The OHV trunk is portable and contains everything needed to demonstrate OHV user safety and teach good land ethics.

Doing things right the first time is the objective of a cooperative educational project focusing on off-highway vehicles (OHVs). On the Right Trail: Off-Highway Vehicle Curriculum for Kids is an educational trunk that teaches OHV user safety, etiquette, and ethics to third- through seventh-grade students. The goal is to both educate students and instill a strong land and trail ethic so that future OHV riders are safe, courteous, responsible, and considerate of other users and the land. As land managers, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) specialists stress the importance of education, in particular education for children—who, we hope, will educate their parents in turn.

This program is not just for OHV riders, however. Many of its components introduce good land ethics in general, as well as the concept of resource impacts. The eight-minute preface video is appropriate for all audiences and serves as a good introduction to issues related to OHV. The video is a handy resource for those who address service clubs, interest groups, and other involved parties.

The curriculum contains seven modules covering the following topics:

• What do you know about OHVs?
• Think safety!
• Planning ahead
• Trail etiquette
• Land ethics
• OHV dilemmas
• OHV pledge

Sponsors of this project are the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; the USDA Forest Service (FS), and BLM. Partners include the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council and the Montana Trail Vehicle Riders Association.

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Jocelyn Dodge takes her OHV class to the trail—students learn best by doing.

Teachers or others interested in borrowing an OHV trunk or obtaining more information about the program/curriculum may contact: Ray Paige of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks at (406) 444-7317; Joycelyn Dodge of the FS Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest at (406) 494-0246 or jdodge@fs.fed.us; or Lorrene Schardt, the BLM Environmental Education Coordinator for Montana, at (406) 896-5230 or Lorrene_Schardt@blm.gov.

To learn more about the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council, please visit that organization's website at http://www.nohvcc.org/. For further information on the Montana Trail Vehicle Riders Association, please visit http://www.mtvra.com/.

To learn more about OHV issues and BLM's "National Management Strategy for Motorized OHV Use," please visit the BLM national OHV website at http://www.blm.gov/ohv/ .