Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

The Sheridan Papers Bad-mouthing ORVs in print canbe profitable especially if government foots the bill . By Lane Campbell In a $500 ,000,000,000 budget , it's less than a drop in the proverbial bucket ; you should know that $6,500 of the taxpayer's money has been spent for an antiORV "editori al," thinkly disguised as a government re port. The rep ort in question (q uestionable report ?) is titled Off R oad Vehicles on Public Land, and was wr itten b y one Da vid Sh erid a n under contrac t for the Council on Environment a l Q.ualit y. (Yes, that's the sam e group whose leaky d irectives st irred the furo r over Ca rter's e nvi ron m e nt a l message .) Drafted in August , 1978 , the Sheridan report m ay never see print in its origi na l form . It is so blatantly on esid ed th a t e nvi ro n ment alists and gove rnment land managers a like are lea n ing on CEQ. to su pp ress it , lest it do irrepara ble harm to the preservation ist ca use. The cou nci l has sent it back to the au th or fo r a major edit , according to Motorcycle Industry Council's Executive Report. Publica tion could b e d el a ye d unt il after -Ch ristrn as. The Bureau of La nd Management , in a com ment letter to CEQ.. too k page-by-page ex ceptio n to 16 d efici e ncies, ranging from logical inconsistency to omission of data to outrig ht misrepresenta tion . The U .S . Forest Service , in its com m ent letter . took Sheridan to task for m isleading the re ade r b y infe rence, and fo r failu re to not e extensive USFS no ise resea rch undertaken a t San Dimas. For opene rs, the report begi ns with the margi n all y me mora ble lines: " It began , oddly enough, in bom b ' sh a t te red section of Hama m atsu , Japan , in 1947 . . ." Yes, in th e Gospel according to Sherida n , Soichiro Hon d a . " .... a 4 1·year·old mechanic - and college dropout ," started it a ll. Would you believe that in 1960, a 50cc Honda "d rea m" machine, unlike its heavier Brit ish , Ameri can and Ge rman counterparts, was light and d u rable enough to take over ro ugh terrai n? It's in the book . All those ISDT Zund a p p s, En fi el d ll n d ia ns. BSA Go ld Stars - not to mention hordes of vintage desert sleds - th ey rnu sta ' been figm en ts of sornebody's imagina tio n. Even the BLM knew of motorcycle ra ces in th e California dese rt p rior to 19 10. Sh erid an d idn't. T he ma n's genera l ignorance of moto rized vehicles, particu lar ly m o to rcycl es, wou ld be excusab le had he not bee n pa id a la rge sum of money to become know ledgea ble . And to add insu lt to he spells m o to cross in jury. "motorcrossl" H e r e 's another . Accordi ng t o Sherid a n, th e average accelera ting aut o m akes 84 dbA a t 50 fee t. Tha t's interestin g, in light of the fa ct that th e Environment al Pro tec t ion Ag ency a proposes to limit the accelerating motorcycle to 80 dbA Or less at that distance . Wonder if EPA has had a chan ce to comment? Enough lint-picking. Let's go for th e hard- core stuff. Sheridan's major poin ts are as follows : ORV riding is consump ti ve , d estru ct ive and in consid era te; whi le hi king arid cr ossco untry skiing . are contemplative , ap p reciative and aesthetic in na ture . Off-road vehicles destroy la nd . ORVs im p air eve ryo ne else 's na ture "experience," Fed eral land managers h ave failed to cont rol t he ORV mena ce ; th erefore they should no w get to ugh. In ch a p ter afte r chapter , po int by point , th e report attempts to system atically discredit QRV users as a group . It 's long been customary to po rtray d irt bikers as mosl,1y blue collar Middle Am erican people . (In fact , the motorcycle industry bases most of its market forecasts on this premise.) Not so, says the Sheridan report. The author cites a survey taken in Idaho that show s ORV people to be part of th e affluent society, al though less educated than the lordly hiker (who is more likely to be poor) . In o ther words , Sheridan is trying ' desperately to politically isolate the ORVer; to transfer the same stigma of el iti sm that has been applied to environmentalists , Of course, as BLM and USFS ha ve already pointed ou t , Sheridan is a bit - er - selective in the data he chooses to back his arguments. For insta nce he chose to ignore a recent survey from Wash ington State that shows bik ers less likely to believe in radical politica l change than non-riders (T he 1978 Washington Offroad Recreation Poll ), or a n ea rlier study from Los Padres Nat'l . Forest that shows bikers to be a diversified cross-section of Americana . A .E. Kier Nash, Gary N icholes and other researchers have said that off-road .bikers are la rgely appreciative of th e outdoors; and th a t th ey use their bikes as ' transportation in pursuit of many non -riding activities. According to th e Sheridan report, however, we are bothersome, consumptive, des tructive , va n dals, lawl ess and "in com p a tib le with th e quality of ou td oor experience b ein g so ug h t b y a