Proposed rule would shrink plant's habitat

Peirson's milk-vetch uses a deep tap root to anchor it in shifting sands of the in the Algodones Dunes.

By GAIL WESSON

The Press-Enterprise

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposed rule Friday that would shrink by 25 percent the boundaries of critical habitat set aside for survival of a plant threatened with extinction in an area popular with off-road enthusiasts in Imperial County.

The new proposed protection for Peirson's milk-vetch, a legume with a deep tap root to anchor it in shifting sands, stems from a lawsuit filed against the service by environmental groups challenging studies done in 2004 on a proposed 21,836-acre critical habitat area that includes the 300-foot Glamis sand dunes.

Public hearings on the proposed rule and a related draft economic analysis are scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 23 at the service's Carlsbad office.

The service proposes a 16,108-acre protected area in the Algodones Dunes, an area managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management as part of the Imperial San Dunes Recreation Area, the service said in a news release.

"This reduction of protected habitat will make it difficult, if not impossible for the Peirson's milk-vetch to survive and recover," IleeneAnderson , a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a news release.

The center was one of the groups that sued the government in federal court.

The service on its Web site contends that BLM 2005 survey data provides "more specific and reliable information" about the plant's population range than the "limited data" used for the earlier habitat proposal.

Actions Renew Tensions Over Use of Desert Land

Release of the west Mojave plan and a judge's rejection of a proposal for the Algodones Dunes reignite debate.

By Janet Wilson, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A pair of decisions in the last two days governing recreation, conservation and development across several million acres of California desert are reigniting tensions over endangered species and motorized access in the fast-growing region.

Late Tuesday, U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials signed the west Mojave management plan, designed to streamline construction and map areas for motorized recreation and wildlife protection on 9.3 million acres of public land in five counties and 11 cities. Parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern and Inyo counties are included in the plan, which took 12 years to craft.

"You have tremendous, growing populations in … the west Mojave, and then you try to balance that with conservation of species, and it becomes a very, very delicate balancing act, and that's what we think this plan achieved," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the bureau's California office. The plan identifies vital areas for the threatened desert tortoise, Mohave squirrel and 98 other species, pinpoints off-road trails, and lays out areas that could be developed.

But the plan was promptly lambasted by environmentalists and off-road vehicle groups, who said that thousands of miles of riding trails had been improperly mapped, that there were no funds for enforcement or implementation, and that lawsuits were inevitable.

"They don't have a nickel — not a nickel — to implement any of it," said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Assn., who was appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to serve on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council and who has monitored the plan closely.

"It wasn't done well," he said. "What they were trying to do — and it's pretty naive — is they were trying to provide for every kind of environmental concern they could with the idea that it would prevent lawsuits, and it's just the other way around. They're going to get sued by the environmental extremists … and off-road access is going to be cut off. It's a joke."

Tom Egan, a former bureau biologist who worked on the early stages of the plan before leaving the agency, called the final version "egregious," and said it would lead to the disappearance of the tortoise in many areas and leave other species "on hospital beds." He noted that the plan included measures for placing signs indicating trails were open to off-roading, but none to say which areas were closed.

A spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity — an environmental group that has long opposed the expansion of off-road driving in the desert — said that the plan would harm the desert tortoise in particular, and that the organization probably would sue to stop it.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston threw out another bureau plan and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological report for the Algodones Dunes to the south that would have greatly expanded off-roading, saying that the plan would harm the federally protected Pierson's milk vetch wildflower and the desert tortoise, and that the agencies had wrongly interpreted the Endangered Species Act.

The judge "basically shredded their plan," said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Noting that about half of the most popular parts of the dunes remain open to riders, he said: "It's time for them to compromise and recognize that 50% is enough."

Bedrosian said bureau officials had not seen the decision and could not comment immediately. She said officials thought they had adequately protected species by calling for tightly controlled riding on designated routes with heavy monitoring.

