Every year, public land used by off road vehicles is being closed off and less and less public land is available to those responsible offroaders who
wish to explore freely without the threat of legal problems.
The majority of offroaders are responsible people who care about the land they use, leaving it better than they found it, cleaning up messes of
others, and genuinely care about saving the land for people to use in all ways for generations.
We care about the land just as much as the "environmentalist" trying to keep us out. They use negative stereotypes saying we destroy the land, trash
it, and kill life. While unfortunately this only happens from a small percentage of offroaders, the ones who care about the land are fighting an
uphill fight to keep it open.
One of the biggest supports in the fight to keep public land free is
Tread Lightly.
But on Sunday, August 19th, Discovery Channel premiered a new offroading show called
One
Car Too Far and to paraphrase a comment on the Discovery Facebook page, "It has set Tread Lightly back 10 years".
Their Facebook page and on other ORV message boards are filled with comments like these.
In the show, two men in a Jeep blatantly do the opposite of what responsible offroading means. They fly through the woods, running over trees, plowing
through plant life, and making every bad stereotype about offroading come to life in the hour show.
Why would the Discovery Channel want to promote such bad behavior? Especially in the midst of this war going on to protect the very sport they are
doing show on? I can’t see why people at Discovery would want to show people destroying land and not acting responsible. Especially on a channel
dedicated to the earth and land.
Could it just be as simple as they are trying to get ratings by showing "cool offroading stuff?"
Or could it be that they want to give ammo to the environmentalists who are trying to outlaw offroading?
They can just point to the show and say "Look, that’s what offroaders do to our land" and there's little that can be done. Plus the fact that now
new people joining the sport will act like them, giving even more fuel to the opposing side.
Could this be a plan on the part of Discovery to shut down offroading? Their agenda all along? If they listen to the bad stereotypes like the ones
that they promoted on their show, they don't know the good side of offroading, and what it does for the land, and could very well want it to die out.