May. 25, 2000

BADGER SPRINGS - ''Boulder pollution'' is what Sanford Cohen calls it, his voice thick with the sarcasm that only the federal government seems to inspire on these trails.

More than 20 boulders, each big enough for a grown man to sprawl over, are strewn across the old Badger Springs Jeep Trail. Each is spaced so that a four-wheel vehicle can't make it past and drive into the Agua Fria National Monument, representing another salvo in a running battle between environmental groups and off-highway enthusiasts.

Cohen, a Prescott radio station owner and the president of the Prescott Open Trails Association, an off-highway vehicle advocacy group, is sitting on his four-wheeler in front of the boulders, decrying the establishment of the national monument.

''I've been riding here for 8 1/2 years,'' Cohen said, ''and now I'll never do it again.''

His is a frequent lament, evidenced perhaps by the bullet holes in the ''Closed to all motor vehicles'' sign.

Today, the Wilderness Society releases a report naming the Grand Canyon and the Sonoran Desert that covers much of southern Arizona as two of the 15 most endangered wild places in the nation, due in large part to off-highway vehicle usage.

Motorized touring, from boats in the Colorado River to quad-wheelers coursing through the desert, are endangering the areas' ecosystems, the report says. The most noticeable motorized tourists are the quad-wheelers, and while the Agua Fria National Monument has few roads running through it and looks nothing like the abused and wheel-rutted lands in the Tonto National Forest north of Phoenix, it is becoming a battleground and a case study in the tug of war for wild lands access.

Off-highway vehicle advocates - folks driving everything from pickups to all-terrain vehicles to snowmobiles off the paved path - have criticized federal government policies they say kowtow to environmental groups that have recently been beating the drum about the harm caused by off-highway vehicles.

The environmental groups say that off-highway vehicle use is not conducive to preserving wild lands.

Cohen admittedly is one of the cleaner-living off-highway vehicle advocates. He and his group travel existing roads and clean up after themselves. On a recent trip to the area around the monument, Cohen filled a trash bag with other people's garbage.

He taught his daughter to ride in a flat, sandy place in what is now the monument. He and friends used to take the Badger Springs Jeep Trail down to the Agua Fria River and picnic, soak their feet and look at the petroglyphs.

''We like to think of ourselves as motorized hikers,'' Cohen said. ''I've got a bad knee. It hurts me to hike long distances. By restricting our way of getting to the monument, you restrict our access to the monument.''

The Bureau of Land Management, which administers the monument, finds itself in as difficult a position as many other national forests and parks: How do you give equal access to all groups - riders, hikers, shooters - without one group infringing on another?

''The decisions to make those closures were made long before we knew about the monument,'' said Gene Dahlem of the BLM. ''Call it serendipitous or coincidence or bad luck. I don't know what you call it. It just happened at the same time.''

The bureau decided to work on access issues last year when officials saw stream-side habitats being damaged by the off-highway vehicle users, Dahlem said.

''Somebody is generating new roads and trails out there, and it's impossible for us in the office to tell the ones who do from the ones who aren't. So we closed access.''

The BLM dealt with the Agua Fria access issue in February by putting steel ropes and pipes across the monument's only access into the river valley and by placing boulders across the trail.

But the off-highway lobby is a powerful one. The Clinton Administration noted its power when it announced its draft plan earlier this month for roadless areas - federally administered, pristine forest lands. Although the administration's plan limited the building of new roads in those areas, it did not restrict off-road vehicle usage of existing roads. The decision drove the environmental community nuts.

''No environmentalist would say that (off-road vehicles) are good for wilderness,'' said Jim Waltman, refuge director for the Wilderness Society, which issued the report criticizing motor-tourism in Arizona. ''But there are places where this kind of activity can occur without as much impact.''

But the Agua Fria National Monument, where Sanford Cohen taught his daughter to ride, is not one of them.

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8097