Bill would protect huge chunk of California land

By Rob Hotakainen
Sacramento Bee

WASHINGTON – If California's Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer gets her way, Congress will vote next month to designate nearly 800,000 acres of California land – an area larger than Rhode Island – as federally protected wilderness.

The House has already signed off on some of the land, giving the designation for nearly a half-million acres in six states. Roughly 60 percent of the land approved by the House is in California.

While few pieces of major legislation are moving in the current Congress, wilderness bills have been a notable exception, and it has been one of the most striking changes caused by the Democratic takeover of Congress last year.

By the time the current session ends, environmentalists say, there's a good chance that an additional 2 million acres of wilderness could be declared off-limits to development. That would double the amount set aside in the last two-year congressional session, when Republicans were in the majority.

No other state has as much at stake as California. If approved, it would be the largest expansion of protected wilderness in the state since 1994, when Congress preserved more than 7 million acres by establishing Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and Mojave National Preserve.

This year's largest proposal for California, sponsored by Boxer and co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, would designate more than 470,000 acres in Mono, Inyo and Los Angeles counties as wilderness, along with 52 miles of Amargosa River in Death Valley and Owens River's headwaters. It's called the Eastern Sierra and Northern San Gabriel Wild Heritage Act.

"It's an historic opportunity, and I think it hearkens back to the values people had when the Wilderness Act was first published in 1964," said Barbara Hill, executive director of the Oakland-based California Wilderness Coalition.

The Wilderness Act, signed into law by President Johnson, closes all designated lands to commercial and recreational development. It defines a wilderness area as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

The land can be used only for such things as hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, hunting or fishing. There can be no mining, no energy exploration, no vehicles and no permanent camps or structures.

Opponents say it's elitist to keep recreational users, including snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, off public lands intended to benefit everyone.

"We're very concerned with this big mass push for wilderness that's going on right now," said Greg Mumm, executive director of the Idaho-based Blue Ribbon Coalition, which wants to keep public lands open to motorcyclists, ATV riders, snowmobilers and others. "There are better choices in today's world for protecting that land and preserving the access that's so needed for recreation."

As members of Congress gear up to debate the plans when they return to work in September, environmentalists are banking on support from an unlikely source to get them approved: the White House.

While the Bush administration has proposed oil drilling in the Alaska wilderness and backs a plan to allow loaded guns in national parks, many environmentalists believe Bush would sign wilderness bills as a way to put a stamp on the U.S. park system in the closing months of his presidency.

Getting this far has been a long fight for environmentalists, who worked hard to influence the 2006 elections. Not only was Boxer elevated to the head of the Senate's environment committee, the elections brought the defeat of their biggest political enemy, Republican Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, who opposed most wilderness bills and had the power to block them.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said his predecessor Pombo "chose to ignore wilderness proposals even when there was a great deal of consensus in support of them."

Rahall said Congress is now working in a bipartisan manner "to ensure that the land is preserved as God intended."

The House has already approved two California-specific bills, both in Boxer's plan. One bill would preserve nearly 115,000 acres of public land within Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, including Redwood Mountain Grove and Old Hockett Trail, one of the first cross-Sierra routes in the southern Sierra. The other bill would protect nearly 200,000 acres in Riverside County that provide habitat for bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, bald eagles and mule deer.

Four California representatives – Democrat Jim Costa of Fresno and Republicans Mary Bono of Palm Springs, Howard "Buck" McKeon of Santa Clarita and Devin Nunes of Tulare – have introduced companion wilderness bills in the House. Feinstein is co-sponsor of both the House-passed bills in the Senate.

Environmentalists say the fight should come to a head in the Senate in mid-September, when the Energy and Natural Resources Committee decides whether to include the proposals in a public lands bill.

Boxer has already run into opposition from Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, who argues the federal government is struggling to maintain its parks. If more wilderness areas are created, he said, states should pay for their upkeep, not federal taxpayers.

Backers of the legislation say there would be no added costs because the federal government owns the property and the only question is how to use the land.

'Off-Road Rage' Climbs as Trails Get More Crowded

By Karl Vick
Washington Post







ATV enthusiasts use the Buckhorn Rim Trail in Utah. How the vehicles share public land with hikers, bicyclists and horses has become a thorny issue. (By Whitney Curtis -- Ogden Standard-examiner Via Associated Press)


FARMINGTON, N.M. -- As more and more Americans light out for backcountry trails, officials are seeing a parallel rise in episodes of "off-road rage": unpleasant, even violent encounters between drivers of all-terrain vehicles and hikers, mountain bikers and others.

