In today’s NY Times: A surge of off-road vehicles is roaring across the West’s public lands. Since coming west for graduate school, I’ve seen a lot of this firsthand. There’s not much of the Mojave Desert (outside of national parks) that isn’t crosshatched with ORV tracks, and it’s shockingly hard to get away from the roar of gasoline engines in the mountains of Idaho. It’s nice to know, as the Times article points out, that there are a few off-roaders trying to reshape the pastime into something more responsible – but they’ve got a lot of work to do.