So now to Atv's and other "off-road vehicles". Being an outdoorsman in both work and life, I spend over two thousand hours in the field a year. Noone better dare tell me that I am seeing only the negative. I have seen fishing areas destroyed, wildlife habitat converted into mudpits, entire hills turned into erosion channels, public property wrecked, all done by these benignly named technological freaks. I have yet to see any good. No broken homes have been reconciled, food production isn't up, no diseases have been cured and not a single orphan has been housed due to these devices. In fact, precious liquid hydrocarbons, metals and plastics, all finite resources, are instead squandered away into something that does nothing but destroy the landscape. A simple test is perhaps needed. If someone can show me any place or time where habitat has been improved, a spawning ground made better or more ruffed grouse choose to live in symbiosis with atv use rather than a 1000 acre aspen forest, perhaps I might alter my opinion. I doubt anyone will come up with an example. What Atv's are about is adrenaline. One argument often used is that recreational vehicle drivers enjoy the outdoors also. They don't. They enjoy going through the outdoors at speed on a petro-combustion vehicle. When one is on top of an operating engine, with helmet, glove and goggles, and driving said vehicle, it is quite difficult to discern the sights, sounds and lives of nature, except for those creatures running away from you. When one looks, listens, and enjoys nature, they usually use their senses, i.e. eyes, ears and perhaps the nose. This is slightly more effective than moving at 40 mph on a machine producing upwards of 70 decibels, head encased in a helmet.

I will avoid other pro- atv arguments as they are empty at best, and great examples of a drunk's reasoning at worst.

The problem with atv's is their very nature. Easy to operate and able to go just about anywhere, any slack-jawed yokel,over-amped teenager or beer swilling troglodyte can hop on and tear up the world. It is like handing a group of sixteen year old boys a fifty caliber machine gun and saying " don't hurt anyone now". Just because something is fun doesn't mean people should be allowed to do it.

What truly irks me to no end is that every time I buy gas in Minnesota, part of the taxes I pay goes not improving roads or bridges, remediating the habitat lost to their construction, assisting in transporting people to work or products to market, but to be handed over to local atv clubs to pay for their personal playgrounds. Often with little or no oversight. Their lobbying power, combined with that of certain legislators and two in-state manufacturers, has bought them taxpayer cash and land use with no essential limit.

Now we have another proposal.

I apologize to the rest of the state for having the same hometown as its proponent. Senator Tom Bakk, Cook-DFL, has introduced legislation to increase the percentage of tax revenue going subsidizing this insanity. It is most likely aimed to help the tourist industry in the north, for it really helps none except resort, gas station, and restaraunt and bar owners, whilst annoying everyone else and destroying nature. We need to simply call this what it is: welfare for the few who benefit from this. It is nothing more.

At this time, with much of our infrastructure underfunded for decades, with continued sprawl, with no access to health care for much of the population, that this is even brought to the floor is frightening. This is what a legislator does? Hand out more cash to an already questionable enterprise? ( See the various articles on lack of oversight regarding trail clubs available at the Minnesotans for Resonsible Recreation website).

It seems our only hope is that gasoline be pushed to such prices it becomes a productonly for useful work. Maybe this only will stop this latest attack on our resources, both land and the public dollar.