"Move your bike or I'll run over it," the driver of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle warned Bill Connelly, who had laid his mountain bike across a trail in the Glade Run Recreation Area, just outside Farmington. Signs were posted banning motorized vehicles from the stony track, and in the summer of 2006 Connelly was tired of ATVs going wherever they wanted.

"Go ahead," he said, according to Dan Dunn, his riding partner that day.

The ATV then crushed the bike, Dunn said, and Connelly grabbed the four-wheeler's handlebars, which brought the driver, a high school wrestler, off the machine, announcing, "I'll show you, old man."

Dunn and Connelly limped home with broken ribs.

"I hate these things. They're loud. They're obnoxious," said Bill Burgund, 61, an amputee with one leg who was walking on a Bitterroot National Forest trail in Montana last year when an ATV careened around a corner, snagging his crutch, wrenching his shoulder and knocking him to the ground.

"If I'd had my druthers I'd have shot the guy," said Burgund, a retired police officer who packs a sidearm on his daily walks. "It's a good thing my arm was so screwed up or I might have."

Federal officials charged with administering public lands say confrontations that erupt into violence on crowded trails in the West remain rare, but they warn that resentful frictions are rising. The region is the fastest-growing in the United States, driven largely by residents' desire to live near scenic public lands that, on weekends near urban areas, can be downright crowded.

"The West is just filling up, and more people are going out to use public lands than ever before," said Heather Feeney, spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department agency that oversees 258 million acres, or about 13 percent of the land surface of the United States.

"So conflict management is probably something that's here to stay," she said.

Like the U.S. Forest Service, the region's other major landlord, the BLM is soliciting public involvement in "travel plans," deciding which trails will be reserved for hikers, which for horses, which for ATVs and which everyone must try to share.

The task has gained urgency with the surging popularity of off-road vehicles. Since President Richard M. Nixon issued a 1972 executive order directing federal agencies to protect public lands from ATVs, the number of people riding the machines has grown tenfold, to perhaps 50 million, according to a federal survey.

And the appeal of the fat-tired four-wheelers offers a direct challenge to rulemakers: Many of the 750,000 ATVs sold each year are marketed expressly for their ability to take riders anywhere they want to go.

"We absolutely do not support that. We support designated route systems," said Greg Mumm, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, which lobbies for riders and manufacturers of ATVs, also known as off-highway vehicles or off-road vehicles. "And frankly the OHV community is sick and tired of the black eye we get from those who think they can go wherever and whenever and however they darn well please."

Mumm points to West Virginia's Hatfield McCoy Trails and Utah's Paiute ATV Trail System as providing off-roaders "the quality of the experience they are seeking" and discouraging "excursions" that carve tracks into landscapes that can take decades to recover.

At the same time, the coalition argues against banning ATVs from large tracts of public land; that approach, Mumm said, "ends up stuffing increasing numbers of people onto a decreasing area, and that creates issues."

There appears to be no shortage of issues now. Critics point out that ATV riders account for 10 percent of visitors to public land, at most. Yet their impact -- whining engine noise, dust clouds visible for miles and nuisance driving, especially by young operators -- profoundly affects the other 90 percent.

"You can't recreate with these machines around. It will ruin your day," said Bob Clark, a Sierra Club regional official who was knocked to the ground by a dirt bike in the Great Burn Roadless Area in eastern Idaho two summers ago.

Clark declined to discuss the episode after the biker was penalized with only a misdemeanor $72 fine. But according to witness accounts, the dirt bike's front wheel was in line to come down on Clark's head when Clark deflected it, spilling the rider atop another hiker. Clark had been trying to get a photo of the biker, who was on a trail barred to motorized vehicles.

"If you're out there, just about every time you'll run into off-road vehicle conflict," said Mike Eisenfeld, a Farmington environmental activist who often mountain bikes in nearby Glade Run, the sort of demi-urban recreation zone under the most pressure.

"It's the norm, not the exception," he added.

Trail tensions are not driven exclusively by ATVs. Hikers are irked at having their solitude broken by careening mountain bikes. And everyone has to get off the trail to let horses pass. But along with their noise, recreational off-roaders often are preceded by their reputation.

"It's totally about culture," said Bethanie Walder of Wildlands CPR, which opposes off-roading. "I think that's where the problem derives. They prefer to ride off-trail. They want to blaze their own trail. The culture's one of 'I can do whatever I want.'

"I think the Forest Service is afraid of them," Walder added. "I wouldn't confront an ORV rider."

Officials are more inclined to blame lean budgets: The average BLM law enforcement agent must patrol 1.5 million acres.

But they acknowledge off-roaders' reputation for rambunctious behavior.