Vince Brunasso of the American Sand Assn., which intervened on the side of the government to have 49,000 acres of the popular dunes reopened to riding, said: "I agree. Let's compromise. Let's have 50% of the dunes in North America reopened then, because if you do the math and add up all the acres we have access to, it falls far short of 50%."

Brunasso said the Algodones Dunes "are different, and they're beautiful, and we can't go to the deep center section. The American people are being robbed of the ability to enjoy that beauty … we're not done fighting."

He said his group would try to have the Pierson's milk vetch delisted as an endangered species.

"The BLM counted 1.8 million milk vetch last year. I don't know how many you have to have before an official person would say its not endangered or threatened" and off-highway vehicle use can coexist with it, he said.

Patterson and others have said the wildflower is doing better for now because of good rains last year and because off-roading has been banned in key areas.

Federal Plans Aim to Control Use of the Desert

Development and off-road use in the Mojave and Algodones Dunes would increase. Critics threaten to sue.

By Janet Wilson and Julie Cart, Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times

Federal officials on Thursday released a pair of desert management plans to accommodate recreation, development and wildlife in the booming western Mojave and in the Algodones Dunes, a popular destination for off-road vehicles in far southeastern California.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said its design for 9.3 million acres of the western Mojave Desert is the largest habitat conservation plan in the United States, encompassing parts of four counties and numerous towns.

The plan, one of nearly 500 around the country, is aimed at expediting development in western San Bernardino, Kern, Los Angeles and Inyo counties while seeking to preserve more than 100 rare plant and animal species, including the threatened desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel.

Such plans allow home builders, miners, water and sewage companies, and others to destroy endangered and threatened species in exchange for setting aside or paying to preserve wildlife habitat elsewhere.

"Everybody out there in this tremendously large, 9-million-acre area will know which areas are targeted for conservation and which areas would be allowed for development," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management's California office, which began developing the plan a decade ago.

Larry Lapre, the BLM staffer overseeing final development of the plan, said the fast-growing area covered under the plan stretches from the San Gabriel Mountains east to Baker, and from Olancha in the Owens Valley south to Joshua Tree National Park. It takes in Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Apple Valley, Lancaster, Palmdale and Ridgecrest.

"It's an hour away from 15 million people," he said.

"Lancaster and Palmdale in particular are experiencing very rapid growth, and Victorville is too…. It's suburban sprawl."

"Every time you do a subdivision in Victorville, you have to do a tortoise survey and a ground squirrel survey and a burrowing owl survey, and usually you find one of each," Lapre said. "Then you have to go get permits, and there's hundreds of those pending. Hundreds of housing projects are being delayed."

Under the new plan, developers could pay fees or set aside land, then acquire one "take" permit covering all the species.

Lapre, a biologist who has worked on such plans for years, said the large swaths of land that would be set aside for the tortoise and other wildlife would help preserve them.

But environmental groups disagreed sharply. Daniel Patterson said the Center for Biological Diversity would sue if necessary to block the plan, which, he said, would ignore an existing recovery plan for the tortoise.

The BLM plan for the Algodones Dunes, long a mecca for off-road vehicle enthusiasts, calls for opening all of the areas that were placed off-limits as a result of a temporary court settlement five years ago.

However, Bedrosian of the BLM said the closures on slightly less than one-third of the area — 49,300 acres — would remain in place until at least Oct. 15 while a federal judge considers competing lawsuits from off-roaders and environmentalists.

Most of the currently restricted area — about 33,000 acres — will be opened to limited motorized use. The BLM said it would issue up to 525 permits per day for that part of the dunes, prohibit overnight camping, and close the area from April to mid-October.

For the time being, the BLM proposes instituting a zoning system that divides the entire 160,000-acre dune system into eight management areas. The 26,000-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area would be closed to any motorized travel, for example, and the 21,000-acre Gecko area would be open to unlimited off-road use.

Altogether, more than 85% of the dunes would be open to off-road vehicles.

Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, assailed the plan as a reversal of the 2000 court agreement and said it fails to provide protection for a threatened plant.

