Where can one go to see needle-toothed alligators, ant beds 25 feet in diameter and century-old magnolia trees?
Bill Eaton, 52, and his friends aren't sure, so they use all-terrain vehicles to explore natural areas, otherwise inpassable by human, in hopes of finding such sights.
"Today, with most of us getting up in age, the way to get up there to see things is not by walking," Eaton said.
Eaton and about 75 other all-terrain vehicle enthusiasts converged Saturday at the Capitol, ATVs in tow, to protest a motor vehicle ban in Texas riverbeds. The ban, enacted by the Legislature in January, prohibits trucks, boats, RVs and ATVs from driving in publicly owned riverbeds.
Eaton said this doesn't leave enough options for ATV riders. He compared the 18 legal sites for ATVs in Texas to the almost 290 ATV parks in California, the only state that beats Texas in ATV sales.
"If you want to ride around here and do it legally, you have to go out of state," Eaton said.
Texas Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, wrote the bill in 2003 after land-owning constituents complained about people trampling their fences to get to rivers, said spokesman Gabe Valenzuela.
Zaffirini based the bill on scientific studies that argue off-road vehicles are environmentally harmful, he said.
"Scientific evidence shows off-road vehicles have had a negative impact on fish and wildlife in rivers," said Tom Harvey, spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "Common sense shows vehicles driven down riverbanks is not an environmentally sensitive thing to do."
But Eaton said most ATV riders take care of the environment.
"We don't want to tear up anything. We want it to be pristine; we want to be able to go back in a year and see this," Eaton said.
Under the bill, Texas Parks and Wildlife can approve local riverbed access plans by counties, cities and nonprofit groups and give federal grants to build them. The department said the money is available, but groups are not taking advantage of it.
Eaton said the message he gets from Texas Parks and Wildlife is that Texas doesn't want ATVs at all. Instead, the state wants to build walking trails that won't allow the close contact with nature that ATVs afford, he said.
"We want them to repeal SB 155, get some ATV trails in place, and then they can do what they want. The idea is to give us some place to ride," Eaton said. "At the rate they're going, by the time they get it done, I will have been dead and buried 20 years."
Texas Parks and Wildlife has approved only one such plan. It allows certain motor vehicles, but not ATVs, to traverse the Llano River in Mason County.
Cameron Chin, vice president of Longhorn Offroad, said repealing the bill would be a mistake, because the state would stop looking to improve off-roading conditions. The group chose not to attend Saturday's protest.
"If we keep protesting, they're going to just take away the money," he said.
Chin, a visual arts studies senior, who spoke at the Capitol in 2003 when the bill was in discussion, said the best thing for the state to do is build more ATV parks.
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