Most Popular Resources

July 11, 2007 -    Wildlands CPR continues to maintain and update a bibliographic database of over 20,000 citations documenting the physical and ecological effects of roads and off-road vehicles. In the U.S. alone, there are 6 million kilometers of public roads and over 36 million registered off-road vehicles. We compiled this bibliography to help people access relevant scientific literature on erosion, fragmentation, sedimentation, pollution, effects on wildlife, aquatic and hydrologic effects, and various other up-to-date information on the impacts of roads and off-road vehicles. The database was originally completed in May 1995 and the latest update was completed in January 2010. Numerous electronic databases were searched and the records were imported into Reference Manager. A list of databases and keywords searched is available upon request. The searches resulted in a variety of scientific and "grey" literature including journal articles, conference proceedings, books, lawsuits, and agency reports most with accompanying abstracts. For more information contact Adam, Wildlands CPR's Science Coordinator. For literature reviews of the most searched topics, check out our Biblio-Notes. Biblographic Database Search: Search Criteria (separate words with spaces, include quotes to query a phrase): Words to search for: Words to exclude (optional):

June 29, 2003 - Jason Lathrop (Missoula, MT, 406-327-1501)   Introduction In the post-World War II period, public interest in outdoor recreation has grown steadily. As affluence and leisure time have increased, use of public lands for recreation has risen steadily, often exceeding 10% annual growth rates through the 1960s (Knight, 1995). Today, in many areas, intensive activity by recreational users, not industrial enterprise, poses the chief challenge for land managers and activists (Knight, 1995).

June 29, 1995 - Reed Noss, PhD   Nothing is worse for sensitive wildlife than a road. Over the last few decades, studies in a variety of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have demonstrated that many of the most pervasive threats to biological diversity - habitat destruction and fragmentation, edge effects, exotic species invasions, pollution, and overhunting - are aggravated by roads.

March 3, 2006 - Jason Brininstool   In this paper I review off-road vehicle emissions and their deleterious effects on human health. With 36 million registered all-terrain vehicles and 12 million registered snowmobiles in the U.S. alone, these machines are a significant source of pollutants. They run on inefficient two and four-stroke engines that emit several dangerous gasses and chemicals including carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) (US DOT 2001). These emissions have all been shown to affect human health. Despite this fact, the U.S.

January 18, 2008 -     This document contains citations and abstracts of the most up-to-date research on the impacts of ORVs on the environment. This is a compilation of ORV research published since 2000, categorized according to resource affected with key findings underlined.  

September 13, 2007 - Adam Switalski with research assistance from Monica Wright   Scenes of Yellowstone Park Rangers wearing gas masks brought national attention to snowmobile pollution. In Yellowstone (YNP) where the cleanest air in the nation should be found, levels of pollution often exceeded those of downtown Los Angeles (Rodes et al. 1998). Studies were quickly initiated and two-stroke snowmobiles were banned from the Park. Elsewhere, millions of snowmobilers still rev up these engines each winter and head into the snow-covered wildlands.

June 27, 2007 - Wildlands CPR    Over the past two decades, advances in off-road vehicle technology have enabled riders to drive on nearly any type of terrain, up steep slopes, and onto lands that once were accessible only on foot. At the same time, the popularity of off-road vehicle recreation has soared.

July 19, 2007 - Tiffany Saleh   The U.S. is home to 3,981,512 miles of public roads (US Dept. of Transportation 2004). Unfortunately, the number of these roads that are currently lighted or will be lighted is not recorded by either the Department of Transportation nor the Federal Highway Administration, and therefore is unknown. We can infer that the majority of these roads are at least illuminated over specific portions. Ritters and Wickham (2003) report that 20% of the coterminous United States lies within 127 m of a road. In addition, U.S.

December 19, 2006 - T. Adam Switalski   The negative impacts of wildland roads on wildlife have been well documented (e.g., Wisdom et al. 2000, Trombulak and Frissell 2000). In addition to road-kill, roads increase animals’ vulnerability to over-hunting, poaching, and the effects of degraded habitat. Despite this qualitative understanding, however, the actual road mileage that would significantly reduce wildlife populations is still under review. A common measure used to gauge the impact of roads on wildlife is road density, measured as kilometers of roads per square kilometer of land area.

