COOKED: Shooting Trash Epidemic on Public Land
Shooting Trash Epidemic on Public Land
Target shooting debris left behind on public lands is a major problem across the United States for the two largest federal land stewards: the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Together they manage 449 million acres of public land.
According to Northwest Colorado BLM Public Affairs Specialist Dave Boyd: “Virtually all of [BLM land] is open to target shooting.”
Washington office USFS Shooting Liaison Jamie Schwartz says shooting on National Forest Service land has been a tradition “since inception of the Forest Service Reserves.”
Public land recreationists include target shooters, Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) users, hikers, dog walkers, runners, and mountain bikers.
The impact of human use, coupled with illegal dumping, generates trash left behind in quantities Washington Office BLM Public Affairs Specialist Tom Gorey identifies as: “[T]he most common type of environmental crime on lands managed by the Bureau.”
“Illegal dumping on America’s public lands is a historical problem,” Gorey says. “One that poses increasingly significant public heath, environmental, and economic challenges.”
Gorey adds it is a problem shared by local, state, and federal land managers.
Federal land managers have Law Enforcement Rules specific to debris and target shooting.
The BLM states that shooting is allowed as long as it: “Does not facilitate and create a condition of littering, refuse accumulation and abandoned personal property. The shooting of any glass bottle, container, or material that would break into small pieces and create a hazard or litter is prohibited. All spent shells or brass are considered litter and must be removed by the shooter.”
USFS laws prohibit: “Possessing or leaving refuse, debris, or litter in any exposed or unsanitary condition.”
Shooters are not the only offenders. People who illegally dump their household trash—and partiers who leave a trail of beer cans behind—add to the debris.
In 2008, Responsible Management conducted a study for Federal land managers and the Shooting Sports Roundtable that includes private groups, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA). Responsible Management gathered information through interviews and focus groups with 1,026 sport shooting participants.
The majority of participants in two out the five featured states—Colorado and Virginia—agreed trash from shooting activities is “The major problem, far exceeding other problems.”
California, Arizona, and Oregon study participants widely agreed that both illegal dumping, along with litter and trash left behind by shooters, are the “major problems witnessed or experienced.”
Participants talked about their frustration with their shooting peers during one of the Responsive Management focus group discussions.
“Several participants remarked that it was unfortunate that litter and environmental damage,” noted the survey report, “happened to be a product of ‘people holding guns.’”
What people holding guns do with the trash constitutes what the BLM, the USFS, and the non-profit group Tread Lightly! label “trigger trash.”
Trigger Trash is what shooters use as targets and leave behind—mannequins, refrigerators, coolers, stuffed animals, propane tanks, paint, aerosol cans, No Shooting signs—along with the spent ammunition litter.
National Rifle Association (NRA) Director of Conservation, Wildlife and Natural Resources Susan Reece believes shooting debris left behind is the responsibility of the shooter.
“The problem is shooters pick up the [debris/trash] and use it as targets,” Reece says. “Once they do that they own it.”
USFS Shooting Liaison Schwartz agrees with Reece: “Once a bullet hole is in it, it’s their trash.”
One example of the national trigger trash problem is two miles northwest of Rifle, Colorado within site of the Roan Plateau at Hubbard Mesa.
Hubbard Mesa is an area of public land managed by the government under the BLM. For over ten years, Hi Country 4 Wheelers OHV club has led the cleanup, collaborating with White River Trail Runners, the BLM, and concerned residents who live near the area. Missing from the volunteer effort are the shooters who create the problem and the local environmental groups—a situation that does not go unnoticed by cleanup participants.
Volunteer leader Greg Noss said in 2011 they removed ten tons of debris of which “probably half” was trigger trash.
Since then the price of scrap metal has skyrocketed. At the 2013 clean-up they saw fewer large metal items like the shot-up school bus and automobiles they had found in the past. Still, most of the volunteers said trigger trash was the biggest problem.
Recreational shooter and Hi Country 4-Wheelers president Jenny Isenhart describes the scene: “Plywood, bottles, cans, shotgun shells, TVs…anything they can find at their house—obliterated everywhere.”
“The biggest issue,” Isenhart says, “is shooting trash.”
White River Trail Runners Trail Administrator Dan Alvis is another local recreationist who is cleaning up after shooters: “There’s always days where they must bring a pick-up load and shoot it up.”
In Isenhart’s words, the volunteers “feel passionately” about Hubbard Mesa.
They are motivated to clean up after irresponsible users. Abused public lands are one of the reasons for closures.
Brian Dorr, a shooter and member of both OHV groups, sums up the problem for land managers and the consequences.
“BLM and the government can’t control it,” Dorr says. “They just shut it.”
So whose responsibility is it to keep America clean?
The NRA believes the care of those 449 million public acres is up to federal agencies.
“They are the ones on the ground interacting with the recreationists,” says the NRA’s Reece. “It is up to the land managers to manage the land.”
Both the BLM and the USFS note that they do not have staff or money to manage the clean-ups. Both the BLM and the USFS believe in community outreach through public education and have invested in campaigns that “work to curb” the problem. And both the BLM and the USFS, along with the NRA, recognize Tread Lightly! as a valuable partner in community education.
USFS Shooting Liaison Schwartz is the program manager for an outdoor ethics initiative through Leave No Trace and Tread Lightly!. Schwartz brought the results of the Responsible Management study to Tread Lightly!, who came up with the messaging campaign on signage: Respected Access is Open Access.
The effects of the campaign are in the early stages of measurement, with Tread Lightly! reporting good results to the USFS in a North Carolina shooting range pilot effort.
The virtual campaign has yet to saturate either NRA or USFS websites, while the BLM posts a copy of the Respected Access is Open Access poster on their shooting information page. As for the hard copy signs posted on public lands, the question is: Are they effective education or are they destined to become trigger trash?
Evidence and opinion from public land field officers and volunteers aim at the latter.
“Signs don’t do any good,” says Hubbard Mesa volunteer Dave Hillbrand. “All they are is targets.”
Whether trigger trash is a sign or spent ammunition, the volunteers always leave the area in better shape. Although even with skid-steer loaders, trailers, buckets, and rakes there is too much to pick up. Trigger trash is embedded in the earth and tangled in the brush.
Four of the forty volunteers, including Chris Overacker and Gary Miller, are at an undesignated shooting site just off the dirt road, picking up debris. Each year Overacker, an OHV recreationist, NRA member, and longtime clean-up volunteer, concentrates his efforts on the shells, last year filling 6-7 seven garbage bags.
“You can’t pick up all the spent ammo,” Overacker says. “You’d be on your hands and knees for days.”
Miller, who takes several trips up and down the littered landscape, bringing back armloads of trigger trash gives the volunteers a challenge.
“If you can find a can or a bottle without a bullet hole,” Miller says, “I’ll give you a buck.”
“You can’t—impossible,” answers Chris Overacker.
