Tortoise a road block for Marines

Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center expansion area in Lucerne Valley.

By DAVID DANELSKI
Press-Enterprise

An adult desert tortoise weighs about 12 pounds and can take days to travel a mile, yet the reptiles have managed to get one of most formidable forces on earth – the United States Marine Corps – to reconsider a large training mission.

The Marines plan to conduct live ammunition training in August, using tanks and other heavy weaponry at their Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.

To prevent harming about 1,400 tortoises living in this stretch of the Mojave Desert, the military now plans to limit operations in its combat center expansion area in the Johnson Valley northwest of Landers.

The Marines had hoped to airlift the reptiles this spring to federally managed habitat land near Barstow to get them safely out of the way.

But military officials and federal land mangers recently announced that the relocation can’t proceed until they analyze how the move would affect tortoises and other wildlife already living in the recipient areas.

The spring move was canceled shortly after an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a legal challenge to it. Desert Tortoises are protected by the Endangered Species Act because they are listed as threatened with extinction.

Marine Capt. Justin E. Smith, a spokesman for Twentynine Palms, said by email that the extend of the use of 88,000-acre Johnson Valley expansion has not been determined, but training “will not negatively impact the desert tortoise species.”

The Marines “will comply with all environmental management requirements.”

Brian Croft, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, said he expects to talk with the Marines about how to avoid harming tortoises. The Marines, for example, may keep tanks and other motorized vehicles on designated roadways when traveling through tortoise areas.

The August training will be a large-scale, live-ammunition operation involving three battalions operating in extreme desert heat in real world warfare conditions, said Smith’s email. Last year’s exercises included troops from Canada and the United Kingdom.

The Johnson Valley has traditionally been an off-road-vehicle recreation area managed by the federal Bureau of Land Manage. But in late 2013, Congress added the valley to the Air Ground Combat Center.

Marine and BLM officials will hold a public meeting to discuss the Johnson Valley situation from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 2, at the Lucerne Valley Community Center in Lucerne.

Obama eyes remote corner of Mojave for desert monument

The Castle Peaks got their name because they resemble the ramparts of a castle. (Jay Calderon / The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

If you've never explored the Mojave Desert, the Castle Mountains wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Getting there isn't easy. From the Coachella Valley, the shortest route winds through the High Desert, east on Highway 62 and north through the Mojave National Preserve (the so-called "Las Vegas shortcut"), then east again past Nipton, a tiny railroad boomtown that's currently being sold for $5 million. The last leg of the trip runs through Nevada, crossing the state line near Searchlight before cutting back into California, via a series of rugged dirt roads that culminate in the Castle Mountains.

It's not a journey for the casual day-tripper. But once you get there...

The most stunning feature is the Castle Peaks, a series of jutting mountains that look like the ramparts of a castle. They loom large over the area's cholla cacti, creosote bushes and bighorn sheep. Baby Joshua trees shoot up from nurturing brush, even as their cousins in Joshua Tree National Park struggle to reproduce amid a changing climate. Abundant grasses and other verdant plants rise from the desert floor, providing so much ground cover that parts of the Castle Mountains look as much like a prairie as a desert.

​There's a ghost town, too, left over from a gold-mining boom in the early 1900s. But we'll get to that.

David Lamfrom, who works to protect California's deserts with the National Parks Conservation Association, guesses he's been to the Castle Mountains 50 or 60 times. Just a few hundred people visit each year, by his estimate.

“It’s just so freaking beautiful. It’s just a really unique place," Lamfrom said on a recent visit. "I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my time and energy and effort on the conservation of the Castle Mountains, even though there are a lot of places that really need and deserve protection.”

For the Castle Mountains, protection might come soon: Conservationists have urged President Barack Obama to declare the area a national monument, along with two larger sections of the desert. They expect Obama to grant their request within the next few weeks, creating the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains monuments through his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Republican politicians, mining interests and off-road vehicle enthusiasts will cry foul if Obama invokes the Antiquities Act, even though most of them support legislative efforts to protect those areas from rampant development. And even if Obama does take action, the Castle Mountains wouldn't completely avoid industrial activity: A Canadian company calledNewCastle Gold hopes to reopen a mine that shuttered in 2001 due to low gold prices, and it has every legal right to do so.

Whatever happens next, there's little disagreement the Castle Mountains deserve some kind of protection. Just ask off-roader Randy Banis, who opposes a presidential designation but has worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein to establish desert monuments through legislation. Asked about the Castle Mountains, Banis could barely contain himself: "Isn’t it incredible? Isn’t it absolutely incredible?"

"The vegetative diversity, and the health of the vegetation — I love stopping the vehicle and just stepping out and walking through," he said. "People are like, 'Really, this is a desert?' It’s just so beautiful.”

The Castle Mountains occupy an unusual perch in the vast Mojave Desert.

About an hour's drive from Las Vegas, the area is surrounded on three sides by the Mojave National Preserve; the fourth side is the Nevada border. If not for the gold mine, it would have been included in the California Desert Protection Act of 1994, which created the national preserve, along with Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks. Feinstein, who wrote that bill, cut 29,000 acres out of the proposed preserve, giving then-mine owner Viceroy Gold Corporation plenty of room to maneuver on its 7,500 acres.

By the late 2000s, the mine was closed, and energy companies were eager to build solar and wind farms across the desert. Against that backdrop — which alarmed conservationists — Feinstein wrote a bill to protect 1.6 million additional acres, mostly by establishing the Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow monuments. The Castle Mountains would have been added to the Mojave National Preserve.

But the bill failed to get traction in a gridlocked Congress, as did similar proposals in 2011 and 2015. So last summer, Feinstein and conservation groups started urging Obama to protect those areas via the Antiquities Act, which he'd already used to create or expand 19 national monuments, including the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California.

“The current political climate is making it difficult to move any lands legislation through either body of the Congress,” Feinstein said in October, at a public meeting that drew more than 1,000 people to the Whitewater Preserve to discuss the monument proposals. “My intention is to continue to push the bill, while simultaneously pushing a presidential designation. But let me be clear: My preference is very much to push the legislation.”

Monument status would preclude industrial development, from wind and solar farms to new mining. The designations would also bring new funding from the federal government, Lamfrom said, which in the Castle Mountains' case could be used to study unique plants and animals, survey Native American petroglyphs, develop a trails system and craft an interpretive plan to teach visitors about the area's history. The National Park Service would begin promoting the monuments, too, almost certainly boosting tourism.

The battle to preserve Castle Mountains

Desert gold

The proposed Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow monuments have commanded the most attention, since they're larger and closer to population centers. The Castle Mountains monument would be relatively small, and far from any California cities.

But conservationists say the Castle Mountains are just as deserving of protection — and not just because they offer stunning views.