June 6, 2006 - Christine Morris   Sedimentation is widely acknowledged as a major cause of degradation of instream habitats (Wood et al. 2005). During rain storms and snowmelt, dirt and gravel roads bleed sediment into ditches that often drain into streams. These roads are a major source of stream sediment loads, especially harmful fine sediments, and roads contribute more sediment to streams than any other land management activity (USDA 2000). Sedimentation is directly related to a decrease in benthic macroinvertebrate density and a change in diversity according to a number of studies.

November 26, 2007 -     In June, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent a letter to the Forest Service asking some pointed questions about management of their road system (see attachment at bottom of page). In October the Forest Service finally responded to her letter (see attachment). The unfortunate thing is that even though Senator Cantwell asked some very good questions, she didn’t really get many very good (let alone just plain good) answers from the agency. While, in effect, they provided some type of answer to every question, a couple of things are painfully clear from the memo:

December 17, 2007 - Jason Kiely and Chris Kassar    Editor’s Note: Bibliography Notes typically covers the ecological effects of roads or ORVs by reviewing scientific literature. However, assumptions about social behavior also influence the debate around the management of off-road vehicle use on public lands. This edition of Bibliography Notes explores one important social science issue that has been studied by researchers. Introduction

September 20, 2007 - Marnie Criley, Mo Hartmann (Northwest Connections) and Sarah Olimb (American Wildlands)    For the last year and a half, Wildlands CPR and Northwest Connections have been working together to expand road restoration in the Swan Valley of Montana. As part of this project, we worked with American Wildlands’ geographic information systems (GIS) lab (www.wildlands.org) to create a visual history of road development in the Swan Valley. This shows the progressive increase in road mileage over the last 100 years, providing a graphic picture of the current situation and how different it is from the past.

September 11, 2003 - Center for Environmental Economic Development    $5.00 member /$8.00 non-member Wildlands CPR commissioned The Center for Environmental Economic Development (CEED) to research the economic benefits and costs of a national road removal program. The study is complete and we have summarized the findings for you. See how road removal can create jobs and provide other important economic and ecological benefits.

April 3, 1998 - Louisa Willcox   Twenty-three years after the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing of the grizzly, intensive research conveys one compelling message: roads kill grizzlies. The mechanisms include: 1) direct mortality; 2) displacement; 3) habituation; and 4) fragmentation of habitat. The effects of access and roads on bears are similar to impacts on other sensitive species such as elk and wolves; but grizzlies are the most vulnerable of all wildlife in the northern Rockies. Direct Mortality

March 2, 2001 - Kinza Cusic   Wetlands, vitally important ecological systems, have a history of inadequate protection. The impacts of road construction and road operation on wetlands are numerous and broad in scope; negative impacts range from changes to the chemistry and biology of the local area to changes in hydrology that go well beyond the immediate area. Loss of wildlife habitat, loss of species and biodiversity, and introduction of alien species are among the consequences of such changes.

December 11, 2003 - Ryan Schaffer   Road decommissioning has been defined as “the physical treatment of a roadbed to restore the integrity of associated hillslopes, channels, and flood plains and their related hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes and properties” (Switalski et al. in press). In practical terms, decommissioning is a process in which the Forest Service (FS) determines that a road is no longer needed or desirable and then physically removes it from the ground, the road database, and/or published maps. Road decommissioning should not be confused with road closure.

November 10, 2001 - Edgar A. van der Grift   The impacts of railroads on wildlife and wildlife habitats are not much different from those caused by roads. Loss of habitat, mortality due to collisions, barrier effect and reduction in habitat quality are the main impacts of habitat fragmentation by railroads. This may cause reduced population viability or threaten a speciesø survival. On a local scale, trains affect wildlife habitats through the introduction of exotic plant species (e.g. seeds), emission of toxic contaminants like heavy metals, or management (e.g. herbicides). Death between the tracks

March 3, 2006 - Bryan Faehner   FLREA Background: Attached as a rider to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill and signed into law on December 8, 2004, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) extends and expands the Recreational Fee-Demonstration Program (Fee-Demo) begun in 1997. The Fee-Demo program allowed public land management agencies to retain at least eighty-percent of collected revenue from existing and new recreation fees.

September 20, 2007 - Laurel Hagen    Editor’s Note: this article is meant only as a practical orientation for the layperson, and does not represent the official legal positions of Wildlands CPR or our affiliates. RS 2477 law and policy is very complex and constantly shifting, and it would be impossible to represent the full spectrum of issues here.