Bighorn Backcountry Report: OHV use
May 9, 2024
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since the 1970s, when the Bighorn Backcountry (also known as the Bighorn Wildland) was identified as a provincially significant wilderness area, management priorities have focused on watershed protection, wildlife habitat conservation, and dispersed non-motorized recreation activities. Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) has actively supported these priorities and, for nearly 50 years, has sought protected area designation for the Bighorn area.
In 2002, through the Bighorn Backcountry Access Management Plan (AMP), the then-Alberta Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) formally permitted motorized recreation of Off-Highway Vehicles (OHVs) in areas where these activities were previously not allowed.
Research in other areas suggests that unregulated use of an area by OHVs over the long term negatively affects water quality, vegetation, historical trails, and wildlife. Such activities may also drive away many non-motorized recreationists from the same trails.
In this document we evaluate management success in the Bighorn Backcountry seventeen years after the implementation of the AMP. “Success” here is defined by how well current management guidelines and enforcement of those guidelines protect “sensitive resources such as fish and wildlife habitats, vegetation, soils and watersheds” (SRD 2002; 10) from serious damage caused by OHV use.
The Government of Alberta (GoA) divides the Bighorn Backcountry into six Public Land Use Zones (PLUZs). Starting in 2004, AWA embarked on a monitoring study focusing on the 76 km network of trails designated for motorized and non-motorized use in the Upper Clearwater/Ram PLUZ (Figure 1) where we evaluated management success in the context of:
1. The impacts of OHVs on and around trails; and,
2. The illegal use of trails by OHVs.
This study encompassed two components:
1. A 13-year observational survey where the trails were walked, and records made of impacts on the landscape from OHV use; and
2. A 15-year traffic count where vehicle counters embedded next to the trails recorded levels of OHV traffic, both when trails were open and when closed to OHV use.