"I won't discount the yahoo factor -- anything goes out there," said Steve Henke, the BLM district manager in Farmington. "We've had Boy Scouts put up signs, and they don't last a week out there."

In Idaho, a Payette taxidermist was found guilty in 2005 of punching and threatening the life of a hunter who confronted him for driving an ATV on a national forest trail closed to motors.

"Put a bullet in her head," a man called out in Darby, Mont., in January, as a woman spoke against ATVs at a profanity-laced public meeting the Forest Service had convened.

ATV advocates offer no excuses for such behavior. But many are irritated at being forced to scramble to retain access to land supported by their taxes.

"I expect to drive my RV pulling my motorcycles up to the gates of Yellowstone, and I expect that park to be open," said Bob McCarty, 61, in a Farmington Harley-Davidson showroom crowded with shining four-wheelers. "I work so I can play, and I do expect to play."

In fast-growing Arizona, where two-thirds of residents describe themselves as "trail-users," according to a BLM official, Cyndi Tuell of the Center for Biological Diversity works to restrict off-roaders. All four of her brothers own ATVs.

"Two of them are adamant you should use them on trails, and the other two believe they should be driven anywhere," she said. "Two of them won't talk to me. I guess I'm glad that they all still talk to each other."

Even when there's no hint of violence, the conflict isn't pretty. The granola-crunchy county government in Boulder County, Colo., this year enforced a ban on ATVs, shuttering Jeff and Vicki Mead's off-road rental business. In revenge, they plan to reopen it as a pornography retailer.

"Clearly we're the subject of abuse in this county," Jeff Mead said.

Forest Service pulls Smokey Bear ad

By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) — Smokey the Bear was unfair.

The Forest Service said Tuesday it has canceled a public service ad in which the iconic bear warned that sparks from off-road vehicles could start a wildfire.

Off-road groups had complained that the ad sent the wrong message that riders operating ATVs in a legal manner can start forest fires.

"The mutual goal of the Forest Service, National Association of State Foresters and the Ad Council is to spread Smokey's enduring message of preventing wildfires to all forest users," the Forest Service said in a statement Tuesday.

Because the ATV ad was interpreted as unfairly targeting off-road riders, the Forest Service has requested that TV stations and other media outlets that had broadcast the ad discontinue it, the Forest Service said.

The BlueRibbon Coalition, an Idaho-based group that advocates for off-road vehicles, hailed the ad's withdrawal.

"I honestly believe the agencies had intended to create a positive message regarding safe use of ATVs on public lands," said Don Amador, the group's Western representative.

Whatever its intent, the ad "incorrectly conveyed to the ATV rider that the best way for them to prevent wildfires was to stay at home. Instead, the ad should have encouraged the use of Forest Service-approved spark arresters and limiting travel to approved routes and areas," Amador said.

Forest Service officials said the ad was not intended to imply that all ATV use causes fires — rather that fire prevention is always important, especially at a time of high fire danger.

The Forest Service supports responsible use of ATVs on public land, said Jim Bedwell, the agency's director of recreation. ATV riders must use spark arresters — which restrict sparks from escaping an exhaust system — when operating off-road on public lands.

Wilderness, schmilderness

In Nevada, wilderness-wary locals derail lands bills that could help their communities

WESTERN ROUNDUP
by Gordon Gregory
High Country News

A view looking northwest from the top of Bald Mountain, Nevada, an area that could be proposed for wilderness protection. CAMERON JOHNSON

SMITH, NEVADA
In this tiny farm town, which lacks a stoplight or even a store, the gathering of more than 700 people on April 2 was unprecedented. And they weren’t at the high school gym to watch the Bulldogs play Class A basketball; they were there to tell officials just what they thought about a proposal to turn their mountains into wilderness.

It was a peaceful if not entirely well-mannered crowd, with most wildly cheering those who railed against wilderness, and jeering the three lone proponents. Shouts of "go back to Santa Cruz" and "we’re the public, stupid" peppered the warm evening.

Over and over, angry citizens came to the microphone to proclaim that no outsiders were going to tell them to keep their trucks and ORVs out of the hills they considered their heritage. Jim Sanford, former publisher of the local paper, summed up the mood: "I don’t think this group here tonight is interested in compromise."

But without compromise, there would be no public-lands bills like the ones approved over the past six years for three other Nevada counties, bills that called for the sale of thousands of acres of federal land and -- in conjunction with a 1998 law generated billions of dollars for everything from school funding to park development. Pushed by Nevada Sens. Harry Reid, D, and John Ensign, R, the bills sought to eliminate the management headaches and local resentments that are rife in a fast-growing state where more than four of every five acres is federal property.