Because of the area's unique geography — it's further east, and higher in elevation, than most of the Mojave Desert — the Castle Mountains foster a diversity of plant and animal life unmatched almost anywhere else in the desert. Monsoonal summer rains tied to the nearby Colorado River are particularly important, supporting dozens of species of grass that blanket the desert floor.

"It’s an extension of southwestern grasslands which extend from Texas all the way into California. This is typical of summer rainfall deserts," said Jim André, a botanist who runs UC Riverside's Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, located in the heart of the Mojave National Preserve. “Most Californians don’t think of California as receiving the monsoon, but in far eastern San Bernardino County it’s quite prominent."

The area is also part of the world's largest Joshua tree forest, which stretches from Mojave National Preserve into Nevada's Lake Mead National Recreation Area. And unlike in Joshua Tree National Park — where the namesake species is struggling to adapt to global warming — Joshua trees are thriving in the Castle Mountains. It's not hard to find healthy Joshua trees sprouting up from black brush, which serves as a spiky nursery to the young plants, warding off herbivores until they can fend for themselves.

The area's relatively high elevations make that possible, providing lower nighttime temperatures than the low-lying national park can.

"Oftentimes when people think of deserts, they think of sand dune systems, or they think of lonely, flat places," Lamfrom said. "But this is a rugged, beautiful mountain-scape filled with Joshua tree forests, with piñon, with juniper, with native grasslands...this is really, I think, one of the truly unique and remarkable places in our desert."

Unbroken wilderness

The same factors that give rise to the Castle Mountains' diverse plant life also support abundant wildlife. It would be difficult to list all of the creatures that spend time there: desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, Mojave ground squirrels, mule deer, mountain lions, Cooper's hawks, great horned owls and more. Several of those species are protected under the state or federal Endangered Species Acts.

Keeping the Castle Mountains pristine, conservationists say, is bigger than just giving those species another place to live. They see the Castle Mountains as a critical link in a chain of largely undisturbed desert that stretches from the Mojave National Preserve into Nevada, eventually connecting the 1.6-million-acre preserve with the 1.5-million-acre Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Keeping that chain intact is especially important for species like bighorn sheep, which roam the open desert. As cities, freeways and fences have increasingly crisscrossed what once was wilderness, bighorn sheep populations have fallen dramatically.

"You can’t keep them in isolation. You have to allow those connections to other (bighorn sheep) populations, so they can have genetic exchange," said Dennis Schramm, who served five years as superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve. "If you don’t protect it, and you put in more fences and windmills and solar fields and all those kinds of things, you’re chopping up the habitat."

The Castle Mountains could also provide habitat for a new species.

A century ago, pronghorns — the world's second-fast land animal, after cheetahs — thrived in the deserts of Southern California. But humans hunted the antelope-like species, and eventually it disappeared from the region.

For years, the National Park Service and state wildlife officials have wanted to reintroduce pronghorns in the Castle Mountains. But they've been waiting to take that step until the area receives stronger protection, which would help ensure their efforts won't be in vain.

Gold in the hills

More than 100 years ago, the Castle Mountains were better known for gold than they were for flora and fauna.

Three Nevada prospectors — Jim Hart, and the brothers Bert and Clark Hitt — struck gold there in December 1907, and by the next year a mining town known as Hart was thriving. The town had about 400 residents, along with five hotels and eight saloons, according to a plaque that greets visitors today. Lamfrom said he's heard the town had two brothels, although that isn't mentioned on the plaque.

Miners quickly realized there wasn't much gold that could be economically extracted, and within a decade the town was deserted. The buildings are gone, but remnants of Hart are still visible: Rusted metal cans litter the base of the gold-laden hills that give the Castle Mountains their name. Viceroy opened a new mine in 1992, although that one, too, lasted less than 10 years.

"The Western American history of this landscape has been intimately tied to mining, and the ability for the (National) Park Service to tell the story of mining here is really important," Lamfrom said.

Mining could also play a role in the Castle Mountains' future.

NewCastle, which bought the mining rights in 2012, estimates there are at least 4.2 million ounces of gold in the hills, which would yield nearly $5 billion at today's prices. A new mine could employ a few hundred people, said Marty Tunney, NewCastle's vice president for business development. The company is still conducting preliminary studies, and could be several years from opening a mine.

NewCastle's permit will expire in 2025, although it could ask San Bernardino County for an extension if there's enough gold to justify further mining. In the long term, the company hopes to give the land to the National Park Service, Tunney said.

"If we were able to mine it the way we would like to go and mine it, and extract the value of it, we’d like to go through full reclamation and hand the project over to the (Mojave National) Preserve," he said. "We currently don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t happen."

Tricky politics

The proposed Mojave Trails monument has generated more controversy than Sand to Snow or the Castle Mountains. Feinstein's bill would ban new mining claims across the monument's 942,000 acres, which surround historic Route 66, between the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. Big mining companies support the bill, but a cadre of smaller firms fiercely oppose it.

Rep. Paul Cook, a Yucca Valley Republican who represents the High Desert, has put forward a different proposal. His legislation, like Feinstein's, would create the 140,000-acre Sand to Snow national monument, stretching from the desert floor near Joshua Tree National Park to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio in the San Bernardino National Forest. But it would offer a lesser level of protection to the Mojave Trails, establishing a "special management area." Ten percent of that area would be open to new mining operations.

At the public meeting in October, John Sobel, Cook’s chief of staff, expressed hope that his boss and Feinstein could compromise. He criticized calls for Obama to use the Antiquities Act, saying a presidential designation would create “second-rate monuments because they lack the adequate support of locals and of Congress.”

Banis, who represents the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, supports Feinstein's bill, since it would keep the Mojave Trails monument open to off-roaders. He's worried a presidential designation would ultimately lead to the closure of the area's dirt roads.

“Boy, it’s going to get me mad if they name this thing the Mojave Trails, and then they go and close the roads. I’ll be so ticked off," Banis said. "That would be such a slap in the face to the recreation community.”

The Castle Mountains are less contentious. While Feinstein and Cook's bills would add the area to the Mojave National Preserve — an option that isn't available through the Antiquities Act — conservationists say a monument designation would have the same effect.

Cook disagrees. He said in an email that a presidential designation could "seriously jeopardize the existing mine by including land needed for mining operations, as well as limiting the ability to drill for wells to supply water needed for operation." He also said adding the area to the preserve would make more sense, from a management perspective, than creating a standalone monument.

"I view a Castle Mountain monument designation as a stealth attempt to shut down one of the most important mineral projects in the country," Cook said in an email.

NewCastle isn't so concerned. Company officials prefer Feinstein and Cook's bills to a presidential designation, since they know the bills would protect their ability to mine. But the company doesn't oppose the Antiquities Act route, so long as Obama includes similar protections for mining. Tunney, NewCastle's vice president for business development, said the company has been "given some assurances by Sen. Feinstein's group" that Obama's Castle Mountains designation would look similar to the provisions in her bill.

