Maine officials are reminding the state’s many all-terrain vehicle users that ATVs wider than 5 feet are not allowed on many pieces of the state’s vast trail network.
ATVs are a major tourism draw in Maine and are made possible by agreements with private landowners who allow them on their land. State agencies say they brokered a deal with landowners based on a maximum width of 5 feet for ATVs.
But now many new vehicles, are up to a foot wider, according to Cpl. John MacDonald, a spokesman for the Maine Warden Service.
“Now you have people who simply can’t get across roads and bridges, doing damage to them, and in some cases they’re even going around them and kind of fording rivers and brooks and streams and things and making somewhat of a mess,” he says. “There are some private landowners, they’re fairly critical trails that connect point A to point B, and if people continue to abuse the privilege to operate on the land with machines that are greater than 60 inches, they could shut them down. And we don’t want that to happen.”
MacDonald says state trails don’t have the width restriction, and people should check before heading out.
Maine registers nearly 70,000 ATVs every year. That total has climbed in recent years, as it was less than 50,000 in the early 2000s.