The bills also designated major new wilderness areas. In Congress, the rough political calculus for such bills is this: If locals get to benefit from the sale of land owned by all Americans, the broader public receives additional wilderness in return. That seemed fair enough to folks in Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties, where a total of 164,000 acres of federal land was identified for auction and about 1.7 million acres were added to the wilderness system. And the state’s congressional delegation had every reason to expect success in other counties.

But in western Nevada this winter, that calculus was faulty. In quick succession, three counties -- Lyon, Mineral and Esmeralda -- rebuffed efforts to craft compromise bills for lands within their boundaries. Fear and misunderstanding fueled a revolt against what locals perceived as a land grab. And now that the state’s anti-wilderness forces are energized, their efforts may derail what until recently seemed like a collaborative way to both meet local needs and protect wild lands.

The federal government owns more than 86 percent of Nevada, more than it owns in any other state. In some counties, the dearth of private property has limited growth, inflated property values and complicated land management. While counties with large federal holdings do get annual PILT funds (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) from the government, the payments are often a fraction of the taxes they’d receive if the land were privately owned. Esmeralda County, for example, gets only about $60,000 a year through PILT, even though 98 percent of it is federally owned.

The first attempt at redress was the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which called for the sale of thousands of acres of BLM land near Las Vegas in Clark County. Thus far, about $2.7 billion has been generated from those lands sales, and some of that revenue has also been made available to other Nevada counties through public-lands bills.

The Clark, Lincoln and White Pine lands bills were designed with local input to meet local needs. For example, the White Pine County bill created 550,000 acres of wilderness and identified 45,000 acres of BLM land for auction. Funds from those land sales will go to the state education fund, local law enforcement and fire protection, and to the BLM. In addition, the bill transferred thousands of acres of BLM land to the county and state for commercial and park projects and funded a study of off-road vehicle trail expansion.

With such successes under their belts, in 2007 Sens. Reid and Ensign and Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., set their sights on Lyon, Mineral and Esmeralda counties, again hoping to craft bills that combined wilderness designation with public-land sales and other locally beneficial provisions. Senate staffers began meeting with wilderness proponents, some ranchers and a few local leaders in the three counties. But most residents and many local officials were unaware of the process until early 2008, shortly before the bills were to be drafted. They felt blindsided by the news that such legislation was being considered for their areas and that they had only a few months to be involved.

"We just found out about this in February," says Mineral County Commissioner Richard Bryant, who says he and others were "dumbfounded" when they learned that almost 500,000 acres of federal land in the county were being considered for wilderness designation.

At a May 21 meeting, the commissioners lambasted Sen. Reid’s staff for not involving the counties earlier in the process. The commissioners couldn’t endorse any lands bill this year, they said; they needed time to determine what wilderness would mean for activities such as mining, geothermal development, grazing and recreation.

Lyon County residents say they were similarly surprised. Most first heard about the bill in late January, after local ranchers announced that they had met with congressional staff and representatives of the Nevada Wilderness Project to discuss how wilderness designation might affect their ranching operations.

Marianne Leinassar, whose family has run sheep in the area since 1858, says the ranchers had assumed that the wilderness would cover about 88,000 acres in the Bald Mountain area -- renamed Wovoka by local wilderness proponents -- because it had been the focus of past discussions about possible wilderness.

But at a Jan. 25 meeting, the ranchers saw maps from the Nevada Wilderness Project indicating that up to about 690,000 acres were being considered for wilderness designation in Lyon and in neighboring Mineral County. "We were all taken aback," Leinassar recalls, as they realized the size of the potential wilderness. "This was huge."

The news that hundreds of thousands of acres might become wilderness and that a bill to that effect could be drafted by summer spread like dust in a fast spring wind. Many didn’t know what wilderness designation meant, so anything seemed possible; there was talk of fences, even razor wire stretched across the landscape -- vast areas placed off limits, with mines closed, flight paths diverted, firefighting hobbled, and military training curtailed during wartime. Rumors of conspiracy and speculation about what Reid was really up to ran wild. "They were like a tornado generating their own storm," Steve Pellegrini, a retired teacher and wilderness advocate, says of his neighbors.

Within weeks of the Jan. 25 meeting, locals formed the Coalition for Public Access. By March, membership reached 1,000, then 1,500, most from Lyon County. Residents in Mineral County also started their own chapter. "This has united just about everybody in all of our surrounding communities who are normally ... on separate sides of the fence on water issues, on grazing issues, things like that," says Emery Thran, the group’s chairman. "This affected a lot of people." Residents saw wilderness not as a way to protect the natural qualities of the land, he says, but as a federal assault on what they most value.