"If that’s the case, that works for us," Tunney said.

Dianne Feinstein’s Million-Acre Land Grab Falters

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

by Chriss W. Street
Breitbart News Network

Three months after Breitbart News and others outed Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) backdoor effort to freeze development on over one million acres of California dessert by having President Obama declare the area subject to the Antiquities Act of 1906, her efforts are going down in flames as Congressional Republicans are moving to ban the Antiquities designation.

Feinstein’s seven-year quest to convince Congress to sequester over 1,560 square miles of the Mojave Desert into three new national monuments under her proposed "Desert Conservation and Recreation Act” has gone nowhere. Feinstein has argued that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains’ is home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.

The Senator had faced opposition from an unusual coalition of sustainable energy developers, wilderness advocates, off-road vehicle users, military bases, energy companies and American Indian tribes. By trying to circumvent Congress through artificially tying up the property with a phony search for non-existent artifacts, she has incensed Republicans and upset many Democrats, who worry about future Presidential actions.

U.S. Rep. Paul Cook (R-CA), whose district covers the area Feinstein wants restricted, complained at a Congressional hearing in September that the Antiquities Act “sets in motion a Washington-based management plan that can sharply curtail recreational and economic activities. I’m deeply concerned that outreach efforts to the public have been hasty and inadequate.”

Cook, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel who won a Bronze Star and has two Purple Hearts from combat duty in the Vietnam War, has said that when he heard about Feinstein’s backdoor efforts, his number one goal was to stop Presidential action.

Cook is a staunch military supporter and sits on the powerful Armed Services, Veterans,’ and Foreign Services Committees. The military is a substantial user of the terrain that Feinstein wants walled off. Because the area contains the remnants of General George Patton’s World War II training camps, national security interests have been lobbying Cook to lead the opposition against Feinstein’s Congressional end run.

The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association both oppose the Antiquities designation and have given Cook perfect 100 percent ratings for each year since he was first elected in 2007. They have lobbied the congressman to oppose any executive order by President Barack Obama regarding the area.

On October 1, 2015, Congressman Cook introduced HR 3668, the California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act (CMORCA). He described the bill as “a balanced approach to protecting, managing, and using our desert and forest areas in San Bernardino and Inyo Counties.” But the bill also bans designating the area under the Antiquities Act.

Cook’s bill creates would create a National Monument, but also opens 100,000 acres to mining, and designates Johnson Valley and five more off-highway vehicle areas as “National OHV recreation areas.”

The new designation would ban commercial development in those areas if the Secretary of the Interior determines the development is incompatible with the purpose of the bill. But the bill sets up the opportunity for development to be approved in a future Republican administration.

Although Senator Feinstein has continually claimed that desert residents are “overwhelmingly in favor” of the three monument designations she is pushing for, the City of Twentynine Palms, the City of Banning, and the San Gorgonio Pass Regional Water Alliance quickly signed on as supporters of Rep. Cook’s CMORCA.

Environmentalists have been shocked by the rising support for the CMORCA bill, which they call part of a a “radical anti-public-lands agenda” by House Natural Resources Committee Republicans, representing a “neo-sagebrush rebellion that appears to be emerging in certain Western states.”

The Rep. Cook’s California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act is expected to have its first House Natural Resources Committee hearing as early as December 9.

Weekend warriors fear Washington land grab could take off-roading off the board

A group of off-roaders and others are attempting to fight a proposed designation of three national monuments in the California desert under the Antiquities Act. (Corva.org)

By Perry Chiaramonte
FoxNews.com

California outdoors enthusiasts fear Washington is poised to put up roadblocks on some of the Golden State's most treasured trails by designating three desert destinations totaling more than 1 million acres national landmarks.

The Obama administration is considering using the federal Antiquities Act to bypass the legislative process at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose efforts to have the Mojave Trails and Castle Mountain, both in the Mojave Desert, and a section of the Sonoran Desert named federal sites were repeatedly blocked by Republicans. A White House move could put the land under federal control, which critics say could cut funding for upkeep or even restrict access.

“Bypassing the legislative process using the Antiquities Act would be as disastrous as it is undemocratic, creating winners and losers with the stroke of a pen,” said Rep. Paul Cook, R-Calif., who has sponsored a bill that bears some similarities to Feinstein's, but would ensure off-roading and mining could continue on the land. Cook’s bill would also allow the state to create water projects for wildlife conservation.

“Any time you take away the consensus of the local community they are left with something they did not ask for." - Amy Granat, California Off-Road Vehicle Association

The Mojave Trails lie in the desert of the same name in eastern California and are part of a 140-mile road that stretches from the Colorado River to Mojave River. The Sand to Snow Monument would cover 135,000 acres from the Sonoran Desert floor in Coachella Valley to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio, in the San Bernardino Mountain range. The Castle Mountains lie on the Border of Nevada and California near the famed Joshua Tree region and reach an elevation of 5,543 feet.

While the Obama administration has not said publicly if the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountain national monuments will be designated, Feinstein asked the president in August to take the action. The Antiquities Act was signed into law in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt, and gives the president authority to create national monuments from public lands to protect significant natural, cultural or scientific features. It has been used more than 100 times, including for such landmarks as the Grand Canyon, Mount St. Helen's and a stretch of the Underground Railroad in Maryland. Given that President Obama has invoked the Antiquities Act to name 19 sites national monuments since 2009 and as recently as July, Cook and other critics have reason to believe the White House could do so again, especially at the invitation of a powerful Democratic ally.

"We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Amy Granat, managing director of the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, which has been fighting the legislative proposals for two years. "More and more of the desert is being taken away from the people. If you look at the entirety of the desert, there has always been a no-win when the Antiquities Act has been put in place.”

Cook supports the designation, but through legislation and on terms that allow current uses to continue. He said a White House decree based on the Antiquities Act “sets in motion a Washington-based management plan" that will ultimately leave the recreational area unfunded - and unkempt.

“ ... the roads and facilities will be left to degrade to a point where public use is unsafe or impossible,” he said. “Anyone who’s read the recent reporting on the newly-created San Gabriel National Monument’s dire situation can attest to this. Use of the Antiquities Act will create more “orphan” monuments like San Gabriel, this time in the heart of the California desert.”

One example of the Antiquities Act not helping to improve an area can be seen at the San Gabriel Mountains, range of mountains located across Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and separates the City of Angels and the Mojave. It has been just over a year since the White House designated the mountainous region as a National monument but the area has still not received any federal funding. The 970-square-mile region badly needed the funding to combat growing blight in the area, but is still plagued by garbage and vandalism. And with no federal funding in sight, the National Park Service does not have the means for proper upkeep.

Feinstein is not without support in her home state. An Antiquities Act designation for the three landmarks could actually bolster recreational activities, according to the Campaign for the California Desert.

