Off-Road Vehicles Survey
Do you ride an Off Road Vehicle (ORV) in the Yukon? The Yukon Conservation Society needs your help!
This is a voluntary survey. If you choose to participate in the survey, you do not have to answer all questions.
Click here to download the survey questions (it's in MSWord format) or visit the ORV survey on Survey Monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7WBP5GD. The survey should take about fifteen minutes.
Off-Road Vehicle Discussion
Get Informed and You Decide! When it comes to traveling by off-road motor vehicle, where you travel and how you use your machine are important considerations not only for safety, but also for protecting Yukon’s fish and wildlife habitat. Making the best choices for traveling requires knowledge and experience. For more information on this or other hikes, or ORV questions, call 668-5678 or ycswild@ycs.yk.ca.
This ATV trail was created recently to get around a gate put in place to stop motorized use of a trail.
Get Informed and You Decide!
When it comes to traveling by off-road motor vehicle, where you travel and how you use your machine are important considerations not only for safety, but also for protecting Yukon’s fish and wildlife habitat. Making the best choices for traveling requires knowledge and experience.
Some trails, such as this one near Hamilton Blvd, are better suited for higher levels of user traffic. Popular trails that avoid sensitive wetlands may be considered for designation by the city as motorized “out and away” trails that allow ORV users to get away from the local green space and into the larger hinterland.
For more information on this or other hikes, or ORV questions, call 668-5678 or e-mail ycswild@ycs.yk.ca.
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Deep ruts in fragile marshland near the Hamilton Blvd Extension underpass. Damage was first caused by construction work and then aggravated in the past year by heavy ATV use.
Off-Road Vehicles Information
YCS believes that education paired with infrastructure, regulation and enforcement will reduce the environmental impacts of Off-Road Vehicles.
YCS has received funding from the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Trust to conduct a project on Off Road Vehicle (ORV) use in the Yukon. ORVs play an important role in recreation, hunting, trapping, outfitting, resource industry and tourism activities; however, as the use of ORVs in the Yukon increases, so will associated safety and environmental issues. Much work has already been done in the Yukon to gather people’s opinions on the safety and environmental issues surrounding ORV use. YCS will build on this work in three ways:
- Research and collect information on ecologically sensitive areas in the Yukon.
- Develop public educational material for all ages that describes the impacts of different ORVs on the environment and wildlife and how to minimize these impacts.
- Bring interested stakeholders together on a Working Group in order to share information and to reach a consensus on additional environmental protection recommendations to be made to the Yukon government.
Let us know what you think! If you have an opinion you would like heard, or photos and input for our educational materials, please contact the ORV Project Coordinator, Christina Macdonald at ycswild@ycs.yk.ca.
Get informed! Check out these links for information on the environmental impacts of ORVs in the Yukon and how to minimize these effects through responsible and safe ORV use.
- A 2003 Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board report that looks at the effects of roads and trails on wildlife.
- The Yukon government’s website on All Terrain Vehicles and the Environment
- YCS endorses the Tread Lightly® principles as guidelines for responsible ORV use.
Working Group Members’ Websites:
- Trails Only Yukon (TOYA)
- The Yukon Off-Road Riders Association (YORRA)
- Klondike Snowmobile Association (KSA)
- Wilderness Tourism Association of the Yukon (WTAY)
- Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board (YFWMB)
- Yukon Fish and Game Association (YFGA)
The culvert here regularly overflows and makes this area sensitive to motorized and non-motorized traffic.
Yukon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan
After several months of consultations, the recommended Yukon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan has been released. YCS and others succeeded in having the deadline for input extended until Sept. 30th to ensure that Yukon people have a chance to comment.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE NEEDED BECAUSE:
- During the consultations to date there has been a strong lobby to allow wolf kill programs in order to maintain or increase hunting opportunities by humans for ungulates like moose and caribou. Some communities feel that Whitehorse hunters are competing with local people for game animals. Rather than controlling wolves, hunting within a certain range of communities could be limited to local people.
- Big game outfitters are also pushing for wolf control to increase ungulate populations.
- Although the plan Principles talk about the value of Yukon wolves as part of intact ecosystems, the Implementation Measures are almost all about how to control wolf populations.
- There are no criteria in the Recommended Wolf Plan about what steps would be necessary before a wolf control program would be implemented. In the 1992 Wolf Conservation and Management Plan wolf control programs were only allowed if a local ungulate population was in serious trouble, and two years of research had been done that showed that wolves were the cause of the decline. Criteria like this are needed in the new plan.
- The Recommended Wolf Plan does not support aerial wolf kill programs – but it does allow the Minister to implement them in the case of ‘emergency’. ‘Emergency’ is not defined.
- YCS does support the Recommended Wolf Plan’s proposal that any wolf control programs should be ‘low-tech’ – using trapping and non-aerial hunting.
- YCS does not support the recommendation to ‘be flexible’ about the current 48 hour time limit between spotting a wolf from the air, and shooting it on the ground.
As stated in Bob Hayes’ new book Wolves of the Yukon, wolf control programs do not succeed in increasing ungulate populations in the long term unless the wolf kill program is continued year after year. Do we Yukoners support on-going wolf control programs in order to increase ungulate hunting success by humans? Do we want to live in managed ecosystems or are we willing to live within the biological limits of natural ecosystems?
The Recommended Plan can be viewed at http://www.env.gov.yk.ca/wildlifebiodiversity/documents/rec_ywcmp.pdf
For more information about the Wolf management Plan, see http://www.yukonwolfplan.ca/going/
YCS has serious concerns about the Recommended new Wolf Conservation and management Plan. Here are our comments and the related media release that was issued on Aug 30, 2011.
Submit comments to:
Michelle Sicotte, Fish & Wildlife Planner Environment Yukon P.O. Box 2703 (V-5R) Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 2C6 |
Graham Van Tighem, Executive Director Yukon Fish & Wildlife Management Board P. O. Box 31104 Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 5P7 |
