LARAMIE - Public meetings are scheduled this week in Cheyenne and Laramie regarding the Medicine Bow National Forest's plan to establish more than 100 miles of trails for off-road vehicles on the eastern half of the Snowy Range.

According to an environmental assessment of the plan, the chief of the Forest Service in 2004 recognized that unmanaged recreation, particularly off-road vehicle use, was one of the four major threats to the nation's forests and grasslands. The intent of this proposal, according to the Medicine Bow's Melissa Martin, is to concentrate ORV use in two areas - north of Mountain Home and west of Albany - while closing 235 miles of unauthorized roads and 39 miles of unauthorized trails.

Designating trail bike and four-wheeler trails will allow families, including children without driver's licenses, to travel together on their machines, so long as each vehicle has an all-terrain vehicle permit from the state, Martin said. Presently, without designated trails, drivers of ATVs on the Laramie District roads must have driver's licenses, she said.

The ATV trails will allow machines up to 50 inches in width to pass the gates, Martin said.

The Bighorn National Forest has already established 432 miles of motorized trails, according to John Hagengruber at the forest headquarters in Sheridan. He said the practice of driving ATVs on roads used by highway vehicles can be dangerous, even for experienced riders.

"We unfortunately had a fatality this year involving an unlicensed driver using an ATV on a forest road," he said. "Those vehicles have low-pressure tires and are not suited for high-speed turns.

Hagengruber said his forest expects that ORV use will grow by up to 6 percent yearly for the next several years, with users moving to heavier and more-powerful machines, some even pulling small camping trailers.

On the Medicine Bow, the hope is that by providing 68 miles of trail bike trails and 38 miles of ATV trails, people will stop driving off the designated roads and trails, a practice that leads to the creation of unauthorized routes accompanied often by environmental damage, Martin said. The proposal includes construction of 21 miles of new trail segments and a bridge to accommodate trail bikes over Douglas Creek below the dam at Rob Roy Reservoir.

Trailheads will be established two miles west of Albany and at the Mountain Home snowmobile parking area along State Highway 230.

The Laramie District also hopes the designations will stop ORVers from illegally using the newly created Medicine Bow Bicycle Trail, a "rails-to-trails" project that converted 23 miles of the old Laramie-to-Walden railroad to a bicycle and hiking trail.

Andy Thompson, co-owner of TNT Sports in Laramie, was pleased that ORV trails would be established. "We hope for more trails to ride so we can attract more people to our community and keep the economy growing," Thompson said.

Suzanne Lewis, conservation advocate at Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said that with more than 2,000 miles of Forest Service roads already existing, trails for ORVers should be created by converting existing roads, not constructing new trails.

"We don't oppose family recreation on the forest," Lewis said. "We just want to make sure the roadless areas are protected and that illegally created roads are closed."

Erik Molvar of Biodiversity said he was particularly concerned that a proposed bike trail near Pelton Creek west of Mountain Home. He said it would harm wildlife moving down from a roadless area just north of the trail.

The plan will be implemented in conjunction with the state's ATV program, Martin said, and some of the permit fees will be returned to the forest for maintenance. "We also hope to partner with ORV groups to get a lot of volunteer help with maintenance."

The environmental assessment also analyzes a "no-action" alternative, under which all unauthorized routes would be closed and no trails would be designated. There's also an alternative under which 21 additional miles of motorized-use trails would be designated.