“The point that Rep. Cook and other opponents of the monument designation are missing is that when our shared public lands are protected, it’s for the continued use and benefit of all Americans," the group said in a statement. "It is only when our public lands are sold off or leased by a developer does the public’s access to our public lands becomes restricted.”

Desert off-road plan draws opposition from environmentalists

Map of the West Mojave (WEMO) Route Network Project and Plan Amendment. (BLM)

By Jim Steinberg
The San Bernardino Sun

VICTORVILLE — A federal Bureau of Land Management off-road travel plan for the Mojave Desert drew stiff resistance from environmental groups at a public hearing Thursday evening.

“It is unnecessary degradation of federal lands,” said Neil Nadler, a Lucerne Valley member of Alliance for Desert Preservation. “It is going to have a profound effect on the environment.”

“It’s shocking,” said Eileen Anderson, chief scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The West Mojave Route Network Project is a travel management planning effort covering 9.2 million acres in the Western portion of the Mojave Desert, which includes parts of San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Kern and Inyo counties as well as a small portion of Riverside County.

Approximately 3.1 million acres in the planning area are public lands managed by BLM, and only BLM land covered by the proposal was discussed Thursday night.

Other public hearings are scheduled in Lone Pine on Tuesday and Yucca Valley on April 15.

The land area served by roads involves about 2.35 million acres, while roads are prohibited in wilderness areas and other special zones which total more than 700,000 acres.

The preferred alternative in the draft plan:

• Designates approximately 10,000 miles of routes for public motorized use.

• Designates approximately 130 miles of routes for non-motorized or non-mechanized (no bicycles) use.

• Closes approximately 4,400 miles of routes to motorized use.

• Reduces stopping, parking and camping outside of Desert Wildlife Management Areas from 300 feet to 100 feet and

• Maintains stopping, parking and camping restriction within the environmentally sensitive Desert Wildlife Management Areas to within 50 feet of the route center line.

• Opens three dry lake beds to unrestricted motorized use from the status of limited to designated routes: These are Cuddeback, Coyote and Chisholm Trail.

• Closes Koehn, a dry lake bed, which is now limited to designated routes.

“There are problems with sinkholes in that area,” said Jeffrey K. Childers, assistant field manager for the BLM’s Barstow Field Office.

“We don’t want people going in there,” he said.

The route plan will be in agreement with the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which involves 22.5 million acres of the California desert, Childers said.

Among those attending the public hearing Thursday was Howard Brown, a mineral exploration and mining geology consultant based in Apple Valley, who said that closing 4,400 miles of routes to motorized vehicles was disappointing.

“The number of people in California is only going to grow. And more people are going to want outdoor recreation,” he said.

“And there is (in the proposal) less access available, he said.

The proposed route network project is the first sophisticated effort to catalogue every road in the BLM study area, Childers said in an interview.

Some of the 10,000 miles of unpaved roads are motorcycle trails only inches wide, he said.

“I was shocked when I first heard about the 10,000 miles,” Anderson said in an interview. “I was flabbergasted. It is unacceptable.”

Anderson said the opening up of that many routes so far off the beaten path makes enforcement an impossibility.

“Once they (off-highway vehicles) are back there, there will be no effective way to keep them on designated routes,” she said.

Tom Budlong, a Los Angeles resident who said he enjoys the solitude of the Mojave Desert, said that the unenforceablilty of the plan will doom it to failure.

This is the second go-around for a BLM route management plan. Another proposal, advanced in 2006, was the focus of a lawsuit by Anderson’s Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

A 2009 court order did not find issue with particular routes, which then covered 5,000 miles, and did not call for any additional route closures, but the court order did fault the methods used to designate those off-road routes.

The court found that the BLM violated regulations spun off from executive orders issued by Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter regarding efforts to minimize impacts regarding natural, esthetic, scenic or other values, said Lisa Belenky, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Anderson said she believes that aspects of the 10,000 miles of routes still violate those regulations.

Both Anderson and Nadler asked for a 90-day extension on the comment period which ends June 4.

And both criticized the route plan for ignoring the importance — and scientific research — about the vital role that land links between designated wilderness or other undeveloped areas play in species survival.

Both said the road density, in certain areas, was so intense that it would inhibit necessary migration of mountain sheep, desert tortoise and other protected species.

Nadler said that heavy route concentration would significantly “degregate” public lands near large population areas, like the Juniper Flats area on BLM land south of Apple Valley and north of San Bernardino National Forrest.

And he called the 130 miles of routes for non-motorized and non-mechanized travel “a joke” because it is such a small number.

Bill would create two new Mojave Desert national monuments

Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduces legislation that aims to balance open space protections with off-highway vehicle use, energy development.

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN
Press-Enterprise

Sen. Dianne Feinstein re-introduced legislation Monday, Feb. 9, that would expand California desert protections by establishing two new national monuments in the Mojave, additional wilderness areas and permanent off-highway vehicle areas.

Feinstein’s California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act of 2015 amends the 1994 California Desert Protection Act that she also introduced. That earlier bill established the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve and protected more than 7.6 million acres of California desert wilderness.

“This piece of legislation is the final chapter in a long effort to preserve one of the most magnificent landscapes in the United States,” Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a written statement. “We must ensure that critical parts of the California desert – with its mountain vistas, bighorn sheep, mule deer, desert tortoises, Joshua trees, Native American petroglyphs and much more – will be protected for all time.”

This is the third introduction of the bill by Feinstein since 2009, after earlier attempts stagnated in Congress. Supporters of the bill said they aren’t sure it will pass the current Republican-led Congress but commended the legislator for collaborating with environmentalists, off-roaders, renewable energy developers, cattle ranchers, miners, utilities and the Department of Defense.

“I think they’ve done a really wonderful job of crafting a bill right up the middle. There’s something for everybody here,” said Randy Banis of Lancaster, a member of off-road groups and the Bureau of Land Management’s Desert Advisory Council.

The key piece of the bill, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is creation of two national monuments that would connect critical wildlife corridors.

The Sand to Snow National Monument would encompass 135,000 acres, from the desert floor in the Coachella Valley to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio. It would connect to the western edge of Joshua Tree National Park and include Big Morongo Canyon Preserve and San Gorgonio Wilderness, eventually linking to the Whitewater Preserve.

David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, an Oak Glen-based nonprofit group that purchases land and opens it to the public, said Sand to Snow would be the most diverse of all national monuments because it includes two distinct deserts as well as pinyon pine forests, oak woodlands and coastal chaparral.

The larger proposed monument, Mojave Trails, is slated for 965,000 acres between the Mojave National Preserve and Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base. It would include about 200,000 acres that once belonged to the Catellus Development Corp., a former arm of the Santa Fe railway.

The Wildlands Conservancy paid $45 million in private funds to buy more than half a million acres of the unspoiled Catellus lands in 2004.

It involved 160-acre parcels laid out like a checkerboard along either side of the railroad tracks from Barstow to the Colorado River, the result of a grant from the government in the 1800s to spur development.

