Great Old Broads Shake a Finger at Off Road Drivers in US Southwest

Submitted by bat400 on Thursday, 16 August 2007 Page Views: 769

The Great Old Broads for Wilderness have one hand on their hips and the other extended, with a finger pointed at the group the women believe are crushing national treasures beneath their wheels.

The group of elderly women campaigning to protect wild places considers the ancestral ruins dispersed across the West to be gems. And their appeal, said Veronica Egan, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, is becoming their destruction.

Her organization traditionally has not fought for archeological sites, but it found its crusade against off-road vehicle use linked them to the ruins. The broads want to ensure that off-road vehicles such as jeeps and all-terrain vehicles stay to designated paths rather than protected areas.

The same off-road vehicle users who are drawn to the Four Corners to see the sites also end up destroying them when they illegally drive cross-country, she said. The uneducated easily can drive over ruins, obliterating history in seconds. Egan wants to see the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies that manage public lands do more to curtail off-road vehicle use. Not only should they do it to protect the land, they must do it to save the archeology, she said.

Scientists, however, are not the only ones who lose. The American Indians who claim ancestry to the area do, too. For them, it does not matter whether they live in proximity to the site should it be destroyed.

Off-road vehicle users who live within the region say its not them who are at fault but outsiders who have grown in numbers as the sport becomes more popular.

As with drinking and driving, the solution lies in reporting offenders, [Jess Carmon, founder of the Four Corners ATV Club] says. Photograph the damage they do and record the license plates, reporting them to law enforcement.

For more, see Farmington Daily News.

Note: More social pressure aimed at off-road drivers, along with calls to enforce current laws to protect ancient sites.

Contributor Bio for bat400: Located in the Lower Ohio River Valley, United States.

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