Do all-terrain vehicles actually cause that much damage to forests and streams?
When ATVs or off-road motorcycles go off from a trail, what’s the big deal?
Why do the wardens/rangers want to keep you out of the water?
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It’s not so much the ATV that does most damage as it is the way they are often operated. When any machinery is driven over the forest floor microorganisms such as nemototodes and the like are killed from the compaction in the fragile soils. Like anything else, the bad guys rough it out and the good guys die out. Believe it or not the damage is real and takes decades to recover. I do not know at what pressure this takes effect but I am sure a nice big ATV could do the job.
The worse damage though comes from the ATV tearing up the soil itself leading to advanced erosion. Driven in a slow and direct manner the damage would be limited to what I wrote above. But hey, who wants to piddle that KZ Brute Force 750 through a meadow when you can gun it across the river and up the hillside.
Why the rangers have a snit over the water? Extreamly fragile aquatic insect life maybe?