page_title: All-terrain vehicle
section_title: Terrain damage
hierarchical_section_title: All-terrain vehicle / Environmental issues / Terrain damage
caption_attribution_description: English: I, Myke Waddy took this photo, New Brunswick Canada.
context_page_description: An all-terrain vehicle, also known as a quad, three-wheeler, four-track, four-wheeler, or quadricycle, as defined by the American National Standards Institute is a vehicle that travels on low-pressure tires, with a seat that is straddled by the operator, along with handlebars for steering control. As the name implies, it is designed to handle a wider variety of terrain than most other vehicles. Although it is a street-legal vehicle in some countries, it is not street-legal within most states, territories, and provinces of Australia, the United States, or Canada.
  By the current ANSI definition, ATVs are intended for use by a single operator, although some companies have developed ATVs intended for use by the operator and one passenger. These ATVs are referred to as tandem ATVs.
  The rider sits on and operates these vehicles like a motorcycle, but the extra wheels give more stability at slower speeds. Although most are equipped with three or four wheels, six-wheel models exist for specialized applications. Multiple-user analogues with side-by-side seating are called utility terrain vehicles or side-by-sides to distinguish the classes of vehicle.
context_section_description: While the deep treads on some ATV tires are effective for navigating rocky, muddy and root covered terrain, these treads are also capable of digging channels that may drain bogs, increase sedimentation in streams at crossings and damage groomed snowmobile trails. Proper trail construction techniques can mitigate these effects.
  In some countries where fencing is not common, such as the US, Canada and Australia, some of ATV riders knowingly cross privately owned property in rural areas and travel over public/private properties, where their use is limited only to trails. Subsequently, environmentalists criticize ATV riding as a sport for excessive use in areas biologists consider to be sensitive, especially wetlands and sand dunes and in much of inland Australia.
  Because both scientific studies and U.S. National Forest Service personnel have identified unregulated Off-Road Vehicles (ORVs) as the source of major detrimental impacts on national forests, the U.S. Forest Service is currently engaged in the Travel Management Process, wherein individual forests are restricting all off-road motorized travel to approved trails and roads. This is in contrast to its previously allowed, unregulated cross-country travel across all national forest lands, except for specifically designated wilderness areas. Although ORVs had been identified 30 years ago as a threat to wild ecosystems by the Forest Service, only after pressure by an unlikely alliance of environmentalists, private landowners, hunters, ranchers, fishermen, quiet recreationists and forest rangers themselves (who identified ORVs as a "significant law enforcement problem" in national forests). has action been taken. The Travel Management Rule was initiated in 2004; completion is expected in 2010.
caption: ATVs in New Brunswick, Canada. Note that one of them is plated, an obligation in New Brunswick to legally cross and roll on roads for a maximum of a few hundred meters.
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