The conservancy donated the land to the government for protection and public use.

Included in the Mojave Trails National Monument would be “phenomenal landforms,” Myers said, including the Amboy Crater, Pisgah lava flows, Cady Mountains and Bigelow Cholla Garden Wilderness.

Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa in Pipes Canyon, northwest of Yucca Valley, also are slated for protection under the bill. In 2011, environmentalists vigorously fought a proposed industrial-scale wind farm on the buttes, which contain rare plants and Native American artifacts.

The bill proposes adding 4,500 acres to Joshua Tree National Park, 22,000 acres to the Mojave National Preserve and 39,000 acres to Death Valley National Park, and designates six new BLM wilderness areas covering 250,000 acres.

Feinstein’s bill also addresses other desert uses: off-road recreation and renewable energy development.

“With so many competing uses for this land, it is essential that we come together to build consensus,” she said.

The legislation designates five existing off-highway vehicle areas on 142,000 acres as permanent recreation areas. They include Dumont Dunes, El Mirage, Stoddard Valley, Rasor and Spangler Hills.

Banis, who worked with off-roaders to propose changes to an October draft of the bill, said 15 off-highway organizations supported it – up from just three letters of support from the industry for the last version of the bill.

Among the changes they proposed – and got in the final bill – were inclusion of Dumont Dunes to study possible expansions of El Mirage and Spangler Hills that eventually could complete some four-wheel-drive trails, he said.

The latest version also adds 80 miles of newly designated dirt roads that can be used by cars and off-road vehicles, he said.

Renewable energy development also was addressed in the bill.

None of the areas proposed for protection are included in the 150,000 acres previously identified by the Department of the Interior for potential solar development in the desert.

The bill encourages development in solar zones established by the federal government to avoid conflicts over conservation land.

It also allows for upgrades to transmission lines necessary to bring clean energy from new desert solar and wind farms to urban areas while still protecting pristine landscapes.

Feds charge five Utahns in Recapture Canyon protest ride

Recapture » San Juan Commissioner Lyman organized the event in May to protest federal control of public lands

ATV riders cross into a restricted area of Recapture Canyon, north of Blanding, Utah, on Saturday, May 10, 2014, in a protest against what demonstrators call the federal government’s overreaching control of public lands. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Trent Nelson)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

Federal authorities are accusing a San Juan County commissioner and a handful of protesters of conspiracy and illegally riding ATVs into southeast Utah’s Recapture Canyon in May.

The Bureau of Land Management closed the canyon to motorized use in 2007 to keep wheels off its many archaeological sites. About 50 riders motored into the canyon following a May 10 rally in Blanding denouncing federal "overreach" and mismanagement of public lands.

But only those suspected of organizing or promoting the illegal ride were targeted in charges announced Wednesday by acting U.S. Attorney Carlie Christensen.

The charges allege that Commissioner Phil Lyman, a Blanding accountant and a vocal critic of BLM policies that inhibit access to public lands, "advertised" the ride through a newspaper article and social media.

"We respect the fact that the citizens of this State have differing and deeply held views regarding the management and use of Recapture Canyon, and recognize that they have the right to express those opinions freely. Nevertheless, those rights must be exercised in a lawful manner and when individuals choose to violate the law, rather than engage in lawful protest, we will seek to hold those individuals accountable under the law," Christensen said in a prepared statement.

During the week leading up to the ride, BLM state director Juan Palma warned would-be protesters that their actions could damage cultural sites, which are protected under federal law, and said illegal riders would face legal consequences. Ancestral Puebloans who lived in the canyon until 800 years ago left artifacts, dwellings and graves.

The five defendants, all current or former San Juan County residents, were charged with "operation of off-road vehicles on public lands closed to vehicles" and conspiracy, offenses that carry up to one year in jail and $100,000 in fines.

None was charged with damaging archaeological sites, but prosecutors said the investigation remains open.

The defendants include Monte Wells, Shane Marian, Franklin Holliday and Jay Redd. The men are ordered to appear Oct. 17 before U.S. Magistrate Evelyn Furse.

Redd, who now lives in Santa Clara, is the son of the late James Redd, the Blanding physician who took his life five years ago after his arrest in an BLM investigation into artifacts trafficking.

Utah protesters prepare for new face-off with feds

In this 2010 photo, Bureau of Land Management staffer Tom Heinlein puts a "No vehicles" placard at the trail head of Recapture Canyon near Blanding, Utah. (Leah Hogsten / Salt Lake Tribune)

by John M. Glionna
Los Angeles Times

This eye-blink of a town in the state’s scenic southeastern corner bills itself as the “Gateway to Adventure.” But this weekend it promises to be more like a launchpad for civil unrest.

A band of angry citizens plans to ride all-terrain vehicles onto closed-off, federally managed public land Saturday in protest against the federal Bureau of Land Management, which many say has unfairly closed off a prized area, cheating residents of outdoor recreation.

The ride, organized by San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, is a gambit to assert county sovereignty over Recapture Canyon, known for its archaeological ruins, that BLM officials say has been jeopardized from overuse. The canyon was closed to motor vehicles in 2007, the agency said, after two men forged an illegal seven-mile trail. Hikers and those on horseback are still allowed there.

Lyman and his supporters want the BLM to act more quickly on a years-old request for a public right-of-way through the area. “You can’t just arbitrarily shut down a road in San Juan County,” he said. “If you can do that and get away with it, what else can you do?”

The revolt has received national attention, coming at the heels of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s successful standoff last month against the BLM that suggests a rising battle across the West over states’ rights on federally managed public lands. Tensions rose in Utah this week after two men pointed a gun at a BLM employee on a highway.

The Blanding protest is being spearheaded not by any citizen rancher like Bundy, but rather by an outspoken local public official — a sign of the growing frustrations in a rural county composed of nearly 90% public lands managed by the BLM. As a result, locals say, they have long been shut out of land-use decisions that that intimately affect their lives and economy.

Many say the Nevada incident and the Blanding protest are both reminiscent of the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion, in which communities across the West decried what they called the overreaching power of the federal government.

In recent years, conservative lawmakers in several Western states have renewed the call for greater state and local control of federal lands — many describing the federal government as an occupying force.

Lyman says he has a right to represent his local constituency against outside agitators, including the federal government. And he enjoys widespread support here.

“I think more than 80% of the people in this town stand behind his cause,” said 33-year resident Jill Bayles, a retired nurse who said she misses driving her ATV in Recapture Canyon.

“I won’t be at the protest because my back hurts, but if it didn’t, I’d be out there on my ATV, leading the charge,” she said. “People here are just tired of the Park Service and BLM telling us what to do.”

Environmental groups have spoken out in support of the BLM, saying that fragile Recapture Canyon must be protected. In a statement issued Friday, the Wilderness Society called for the area “to remain closed to motorized use so its valuable natural, cultural and historic resources can be protected.”

