By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ron Clifton, Pickaway County, was planting a field when he saw a kid on an all terrain vehicle (ATV) on his property. He yelled at the kid, who took off.
“It made me mad,” Clifton said.

He called the sheriff. Fortunately, an officer was driving by at the time. Clifton accompanied the officer to see the parents.
“We addressed the problem,” he said. “The mother said: ‘I told him to go over there. The kids have no place to ride their four-wheelers and he wasn’t going to hurt anything.’ The parent was the major problem. The discipline wasn’t there.”

John Balzer of Ross County has ATV problems too. “We’ve had ATVs go in the woods, around fields, through fields, just about everywhere,” he said. “Most of the time you cannot get close enough to see them. If you’re working in a field and they come out of the woods, if they see you, they turn around and go.”

Protection from ATVs for private property owners was one of Farm Bureau’s priorities for the year, said Beth Vanderkooi, director of State Policy. Farm Bureau worked with legislators to have an amendment put onto the Transportation Bill (House Bill 2).

“It does a couple of things that relate to ATVs,” Vanderkooi said. “The first is that it created a registration period and a registration fee for all ATVs that are being used, except for those that are being used on farm for agricultural purposes.”

Previously there was registration for ATVs which were used on the public trails throughout the state, Vanderkooi said. That is now expanded to all non-agriculturally used ATVs helping to ensure they are identifiable and registered to the owners.

The fee will be $31 for a three-year registration, and most of that goes to the fund used to maintain public ATV trails, Vanderkooi said.

“We do have a problem in Ohio with ATV trespass leading to crop damage and damaging the soil,” Vanderkooi said. “There are some provisions that deal with criminal trespass of an ATV and part of what the registration and the licensure will do is to make it a little bit easier to identify (the ATV).”

Penalties associated with ATV criminal trespass will increase but probably the provision with the most teeth in it is a “three strikes and you’re out” sort of clause.

An individual who violates the ATV trespass law three times may have their ATV confiscated.

Both Clifton and Balzer, however, said they seldom see the ATVs, so the license wouldn’t help. The off-roaders enter Balzer’s property by way of an abandoned railroad track.

“The first thing they do is go around your fields,” he said. “That gets boring after awhile, so they decide they want to go across your fields.”

Clifton had similar problems. “We have a farm in Ashville that they come in and run over the growing crops,” he said.

He called ATVs a “need and a nuisance. A lot of farmers use them,” he said. “They have sprayers and they go out and check their own crops so there’s a need for them. Then, when your neighbors feel that they need to ride them on your property, that’s a nuisance.”
Off-roaders in Ohio are definitely causing crop and soil damage, Vanderkooi said.

“Some people do not understand, especially if they are from an urban area and they see a wide open space,” she said. “They don’t necessarily connect in their mind that that is private property and you can’t trespass.”

Farm Bureau was aware the trespass law would not solve all of the problems for the reasons Clifton and Balzer mentioned. Yet, it will help to identify ATVs, to educate ATV owners and to make an example of those who are cited.

“It was a small but strong step in an overall effort,” Vanderkooi said.