In a place where many families arrived in the area more than 100 years ago, those values often involve a personal sense of history. Dr. Robin Titus practices medicine out of a one-physician clinic set amid an ocean of alfalfa fields. From her small office window, she can see the mountains her great grandfather mined. Some of her ancestors are buried there. And though she is an avid outdoors-woman, the idea that "outside" interests might affect local use of the nearby mountains rankles her deeply. "Somebody from out of town is trying to do something that affects the way we live here," she says. "People will tend to fight over that."

But wilderness supporters say many locals simply misunderstood the status of the proposal, as well as what a wilderness designation would mean. The Nevada Wilderness Project had not finalized its plans when it presented its maps to ranchers at that January meeting, says Cameron Johnson, northern Nevada outreach director for the group. He says it had identified roughly 690,000 acres in Lyon and Mineral County as possible wilderness, but had yet to make specific recommendations about which areas were most suitable for designation. Contrary to rumor, he says, his organization would have recommended accommodating traditional uses, including all existing mines and grazing allotments.

Thran, however, says the problem wasn’t a lack of understanding. He blames overreaching by wilderness proponents: If they had remained focused on the Bald Mountain/Wovoka area, he says, the outcome might have been different. "I don’t know if it would have raised an eyebrow around here," he says, of a bill containing just the 88,000-acre Wovoka wilderness. "But now, they’ve pretty much angered our community. No negotiations now. I’m sorry." Titus agrees that local passions are so inflamed that reasoned discussions on the topic are nearly impossible. "People feel that if they give in at all, they’ll lose it all," she says.

Local wilderness proponents still hope that at least the Wovoka area can receive protection through other legislation. Pellegrini and fellow advocate Art Shipley say that when they explain to other residents why the area is so special, many agree it deserves protection from off-roaders. But as soon as the word "wilderness" is mentioned, they say, people back away, thinking that practically the entire county is included. "I wish we didn’t have that 690,000 acres hanging over us," Pellegrini says.

The western Nevada experience may well hang over other potential lands bills in the state, as newly-empowered anti-wilderness activists are determined to continue the fight.

Peter Liakopoulos, host of the Las Vegas talk show Rural Nevada Today, is promoting the creation of a coalition of 14 counties to fight public-lands bills. The BlueRibbon Coalition, an off-road advocacy group based in Pocatello, Idaho, is backing anti-wilderness efforts in Nevada and elsewhere, says Brian Hawthorne, the group’s public-lands policy director. "I think what you’re seeing is a change, a realization that you’re trading wilderness for reasonableness," he says.

Part of what’s changing as well is that some local officials, under pressure by the Coalition for Public Access and others, now refuse to even talk about a lands bill because of the likely wilderness component. Lyon, Mineral and Esmeralda counties passed resolutions this winter opposing any new wilderness within their boundaries. Lyon County and Esmeralda County also passed resolutions rejecting any lands bill that designated new wilderness, effectively shutting off further consideration of any lands bill.

Mineral County commissioners put lands bill discussions in limbo earlier this spring, when they said they weren’t ready to work with Senate staffers. Mineral County Commissioner Jerrie Tipton still says a carefully crafted lands bill is critical to her county’s economic future, and she, for one, would consider some wilderness as part of the package. "(Federal land ownership) is part of the reason we’re so damn poor," she says. But overcoming a tidal wave of opposition may be impossible at this time, she says: "A year ago, I would have said that we can work through it. Today, I don’t know."

The only hope is to fully engage residents in the design of the lands bill, Tipton says. "These people (local citizens) have to be brought into it, or it’s not going to work," she says. "They need to have a hand in the crafting of the vision, or we’re all going to be tarred and feathered."

Without local residents and governments on board, there’s little chance that Sens. Reid and Ensign and Rep. Heller will press forward on these bills. A modest lands bill for Carson City (which includes the former Ormsby County) is progressing without rancor -- in part because the county contains no chunks of federal land large enough to qualify for wilderness. Jon Summers, Sen. Reid’s communication director, says, "We said from the beginning we’re not going to force this down anyone’s throat."

Federal fight brewing on regulating ORV use

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret News

WASHINGTON — The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management need better plans for off-road vehicle use on public lands, but the government, ORV users and conservationists all have their own ideas of what they should include, based on a Senate hearing Thursday.

The government is adjusting how it handles ORVs as the number of users increase each year, but Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said there is a disconnect between what the different departments know and what they are doing.