This week, BLM officials notified Lyman that any illegal foray in the area would bring consequences such as citations and arrest. “I strongly urge you to cancel the proposed ride in the closed portion of the canyon,” Lance Porter, the agency’s local district manager in Moab, wrote in a hand-delivered letter. “BLM will seek all appropriate civil and criminal penalties against anyone who participates in the proposed ride.”

Lyman quickly responded with a letter saying that the ride was still on and that local resentment of federal officials here had not cooled: “I do not consider my protest, or the protest of those who choose to participate on May 10, to be in violation of the law.”

Many across the West are watching to see what happens in Recapture Canyon.

Earlier this week, two men wearing hooded sweatshirts brandished a handgun at a BLM worker driving an agency vehicle, holding up a sign that read, “You need to die.” BLM workers have since been advised to take precautions such as not wearing their uniforms, and the agency issued a statement saying threats against its employees “will not be tolerated.”

The protest comes just a month after Bundy successfully took on the BLM over his claims to graze hundreds of cattle on public land without paying fees. In that incident, the federal government backed down after raiding the rancher’s land — pushed back by the arrival of hundreds of so-called citizen soldiers, many armed with semiautomatic weapons.

Officials said the retreat came after they feared bloodshed.

Lyman’s protest was planned long before the Bundy incident, but now militia who rallied to help Bundy are expected to converge in this town of 3,500 residents settled a century ago by Mormon missionaries.

In recent days, many militia members have left camps near the Bundy ranch 80 miles north of Las Vegas to make the nearly 500-mile drive to Blanding.

“There aren’t as many men here as there were a few days ago,” Bundy’s wife, Carol, told The Times. “Many of them have gone up to Utah.’

Asked whether they would be armed, she said, “They’re militia! Of course they’re carrying their weapons.”

On Friday, Stephen Dean, a 46-year-old Salt Lake City artist and self-proclaimed militiaman, sat in his van at a park where a protest rally was scheduled for the evening. “I drove up from the Bundy ranch today to show my support for local people here for access to public lands,” he said, an American flag flying from his radio antenna.

He said he was a member of a Utah militia group known as the People’s United Mobile Armed Services. “Cliven told me there was another cause up here,” he said. “I’m from Utah, so this is important to me.”

On the militia group’s Facebook page, Dean posted a message that said, “This could be the next big story as the ATV loving locals team with Militia groups to recapture Recapture Canyon.”

He added: “The pro-ATV dude at the grocery store said ‘it could get ugly really fast.’” He closed the post with, “Arm yourselves!”

Later that night, he set up a microphone and tried to solicit funds from 75 people who had arrived to hear Lyman speak.

When Lyman arrived, he was perturbed that his rally had been commandeered by a militia he didn’t invite. “This is my crowd,” he told a reporter. “But I don’t just want to get up and push them out of the way.”

Later, he walked up to the microphone and asked Dean: “Who are you, anyway?”

He then told the crowd that he and other protesters planned to ride their ATVs onto federal land in the morning. “This isn’t political; this isn’t economic. This is just who we are,” he said to applause.

“If you make a rule that I have to lick your boots, I’m just not going to do that,” he added. “I’ve tried to work with these federal people and have spent a lot of time on my knees. But sometimes you just have to stand up for yourselves.”

Meanwhile, officials have urged calm.

“I hope we can continue to use civil dialogue in matter because nobody wants to see people get hurt,” Kathleen Clarke, who was a BLM director from 2001 to 2006, told The Times. “A big show of force and a showdown at the OK Corral is just not helpful. We don’t want that kind of standoff.”

She added: “it’s never a good thing when you have one group of armed Americans lined up against another.”

Marines, off-roaders compromise over area near Twentynine Palms

Trails used by off-road vehicles go through Johnson Valley west of the Twentynine Palms Marine combat training base. For a decade, the Marine Corps and off-roaders have argued about who should be able to use the area. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

by TONY PERRY
Los Angeles Times

A near decade-long dispute between the Marine Corps and off-road vehicle enthusiasts over a rocky patch of desert west of the base at Twentynine Palms has ended in a compromise brokered by Congress.

Neither side got all it wanted in the tussle over the nearly 200,000 acres of forbidding Johnson Valley -- a place of rugged beauty that off-roaders say is virtually without peer for their sport. The Marines say the same about their training needs.

As included in the 2014 defense bill signed by President Obama, approximately 43,000 acres of Johnson Valley will be for recreational use only, 79,000 acres will be for the Marine Corps, and 53,000 acres will be shared between the off-roaders and the Marines.

Just how that sharing will be accomplished has yet to be decided.

"Generally we're pleased," said Steve Egbert, a Tulare pig farmer and president of the 6,000-member California Assn. of Four-Wheel Drive Clubs, one of several off-road organizations involved in the issue.

"As long as it works out the way the bill intends, we can live with that," Egbert said Friday. "We would have preferred something different. But this is probably the best we can get."

Maj. Gen. David Berger, commanding general of the base at Twentynine Palms, said that without the additional training area, Marines would not be able to train effectively to fight at the brigade-level.

With the additional area, he said, Marines will "learn to fight the way [they're] actually going to fight in a conflict, at that size level."

For the off-roaders, the annual King of the Hammers race, billed as the toughest desert race in the nation, drawing more than 20,000 spectators and participants, will continue, although its course will have to be redrawn slightly, officials said.

At a public meeting this week in Yucca Valley, Bureau of Land Management field manager Katrina Symons said the arrangement calling for the Marines and off-road community to share part of Johnson Valley is the first of its kind.

About the only thing that comes close is an agreement that allows the public to use the beach near Vandenberg Air Force Base except when the base is launching a missile or satellite, officials said.

The Johnson Valley plan allows the Marines to use the shared area for two 30-day stretches a year for combat training. Just when those 30-day stretches will be has yet to be decided, BLM officials said.

The off-roaders had posted a petition on the White House website calling for Congress to turn down the Marine Corps bid to annex the Johnson Valley land: "The Marines current expansion plan is unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible. Expanding the world's largest Marine base will cost taxpayers millions."

The petition gained 29,456 supporters.

In response, a post by a deputy under-secretary of defense said that while the military places a "high value" on community relations, lack of the Johnson Valley area for training would force the Marines to "rely on classroom instructions and simulation which cannot provide realistic and practical experience."

The Marine Corps has long insisted that it needs additional land at the 640,000-acre base at Twentynine Palms for large-scale, live-fire training exercises including infantry and air power.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Paul Cook (R-Apple Valley), a retired Marine colonel, worked to bring the two sides together.

After the bill was signed by Obama, Cook said that the agreement "ensures public safety, while also balancing the training needs of the Marine Corps with the rights of the off-road community."

While the Marine Corps had issues of national defense on their side, the off-roaders talked of their impact on the local economy: an estimated $71 million annually.

