OHVs: Judge orders closure of off-roading trails in Mojave Desert

Daniel Cusick

An administrative law judge has rescinded a Bureau of Land Management decision to open two off-highway vehicle (OHV) trails in the Mojave Desert, where environmental groups said the vehicles would damage or destroy desert tortoise habitat.

The decision from the Interior Department's Interior Board of Land Appeals upholds an appeal brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, which argued the plan to open two routes in the Rand Mountain Management Area of Kerns County, Calif., was flawed because it required little of off-roaders with respect to protecting the federally threatened tortoises.

Critics also argued that the off-roading trails were tied to the larger West Mojave Plan, which was struck down in federal court last September. The West Mojave Plan would have created approximately 5,000 miles of designated OHV routes in the desert.

Ileene Anderson, a California-based biologist with CBD, said the two trails were within a designated area of critical environmental concern and that they had been closed as recently as 2002 to protect the desert tortoise and its habitat. She said BLM based its 2008 decision to reopen the trails on a public education and permitting program that gave OHV riders little information and required only that vehicle users carry a map of the Rand Mountain Management Area.

Moreover, Anderson said, BLM's own monitoring shows that off-roaders have encroached on sensitive areas that should be off limits. ""The number of illegal actions that have occurred since the education and permit program has been in place confirms the failure of the program," she said. "The judge agreed with us that the bureau needs to rethink the decision to open these routes."

David Briery, a spokesman in BLM's California Desert district, said his office had not yet seen the IBLA ruling and that Interior attorneys would determine the agency's next move in the coming weeks.

John Stewart of the California Association of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs said the ruling was unnecessary because BLM had installed barrier fencing along the routes to keep OHV riders from venturing off designated trails. "They were making sure there would be no off-route travel" into tortoise habitat, he said.

Brian Hawthorne, public lands director for the BlueRibbon Coalition, an OHV user group, said the decision is one more blow in a series of decisions that have increasingly restricted OHV use in the Mojave Desert.

"We'd like to know where we can go," Hawthorne said. "We have to be able to ride somewhere."

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Source: http://www.eenews.net/ll/

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