"The BLM has identified travel management on its lands as 'one of the greatest management challenges' it faces," Bingaman said. "Likewise, the Forest Service has identified unmanaged recreation — including ORV use — as one of the top four threats to the management and health of the National Forest system. Despite these statements, it seems to me that neither agency has been able to successfully manage off-road use."

Bingaman said off-road or off-highway vehicle plans are not enforced or agencies are ignoring unregulated use "with significant consequences for the health of our public lands and communities, and adverse effects on other authorized public land uses." Bingaman suggests more resources for the agencies could help the problem.

Henri Bisson, Bureau of Land Management deputy director, said that balancing the needs of everyone who uses public lands "is a continuing challenge" for the federal land managers.

"This challenge has been building over time," Bisson said. "What was once the vast and spacious public land of the West that few knew about and fewer actively used for recreational purposes has now become something quite different."

Bisson said BLM lands will have 58 million recreation visits this year, a number that has nearly doubled in the last 25 years.

"The combined effect of population increase in the West, unauthorized user-created roads, explosive growth in the use of OHVs, advances in motorized technology, and intense industry marketing have generated increased social conflicts and resource impacts on the public land," Bisson said.

Groups at the witness table Thursday illustrated the conflicts with Trout Unlimited and the Wilderness Society wanting tighter controls on ORVs while the American Motorcyclist Association and the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a recreational vehicle advocacy organization, emphasized that its users are responsible and want to obey the rules but active management needs to be in place.

"BRC fully encourages and supports reasonable and responsible management prescriptions for this type of recreational activity," said BRC executive director George Mumm, who used the Paiute Trail System in Utah as a "successful application of active management for OHV recreation."

"Properly managed motorized recreation presents both a service to citizens and a source of revenue," Mumm said. "Such revenue is vital to rural counties who welcome recreation in lieu of other activities that no longer provide predictable or meaningful revenue, particularly for counties with significant federal public lands."

Edward Moreland, vice president for government relations for the American Motorcyclist Association, said the off-road community supports stiffer fines and penalties for those who knowingly damage public lands but do not want to see unfunded mandates or artificial deadlines put in place that end up hurting users instead of helping them.

"An inventory system that fails to provide adequate time and funding to do the job right is destined to fail," Moreland said.

Bradley Powell, the Western Energy and ORV coordinator for Trout Unlimited, a group that focuses on protecting coldwater fisheries, insisted that he was not at the hearing to oppose ORV use on public lands, "but to ensure that their use is compatible with the land's capability (particularly fish and wildlife habitats) and the needs of sportsmen/women, recreational users and others who rely on America's public lands for their enjoyment."

Powell said that many ORV users ride responsibly but those that travel off trails and create "unauthorized routes" create problems.

Off-road groups want in on debate

Victorville Daily Press
HILLARY BORRUD Staff Writer

Off-roading groups are concerned that they could be left out of the discussion on how to prevent motorized vehicle damage to public lands.

In late June, a group of 13 former rangers and public land managers calling themselves the Rangers for Responsible Recreation identified reckless off-roading as the No. 1 problem facing public lands across the U.S.

The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which is supporting the ranger group, continued its national campaign on Tuesday when it released figures on criminal activity on lands under the protection of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management or the BLM between 2004 and 2007.

Across California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, BLM records showed about 6,600 off-road violations for hit-and-run and other driving offenses, and about twice as many incidents of driving under the influence for off-roaders as compared to automobiles, according to a press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility or PEER.

In interviews Tuesday, representatives of the national Off-Road Business Association and BlueRibbon Coalition said they support law enforcement cracking down on irresponsible riders who give the sport a bad name, but they also feel scapegoated.

Off-roaders are increasing while the amount of land available to them is shrinking as more wildlands are protected, off-roading rights advocates said. This results in increased trespassing and resource damage, they said.

A 2005 survey by the U.S. Forest Service found that participants in off-road activities increased by 42 percent nationwide between 2000 and 2004.

Meanwhile, public land where off-roaders can ride has been cut in half through closures, such as under the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, said Don Amador, the western representative of the BlueRibbon Coalition. Amador said that he would like to see more routes opened to riders.

“The Rangers really should reconsider pointing fingers at the OHV community when it was their agencies that often placed recreation management at the bottom of the priority list,” Amador wrote in an e-mail.

Meg Grossglass, a spokeswoman for the Off-Road Business Association Inc., said that off-roading groups want to partner with the Rangers for Responsible Recreation to increase enforcement of off-roading rules and educate riders through maps and other methods. Development in areas such as the High Desert has also cut down on areas where longtime residents used to be able to ride through open parcels of land, she said.

“The name of the game is you have to be reasonable,” she said. “Each side has to be a little unhappy.”