"The worst part is that the plan fails to deal with the crowds," Patterson said. "They totally failed to consider the carrying capacity of the dunes. The caps are only for a small area. It's a paper plan that will have no on-the-ground enforceability."

On holiday weekends, as many as 250,000 people roar over the dunes in sand rails, trucks and dune buggies. Four years ago, three people were killed and dozens injured, including a park ranger who was run over during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Bedrosian said the agency considers the 33,000 acres of limited use a "laboratory," adding that vehicle limits could be adjusted if necessary.

California Dunes May Be Reopened to Off-Road Vehicles

By NICK MADIGAN
New York Times

Federal officials are proposing reopening land that had been off limits to riders of dune buggies and other off-road vehicles in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, which in recent years has been the site of virtually unfettered chaos on holiday weekends.

A proposal drawn up by the Bureau of Land Management seeks to reopen 49,310 acres of dunes that were closed to off-road vehicles under a settlement reached in November 2000 between the bureau, a coalition of off-road clubs and three groups of environmentalists, who were concerned about the damage being done to endangered plants and animals.

''The administration seems to be abandoning a negotiated settlement that would provide a balanced approach to the use of the dunes,'' Daniel R. Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Idyllwild, Calif., said today.

Mr. Patterson and other environmentalists believed that their settlement with the government precluded a retraction that would allow unlimited use by the off-roaders, who come in the thousands to race in towering dunes near the five areas that are currently protected.

''We're pretty much blown away by the fact that we have an arrangement between conservationists, off-roaders and the B.L.M., and approved by a federal court, and now the Bush administration is seeking to dismiss that deal,'' Mr. Patterson said.

The bureau's proposal says the area provides a ''world-class recreation opportunity,'' and adds that with increased policing and monitoring the effects of the off-roaders and other users can be mitigated. One area, for instance, would be limited to no more than 525 vehicles at any time for the first year of the plan, with future numbers adjusted according to the effects on the landscape.

The plan, which has a 90-day comment period, calls for establishing curfews ''in areas of historic lawlessness'' and ''limiting alcohol use to established camp areas.''

But law enforcement officials have had difficulty policing the dunes, especially on weekends, when as many as 200,000 people come to the area, about 150 miles east of San Diego. Last Thanksgiving, there was a homicide, two stabbings, two fatal accidents and innumerable brawls.

Officials at the Bureau of Land Management, which has final say over use of the area, did not return calls seeking comment.

The environmentalists are trying to save endangered species like the Peirson's milkvetch plant, which is unique to the Algodones Dunes, and the desert tortoise.

''If they're not going to keep the areas closed where the plants and other endangered species are, then the plan fails to protect the American people's precious resources,'' said Terry Weiner, a botanist and coordinator for the Desert Protective Council, which seeks protection for Southwestern deserts. ''You cannot appreciate the dunes if you're raging across them at 40 miles an hour with smoke in your face and deafening noise.''

The November 2000 agreement was reached between the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Bureau of Land Management and five off-road groups, including the Blue Ribbon Coalition, which says it has 600,000 members.

Dan Meyer, general counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility -- which says it has 10,000 federal, state and municipal workers as members -- said his primary concern was the bureau's own law enforcement officers, who are charged with maintaining order against often overwhelming odds.

''The rangers come to us because they're concerned about all that off-road vehicle traffic and, basically, how they're supposed to be traffic cops for thousands of off-road vehicles,'' Mr. Meyer said. ''There's a real sense of lawlessness out there. It's something out of 'Mad Max.' ''

Harold Soens, a member of the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, which has sued the Bureau of Land Management over the earlier closures, said of the proposed change, ''I think it's a good deal.''

He added, ''At the moment, you're putting more people in a confined area, and they'll eventually ruin the landscape.''

The Algodones Dunes, which lie in a 40-mile swath north of the Mexican border, have been a source of controversy for years. The 32,240-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness, to the north of the area currently under revision, has been permanently closed to off-roaders.

The Bureau of Land Management document lists 80 animal and bird species and more than 60 plants found in the area.