The area set aside exclusively for the public will be known as the Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Area and is nearly as large as the Imperial Sand Dunes at Glamis in the Imperial Valley, Cook noted.

The area includes topographic features that draw off-roaders and others: Spooners, Aftershock, Sunbonnet, the Rockpile and more.

For the shared area, training is not set for anytime soon. It will probably take at least 18 months for the Marine Corps to resolve three iron-ore mining claims and also to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and complete an environmental review involving how to protect the desert tortoise.

Off-roaders cry foul at renewable energy plan

Brightsource Solar Facility

Anneli Fogt
Desert Dispatch

VICTORVILLE • Off-roading enthusiast Jon Stewart was among dozens of people who showed up at a public hearing Friday to protest a plan that would fast-track renewable energy projects throughout California’s deserts.

“They’re not looking at hunting, photography, astronomy and stargazing, it’s all of these little things people want to go out and do and enjoy,” said Stewart, a member of the California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs.

One of the main topics of Friday’s Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission meeting was expected to be OHV vehicles on the Pacific Crest Trail. However, after a presentation on the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, the focus quickly shifted to the preservation of the desert and the use of public land.

The plan is a collaboration between the country, state and numerous other agencies to take 22 million acres of the desert from the Mexico border to Inyo County and use the natural resources — sun and wind — for renewable energy. The plan has been under scrutiny since in its introduction in 2012.

The tipping point of Friday’s meeting was the concern over the preservation of recreational areas. Even though the plan states that recreational areas will be preserved, many OHV proponents are wary.

“It’s a bait-and-switch tactic,” said Stewart. “They’re subdividing (OHV vehicles) into a corridor and not looking at the big picture of how people enjoy the desert.”

OHMVR commissioner Kevin Murphy said it is “alarming to think about zoning the desert” and cutting it up into areas of energy production while leaving others for those who want to photograph or enjoy recreation.

“Someone trying to appease one group to use the land for some non-public benefit is upsetting as a person that lives out here and loves the desert,” said Lancaster resident Doug Parham. “Recreation has never been controlled.”

Parham suggested putting solar panels on the roofs of the urban landscape where there is plenty of open space on the tops of buildings and parking garages.

Terry Weiner from the Desert Protective Council seconded Parham’s suggestions of urban solar but had different concerns behind her reasoning.

Weiner said the problems go beyond humans’ desire for unspoiled beauty and recreation. She said solar panels cause problems for wildlife as well. She said birds can be burned by the heat coming off of solar towers or mistake a sea of solar panels for water. She also said the land can be negatively affected by the massive amounts of construction. Weiner urged the plan to be held off until all of the studies are done about how everything will be affected.

The public draft of the plan is expected to be released in the spring or summer this year, and there will be a 90-day comment period for the public to voice its opinions.

Glamis Dunes: Judge rejects lawsuit, opening new areas to off-roaders

Additional areas of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, known as Glamis, will be opened to off-roaders this fall. (AP)

By Janet Zimmerman
Riverside Press-Enterprise

Ending a 14-year closure, about 40,000 acres of the popular Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area will be opened to off-road vehicles this fall after a federal court judge overruled environmentalists’ objections.

The land had been placed off limits to protect the Peirson’s milk vetch, a perennial herb listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The 250-square-mile recreation site in Imperial County is one of the most popular off-roading areas in Southern California, drawing an estimated 1.2 million visitors a year. It’s commonly known as Glamis for the small town there — the name popularized on T-shirts, decals and bumper stickers.

Off-road enthusiasts celebrated the decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District Court of California in San Francisco. Her ruling last week upholds a 2013 management plan adopted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that includes lifting most of the milk-vetch closure.

“It’s an excellent riding area,” said Jim Bramham, a board member of the American Sand Association, on Monday. “It’s been historically some of the best open dunes for people who like to do long, lineal rides and explore the desert.”

Bramham’s group was one of 10 that helped fight the lawsuit challenging the BLM’s plan. The American Sand Association’s website urges riders to stay out of closed areas until the BLM removes red off-limits stakes.

The largest area that will reopen is in the center of the dunes, with a small portion south of Interstate 8 and another in the northern section near Highway 78, Bramham said.

The dunes are the largest such formation in North America, covering almost 200,000 acres in southeast Imperial County, near the U.S.-Mexico border. The area also is known as the Algodones Dunes.

Officials with the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the lawsuit, said they are considering whether to appeal the decision.

In her ruling, Illston found that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is overdue in issuing a recovery plan for the Peirson’s milk vetch, and ordered one done by 2019.

The court order maintains closure of 9,261 acres of critical habitat deemed necessary for plant’s survival, as well as 26,000 acres of the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness that is permanently closed to vehicles.

The remainder, more than 127,000 acres, will be open to sand rails, motorcycles, four-wheelers and other off-highway vehicles.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, worries about enforcement of the closures.

“The critical habitat follows the geography of the dunes. It looks like a big comb. I don’t know how they’ll be able to enforce keeping trespassing from happening in these areas that look like fingers going out from the backbone of the comb,” she said.

Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator for the Desert Protective Council in San Diego, said she has seen evidence of traffic in a closure area she regularly visits off Interstate 8 near the Buttercup Campground.

“People weren’t respecting that closure. They were riding through there,” said Weiner, who noticed many of the red stakes buried in sand or ridden over when she was there last month.

“That is the only place that the Peirson’s milk vetch lives on the entire planet,” she said. “The seeds can stay alive in sand for up to 20 years, but that requires the sand not being constantly turned up by tires, which dries them out.”

The Bureau of Land Management will work with off-roading groups to educate the public and develop new maps and signs to direct riders away from closures.


Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area

Size: Almost 200,000 acres, the largest mass of sand dunes in North America. The dune system extends for more than 40 miles in a band averaging 5 miles wide.

Where: In the southeast corner of California, on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Origin: The dunes were formed by windblown sands of ancient Lake Cahuilla.

Flora, fauna: Include Peirson’s milk vetch, a perennial herb, and desert tortoise, both listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Cool fact: The dunes are popular with moviemakers, who first filmed there in 1913. The list of credits includes “Star Wars,” “Jarhead” and “Scorpion King.”

Cook continues Johnson Valley legislative efforts

Jose Quintero
Desert Dispatch

WASHINGTON • Rep. Paul Cook took another step this week toward permanently protecting the Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area by introducing a bill that would give the land a special federal designation.

Cook, R-Apple Valley, announced in a news release Thursday that he had introduced H.R. 4371, which would make Johnson Valley the first national off-highway vehicle recreation area.

Cook, who represents the High Desert in the 8th Congressional District, announced last year that he had helped engineer a compromise that would save nearly 100,000 acres of the off-roading area, including the famed Hammer trails.

