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Taken from the Sierra Club Cape Cod website.
Off-Road Vehicles
Usage of Off-Road Vehicles (ORVs) in forests and protected wildlands, such as the Cape Cod National Seashore, is a potentially damaging activity, due not only to physical damage to vegetation caused by vehicles, but also to concerns of exhaust and noise pollution. The Cape Cod Group recently researched and wrote the basis of the Massachusetts Sierra Club response to the MA DCR Draft proposal concerning Criteria for ORV road building in public lands. We determined that ORV trails and areas on public lands should be closed to all vehicles, unless their use is deemed appropriate after complete financial, safety, and environmental analysis and review.
Neither the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) nor user groups have successfully enforced existing rules, even when trails have been closed. Because existing problems have not been fixed, no new ORV trails should be contemplated. In the greater Cape Cod Area, the DCR closed Myles Standish State Forest in Plymouth to ORV use in 2005 due to concerns of misuse and environmental damage.
The Cape Cod group hopes that more of such actions will be taken in order to protect fragile ecosystems from damage. We continue to press the National Park Service to honor their pledge to periodically assess ORV damage with impartial, peer-reviewed scientific studies.
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