AUBURN – Bill Morse calls them “the rogue riders,” the people who buzz around on unregistered all-terrain vehicles, spinning ruts into the ground and angering landowners who might otherwise let the good riders buzz right through.

“About 10 percent of (ATV users) are causing all the problems,” said Morse, president of the Rumford-based River Valley Riders ATV Club. His group has 216 members and cares for 200 miles of trails, which link to systems across Oxford County. “If there’s a problem, we jump on it,” Morse said Tuesday.

But his group can’t help everyone.

All-terrain vehicles and their use is a statewide matter, one which led to the creation of a 15-member task force aimed at bringing new rules to the Maine Legislature when it gathers in January.

Morse joined more than 70 people Tuesday to sound off to task force members about the machines, their use and dozens of proposed changes in state laws and rules governing ATVs.

Proposals call for written permission of landowners before a trail is formed, outlawing tires with tread that’s too deep, mandatory liability insurance for all ATVs, higher fines for violations and a lower threshold for police confiscation of the vehicles.

New rules are needed, said Paul Jacques, deputy commissioner of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

The vehicles’ popularity is growing too fast to be ignored anymore, Jacques said. In the past 10 years, the number of ATVs registered in Maine has increased 136 percent, to 52,830 in 2002.

If rules can be introduced now, the vehicles will be no more intrusive than snowmobiles in a few years, Jacques said.

Though some people criticized details, the tentative proposals drew mostly positive comments from the people who came. Many were members of ATV clubs. Some wore day-glow green “Pro ATV” stickers.

At Morse’s invitation, the crowd gave the seven task force members who attended the meeting a round of applause. Members included people from several state agencies, Central Maine Power and SWOAM, the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine.

There were dissenters, though.

Steve Brooke, who owns a 10-acre woodlot in Farmingdale, said he has grown frustrated by an increasing lack of respect for his property.

Riders have ground up the trails which snowmobilers maintained across his land, moved barriers and even deserted an old Jeep Cherokee in a soft piece of ground, Brooke said.

He called their use a kind of blackmail.

“They seem to say, ‘If you give us a trail we can destroy, we won’t destroy all your land,'” said Brooke, who doesn’t like the vehicles any more than their riders.

“I don’t see how a four-wheel drive vehicle with lug tires can pass without severe impact,” he said. “These are vehicles that are engineered and designed to be destructive.”

Such treatment can be fought with greater enforcement of existing laws, said Morse. He and others in ATV clubs work to smooth over problems like those Brooke faces, he said. His club builds bridges, rakes the ground and talks with landowners in detail before a trail crosses a property, he said. Others are similarly responsible.

The danger, agrees Morse, Jacques and Brooke, is that some landowners will become discouraged and close all access to their lands.

Brooke, who fishes and hikes, said he imagines erecting “no trespassing” signs, something that would bother him greatly. Most the places he goes to enjoy the outdoors are on private property.

“I don’t like posting any land,” he said.

Tuesday’s meeting was the third of four public forums on the ATV recommendations. The final meeting is planned for Thursday in Sanford.

dhartill@sunjournal.com