<p>There once was a barrier at the entrance to this corner of the Mountaintown Roadless Area, a red-and-white metal fence that blocked all-terrain vehicles from accessing the rugged trail beyond.</p><p>It's been down for years now, and the terrain behind it has been turned into a playground for ATV riders. A sharp dip meant to deter drivers is muddy and flattened, and large stretches of the path are worn by tire tracks, with a grassy strip down the middle that looks a lot like a forest median.</p><p>There's even a faint splotch of paint on a tree to mark the entrance to the illegal trails.</p><p>"In one section, they were running the trail so much, hikers were following the ATV trail rather than the official trail," said George Owen, who oversaw the hiking trail's construction in the 1980s. "They want to run anywhere they want."</p><p>Renegade ATV trails are regarded as one of the biggest threats to pristine wildlife by foresters, but many struggle with how to actually put an end to the abuses.</p><p>In Mountaintown, a patch of forest in northwest Georgia, the traditional defenses against ATVs haven't worked.</p><p>Tank traps, the bumpy dips meant to deter drivers, have been turned to playpens. Strategically placed branches or timber has been shorn by machete-wielding drivers. Gates and barriers have been quickly destroyed. And rangers complain there's too few patrolling officers to be much of a deterrent.</p><p>"We've got eight officers _ that's almost a million acres we're covering," sighed Stewart Delugach, the patrol captain of the sprawling Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, which includes Mountaintown. "There's no way they can be everywhere at once."</p><p>Some environmentalists are encouraging more drastic steps.</p><p>A report released last month by Wildlands CPR, a Montana-based group that aims to stop off-road vehicle abuse, encourages stiffer patrols, tougher penalties and electronic monitoring to deter ATV drivers. It also suggests encouraging more self-policing by closing the legal off-road areas hit by repeat offenders.</p><p>"Everyone has a right to access our public lands, but no one has the right to abuse these lands or ruin the experience of others enjoying America's great outdoors," said Jason Kiely, one of the group's leaders.</p><p>ATVs and other off-road vehicles had almost unfettered access to federal lands until 1972, when President Nixon issued an executive order that required agency heads to develop regulations. President Carter expanded it five years later to allow agencies to ban ATVs and other off-road vehicles on trails if they're damaging the forests.</p><p>Since then, illegal trails have exploded. Rangers now say that thousands of miles of trails now crisscross federal forestland. Many are disused logging trails, but in some cases ATV drivers armed with axes, machetes and other tools carve out their own paths.</p><p>The U.S. Forest Service has tried to sate the demand by setting aside vast tracts of land for ATV use, but they're often seeing those areas turned into a hub for more illegal trails.</p><p>The agency now lists this type of "unmanaged recreation" as one of the greatest threats to the federal forests. They say the renegade drivers disrupt wildlife, expose terrain to invasive species, and endanger hikers and others who use the trails legally.</p><p>"If the general public decides they're going to ride their ATVs across the forest, there's nothing anyone can do about it," said Mitch Cohen, a spokesman with the Forest Service.</p><p>"If the people don't see the damage they're causing and don't value they're national resources enough, there's no amount of law enforcement we can put out there to stop it."</p><p>In Georgia, the foresters and environmentalists trying to stop ATV drivers are sort of like forensic scientists, collecting clues to decipher as they navigate trails.</p><p>"That was an ax," said volunteer David Govus, pointing at a thick, sliced tree limb that once divided the path.</p><p>"Tenacious," muttered Wayne Jenkins, the director of Georgia ForestWatch.</p><p>Some of the signs aren't so subtle. A few miles down the road, an ATV driver had forged a sidespur and marked it with white paint. Later, after hearing the faint hum of a vehicle in the distance, Govus leaned over a muddy patch, snapped off a twig and dipped it into the middle of a stretch of ATV tracks.</p><p>"It's pretty fresh," he said. "Maybe we'll run up on them."</p><p>It was wishful thinking. On foot, the environmentalists didn't stand a chance.</p><p>"You're always going to have renegades," said Jenkins, exasperated. "You hope it's not going to become a culture. We can't all do whatever the hell we want, when we want."</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2def38c)</p>
