders were concerned that SB 435 would require smog checks on legal dual sport conversions (dual sport kits added to 2000-2003 green-sticker dirt-bikes such as XR650Rs, open class KTM 4-strokes, DRZ400s, WR426/450s, etc.) As it stands now, the bill’s focus was reduced to address catalytic converters.

The General feels that dual-sport recreation and related events are an important factor to rural communities in the current economy. Having ridden in, or helped tech at, a number of dual-sport rides in Northern California, I can attest to the fact that businesses (local hotels and restaurants) thrive when several hundred riders utilize their establishments.

There are a number of exciting and fun dual-sport rides coming up this summer and fall.

Check in Nor Cal Dual Sport for a list of rides
http://www.norcaldualsport.com/home.html

Also, ck. in with North Bay Motorcycle Club for their Lost Coast Dual Sport Ride in Oct.
http://northbaymc.org/

I hope to see many of you at these events.

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