Forest Service Takes To The Air, Catching Wilderness Scofflaws

From the Tahoe Tribune comes a story of airborne law enforcement. The law in question: the designation of large tracts of land in the Western US as "wilderness areas;" and the lawbreakers: snowmobilers, to whom the law applies just as much as to motorcyclists and off-road truck drivers. Indeed, it even applies to the Forest Service itself: "We're not allowed to ride snowmobiles into wilderness areas, either," Anthony Botello, resource management officer at El Dorado National Forest, told the Trib.

So how do they enforce the law, if they can't use the tool that the violators are using? "[W]e do pretty regularly put a plane up. We look (for tracks) at boundaries but sometimes they are hard to see." The plane the Forest Service uses has a GPS navigation system to keep track of the boundaries of all the wildernesses that the National Forest manages: Mokelumne Wilderness, Desolation Wilderness, Meiss Meadows, Freel Peak and Loon Lake. All motor vehicles are strictly prohibited.

The two snowmobilers were ticketed on Deadwood Peak by ground-based (and presumably unmotorized) Forest Rangers who were guided to an intercept position by the plane. The Sacramento men now have a date with court; they could be fined or even jailed for up to six months.

FMI: www.fs.fed.us