major ity of Americans. " . Even if we wer e good gu ys, he co nt in ues, we wou ld ~ t i ll be unwelcome. "St. Fra ncis of Assisi himself' on a n O RV co uld not hel p b ut di mi nish t he " rec reational ex perience " of non -O'R'Ve rs , says Sheridan . As Sheridan pain ts his pic tures of havoc in the open spaces, there is much that lon g-tim e readers of Cycle News wo uld recognize . (He even managed to dredge up the blunt -nosed leopard lizard again .) There are pages about Do ve Springs , Ba ll ing e r Can yon, Hollister H ills , H u n g ry Valley , Chabot, the Pa noche Hills all "d isaster sites" in envi ronmentalist lexicon. The Pha nt om Duck even rated a page and a ha lf. T h is u nwelcom e attention may partly explain why this year BLM enforcers ha ve decided to notice the Du ck and his unor ga nized Ba rstow-to-Vegas Trail Rid e . In example after exa m p le, Sheridan tries to bu ild a case . ORVs alter the la n d, its vegetation , its wildl ife ; th erefore ORVs a re des t roying it. A mot or cycle a ffects land at a rate of one acre for every mil e of tr avel ; so, by Sherida n's reason ing, we've destroyed over a mill ion acres of Cali forn ia desert. According to one study q uoted in the report , we ca n't even rid e in desert washes without doing d am age . Wh e r e , then. does Sh e r id a n recommend we ride? In a lengthy d iscu ssion of policy (i n wh ich the a ut hor chastises Federal agencies for leaving so much land open) , Sheridan recommends that we be confined to "sacrifice areas" - places so overridden that the environmentalists have already written them off - and charged for the privilege . The author proposes ORVers and /Or their equipment be federally ,taxed , either by IRS Or by the federa l landmanagement agencies. The money would be.used for outright purchase of _ ORV land , shared-development wit h sta te s, d evelopment of tra il -h ead fac ilities, and , lastly, "reha bilita tion" of ORV-d a m aged land . That last one bears som e ela bora tion, which the author happily vol unteered to do . You see , to Sheridan, rehabilitation means the sam e thing for ORVs as strip mines restoration of the land to its prior condition, and hang the cost. (Oh , yeah , Sheridan also said we could ride in abandoned strip mines.) The cost? Sheridan estimates it at $2 ,000 to $6 .000 an acre, Let that sink in a minute. Yeah, even in California , there are acreages of fallow land available for $500 to $1500 an acre, Little known fact : the BLM will sell land for $2 an acre to any recognized loca l government agen!)' for recreational development. Either wa y, at these prices, it would be cheaper for ORVers to buy land outright and do with it as they please rather than submit to a taxation/ rehabilitation . scheme such as Sheridan proposes. Yet propose it he will , even if all the other blatantly negative aspects of his report are edited out. Sheridan's environmenta l-science cronies love the report , since it calls for enough sophisticated study to keep them all in federally-funded jobs, And even the federal agencies who criticized the bult of the report called the policy recommendations "interesting ." It fits a pattern. First we are bombarded with a blitz of carefullyselected data to convin ce us that we are not welcome or wanted anywhere we ride . We're accused of becoming a powerful and vociferous pressu re group that has "co-op ted" government agencies (when in fact nearly every agency is heavily infiltrated with preservationist staffers) and that the majori ty of Americans are against us . Then we're told that, as a peace offering of sorts (after all , there are several million of us) , we can use "sacrifice areas " to ride in , if we'll foo t the b ill. But th e proposal is offered underground rules t ha t a llow a ny O Rv -tax re fund ~hus generated to be easily gutted , sip ho ning off m oney un t il t he re's none left for site acquisi tio n . Remember? T hey tried that in California , but we ca ught them at it just in time. For this r epo rt and its accompanyi ng proposals , Sh e rid a n was paid $6,500 out of a CEQ. contract with a $ 10 ,000 pot limit. This much was learned by t he AMA 's Government Relations Dep t. through the provisio ns of t he Fr e e d om of Informa tion Act. You see , that's wh at David Sherida n does for a living. He's' a co ntract wri ter who makes a business out of writing gove rnment reports , He also mana ges to milk the poss ibl e spin off pre tty well. H e sold Sm ithsonian Magazine an article (pu blished in th e September issue) wh ich made the same points a nd quot ed m a ny of the same sources as .th e CEQ. rep ort. O nl y th e style of delivery was cha nged to protect the co nt ract. In this su pposedl y free socie ty, we have discovered a worl d of op po rtu nity for pett y de magogues. Through th e m ir acl e of government cont rac ti ng , it is no w possible to campaign to lim it othe rs' fr eed o m n ot just for ideo logy's sake - but for profi t. 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