Will Surprise Canyon remain off limits to off-road drivers?

Four-wheel-drive enthusiasts want to reopen the wild road, but environmentalists say no. The fight over the state road is in federal court.


By Lee Romney, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

Five years after it was temporarily closed to off-road enthusiasts who winched their vehicles up its limestone waterfalls, a coveted canyon on Death Valley National Park's western edge has been reclaimed by nature's hand.

Thick willow groves have erased nearly all traces of the washed-out road that once pointed extreme sportsmen to the ruins of a onetime silver boom town. Bighorn sheep appear with greater frequency, conservationists note, and the endangered Inyo California towhee has returned.

But the battle for Surprise Canyon, home of the longest year-round stream in the Panamint Range, has revved up a notch: More than 100 four-wheel-drive aficionados determined to see their prized run reopened have filed a lawsuit in federal court that is being closely watched throughout the West.

The claim relies on a Civil War-era mining law that allowed counties and states to lay routes over federal land. Although the statute, known as RS 2477, was repealed three decades ago, routes established before then were allowed under a grandfather clause. A gravel toll road in Surprise Canyon that fell into public hands before succumbing to flooding is such a route, the lawsuit contends.

Battles over what routes qualify have intensified in recent years across Utah and other Western states, as emboldened counties, off-road enthusiasts and private landholders seek to wrest from federal hands thousands of old rights-of-way, rutted vehicle trails and even cattle paths.

But the Surprise Canyon claim — which demands that the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service immediately reopen the canyon to vehicles — appears to be the first federal court fight over a California route.

Since the Surprise Canyon suit was filed in late August, Inyo and San Bernardino counties have filed separate RS 2477 federal court claims that assert local control over 18 other routes.

Six environmental groups are seeking to intervene in the Surprise Canyon case, hoping to see the canyon permanently closed and to weigh in on the antiquated statute.

"This is a law that was passed a year after Lincoln was assassinated and repealed 30 years ago, and its dead hand is still haunting the protection of our national parks," said Ted Zukoski, a Denver staff attorney with Earthjustice, which is representing the environmental groups. "What they are attempting to do is to undermine protection for these beautiful wild areas."

Although Utah "has really been the epicenter of this debate," Zukoski added, "it certainly seems like the California desert is becoming another area where there's a tremendous amount of pressure on this issue."

Brian Hawthorne of the Idaho-based Blue Ribbon Coalition, which represents off-road enthusiasts, said the disputes are real and must be resolved to clarify where vehicles are permitted.

Hawthorne said he'd prefer to see the conflicts settled outside court: A New Mexico congressman last month proposed legislation that would allow states or counties to gain title by producing any official map or survey made before 1976. But Hawthorne conceded that passage was unlikely.

"We are looking at a monumental battle over each and every one of these roads," said Hawthorne, whose group has not taken a stance on Surprise Canyon.

Built in 1874, Surprise Canyon Road carried miners to Panamint City. Constant washouts prompted regular rebuilding. But a 1984 flash flood wreaked havoc that no one chose to counter.

Then, in 1989, hard-core off-road enthusiasts stacked boulders and pruned back willows to clear a path for their tricked-out machines, forging a route that at times took them directly through the stream bed and — with the help of steel winch cables — up its seven slick waterfalls. (The road had previously covered the stream, pushing it underground in places, before flooding stripped the canyon to bedrock.)

The California Desert Protection Act in 1994 placed the upper portion of Surprise in Death Valley National Park and designated the Bureau of Land Management portion below as wilderness. But Congress excluded a narrow strip of land around the washed-out road. That made it legally open to off-roaders, and the canyon's cachet grew.

Critics of the riders say they destroyed sensitive riparian habitat of the Panamint daisy and Panamint alligator lizard and spilled oil, gas and antifreeze in the water. The riders counter that they maintained the ghost town buildings and regularly hauled out trash. They also point out that the road had been host to a steady stream of cars for decades.

Off-road use came to a halt in 2001 when, as the result of a settlement in a broader lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the canyon was temporarily closed pending a detailed joint environmental review by both federal agencies. (The current lawsuit demands that the canyon be reopened regardless of the review.)

The 2001 settlement noted that the smattering of property owners up the canyon would be exempted and could request a key to the gate barring access to the road. To the off-road winchers, that smelled like an opportunity.

"What would you do if you wanted to get up there?" asked Joe Stocker, 70, a retired millwright who made dozens of canyon winch runs and is a plaintiff in the new case. "You'd buy land up there."

One property owner sold — to off-road enthusiasts who formed two land partnerships at the heart of the current case. But the Ridgecrest field manager of the Bureau of Land Management denied keys to the new property owners, saying that their access "would result in appreciable disturbance or damage to federal lands and resources." Each was invited instead to apply for a permit. One owner did, to no avail.

The suit demands that the agencies process that application if the RS 2477 claim is not upheld.

With the gate still locked, the new owners turned to RS 2477. The lawsuit was filed in the District of Columbia on Aug. 31. Environmental groups filed a motion to intervene earlier this month.

"The canyon's dramatic recovery," they wrote, "could be short-lived if it is again opened to motorized use."

Consequences could be broader: Counties across California and elsewhere have for years passed resolutions claiming control of roadways under RS 2477. They have also filed claims with federal agencies that control the underlying land. But an appellate court ruled last year in a Utah case that only courts could determine the validity of such claims.

The ruling also said courts should look to state law to determine what qualifies as a road under the statute. Utah requires continuous use for a decade. Colorado and other states have much weaker definitions. The Surprise lawsuit may shed some light on the law here.

"It may answer a question in California: What is a road?" said Karen Budd-Falen, a Wyoming lawyer retained by the off-roaders.

Zukoski, of Earthjustice, said he believes only states and counties have the right to bring RS 2477 claims. But Budd-Falen argues that under California law, public use alone can create a road, without a formal county designation. That means, she says, that the public can also file the claim. A court determination that her clients are entitled to sue could set a precedent, she said.

A Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman in Sacramento said the agency could not comment on the lawsuit but confirmed it is the first RS 2477 court action against the bureau in California.

Alan Stein, deputy district manger for resources at the bureau's California Desert district office, said the designation of a right-of-way would leave open many questions about its scope, how it should be maintained and who gets to decide. "None of it is simple," Stein said.

The National Park Service, meanwhile, finds itself facing three such federal court challenges, two filed by counties last month in California. San Bernardino County's suit asserts a claim to 14 roads in the Mojave National Preserve, placed under federal control 12 years ago by the California Desert Protection Act.

The county maintained the roads, some of which are paved, and relies on them to provide services to residents, said San Bernardino deputy county counsel Charles Scolastico.

Inyo County's suit claims four longtime "county highways" that are now un-maintained dirt roads in Death Valley National Park. Two have been closed — illegally, Inyo County claims.

All roads are in wilderness protected under the 12-year-old desert act.

What the county wants to do with the roads is beside the point, said Ralph "Randy" Keller, Inyo County assistant counsel.

"State law says only the supervisors can close a county highway," he said. "They are county roads under county control and, without even consulting the county, they've been taken. It comes down to an issue of local control."

National Park Service West Coast spokeswoman Holly Bundock said she could not comment on specific litigation, but she added: "We don't invite vehicle access in wilderness areas because that's fundamentally in conflict with the Wilderness Act and our policies on managing the Wilderness Act."

Reason for concern about sale of U.S. lands

Los Angeles Times

LETTERS
Re "This Land May Not Be Your Land," Dec. 4

Not too reassuring was Gerald Hillier's quote, "This is not a return to the Old West land rush," in the article about a bill to allow mining claim holders to purchase federal property.

Hillier is the former U.S. Bureau of Land Management district manager for the California Desert Conservation Area and now a consultant to county officials in four Southwestern states.

Having largely eviscerated conservation measures from the Conservation Area Management Plan during his tenure and, more recently, having played a role in representing the Blue Ribbon Coalition of off-highway vehicle users in the soon-to-be-released West Mojave Plan, such comments cannot be taken too seriously. Our public lands belong to all Americans, not a select few.

THOMAS EGAN

Helendale, Calif.

Egan is a former wildlife biologist with the Bureau of Land Management.

• • • • • •

The proposed legislation by Reps. Richard Pombo (R-Tracy) and Jim Gibbons (R-Nevada) is equivalent to a spendthrift heir selling his inheritance for a spending spree. Under the radar, without open discussion, the legislation would be a monumental change in the character of Western public land.

Don't be fooled by the "mining law reform" twist. Read the language: "to facilitate sustainable economic development" is a defined justification for privatization. Buyers, supported by a "certified appraiser," determine the price — an open invitation to bogus appraisals. The result: Anyone can claim public property, buy it and develop it. The property does not need to be a current mining claim, or have mineral value. Entire forests could be claimed and purchased by timber companies.

Anyone who has hiked, fished, driven through, looked at or in any other way appreciated public lands in the West should be aghast and horrified at this proposed legislation.

The astounding fact is that it squeaked through the House and could become law.

TOM BUDLONG

Los Angeles

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.