A portion of Johnson Valley is explicitly designated for off-highway vehicle use under last year’s deal negotiated with the Marine Corps. Cook, a retired Marine, says federally designating the area will ensure continued off-road access. Cook says the designation might seem like a small change, but it’s an important step to keeping the land under the authority of the Bureau of Land Management.

“It will show that Johnson Valley is of national significance, raising its profile for economic purposes and within the federal government, which owns the land,” Cook stated in the release.

The BLM estimates that Johnson Valley currently generates more than $71 million annually for local economies, according to the release. The King of the Hammers race alone draws an estimated 30,000 people to Johnson Valley each year.

“I’m proud to have been a part of the national campaign to save Johnson Valley last year,” Cook stated. “Johnson Valley is a national treasure and this bill formally recognizes it as such.”

Off-roaders’ battle over Johnson Valley recreation area ends

The Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle
Recreation Area hosts the famous
“King of the Hammers” Race. (SEMA)

Staff Report
Tire Business

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — After a six-year battle over the future of the Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Recreation Area in the Southern California desert, the issue finally has been settled.

After a consistent grassroots effort by the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) and other partner organizations, a legislative solution was finally reached to create a dedicated OHV recreation area and provide land for military training exercises, as well.

As explained by SEMA’s Action Network (SAN), “The issue was simple—how to expand the adjoining Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms while preserving recreation access to 189,000 acres at Johnson Valley.

“The Marines needed the additional land to simulate brigade-level expeditionary force movements and the Johnson Valley topography seemed ideal for training purposes.”

SEMA said the debate “reached a crescendo in 2013,” and a decision required Congressional approval.

Under a provision included within the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law last December, 79,000 acres of Johnson Valley has been transferred to the Twentynine Palms military base. Simultaneously, the law created the “Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area,” providing federal protection to over 96,000 acres established in 1980 for OHV recreation by the state of California.

It is the first time an OHV area has been provided national recognition, according to the SAN. Twice a year, 53,000 acres of the OHV area will be provided to the Marine Corps for 30 days of military training exercises, it explained, noting no dud-producing ordnance will be used at that time in order to assure safety and continued OHV access to the area.

“The SAN commends Rep. Paul Cook, R-Calif., for the instrumental role he has played in reaching a reasonable shared-use solution,” said SAN Director Colby Martin. “We joined with a number of other organizations representing the off-road community to support this provision that addresses the nation’s military training needs while providing access for responsible recreational activities.

“We consider this ground-breaking provision a positive result for both the OHV community and the United States Marine Corps.”

The recreation area will continue to be controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). SEMA said it contains a unique mix of open desert, dry lake beds and formidable rock-crawling formations that attracts four-wheeler enthusiasts from around the world.

The area hosts the famous “King of the Hammers” Race, which drew more than 50,000 people to the 2013 event. The BLM estimates that Johnson Valley generates more than $71 million annually for local economies—an amount that will continue to grow, SEMA said.

Rep. Paul Cook, in a statement, said “the agreement preserves California’s most important off-road recreation area for future generations.

“After years in which off-roaders have lived in fear of the closure of Johnson Valley, this permanently ends the threat of base expansion into off-road areas.”

Prior to being elected to Congress in 2012, he served a 26-year career in the Marine Corps before retiring as a colonel. SEMA said Rep. Cook has lived for years in the area that includes Johnson Valley and the Twentynine Palms base and represented those communities in the California state legislature before his election to Congress.

The SAN said it worked collaboratively with the Off-Road Business Association (ORBA); California Motorized Recreation Council (CMRC); Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC); and Americans for Responsible Recreational Access (ARRA).

CMRC includes ORBA; California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs (Cal4Wheel); California Off-Road Vehicle Association (CORVA); American Motorcyclist Association National (AMA); AMA District 36; AMA District 37 Off-Road; San Diego Off-Road Coalition (SDORC); American Sand Association (ASA); and California-Nevada Snowmobile Association (CNSA).

Jurassic age dinosaur tracks stolen from Moab trail

By Natalie Crofts
KSL.com

MOAB — A 190-million-year-old dinosaur track was reported stolen from a trail in Moab Wednesday, officials said.

The track was lifted out of Jurassic age Navajo sandstone in the Hell's Revenge area, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The missing track was noticed by a tour guide for Moab Cowboy Country Outdoor Adventures, who reported it to the BLM.

“You can’t assign a monetary value to it — they are priceless, they are one-of-a-kind, individual tracks that a dinosaur made 190-million years ago and they can’t be replaced once they’re gone and stolen," said BLM district paleontologist ReBecca Hunt-Foster. "(Thieves) steal them scientifically from context, they steal them from the public from enjoying them and they steal them from all of us Americans who own them as federal property.”

Hunt-Foster said the incident is still under investigation, but that it appears the track block was lifted out. There are several other track blocks in the area.

The tracks were located next to a popular off-roading area, she said.

“A lot of the guides will pull off and show people the dinosaur tracks that are there on the cliff side so all of the public can enjoy them and unfortunately one of these guides who is very familiar with the tracks recognized that one of the blocks had been stolen and reported it to us," Hunt-Foster said.

Moab Cowboy Country Outdoor Adventures owner Kent Green was on a tour on the Hell's Revenge trail in the Sand Flats recreation area with a group from California when he noticed the dinosaur track was missing.

"I was showing them the tracks and explaining a little bit about them and walked over to show them this beautiful, definite track that I always liked to show and I discovered it was gone," he said. "It was just gone — I couldn't believe my eyes when I'd seen that."

The person responsible for the theft could face fines and a potential jail sentence of up to five years, Hunt-Foster said. A statement on the BLM website for Hell's Revenge asks for visitors to treat the tracks with care and says that disturbing the tracks or pouring anything in them to make a mold is forbidden.

"What a lot of people don’t understand or know is that these fossils are protected under federal law and so there are civil and criminal penalties associated with this theft," Hunt-Foster said.

She said the track block would have been difficult to carry because of its weight, but that the the spot is easy to access because it is on a designated jeep trail.

“People have often, unfortunately, been even parking on top of these things for years," Hunt-Foster said. "We’re in progress of trying to put up a barrier to keep people from parking on these tracks and to be more aware of them. The tracks are actually right on a cliff edge.”

Green takes people on tours of the area every day and said he was shocked and devastated when he discovered the track was gone. The last time he saw the track was at about 6:30 p.m. on Monday and when he returned Tuesday at around 3:30 p.m. it was no longer there.

"The feeling that I had inside was just like somebody had not only taken something from everybody else, but it almost felt like somebody had shot my uncle, believe it or not," he said. "It is really just a good attraction to be able to show folks who visit our area and the kids absolutely love them."

He said there is a fracture in the rock where the track used to be and some surrounding rocks look like they were broken up when someone tried to pry the rock up. The whole piece the dinosaur track was on was taken.

The BLM does not currently have any leads in the investigation. Anyone who would like to report suspicious activity can call 435-259-2100.

A roaring triumph for public access

Fabio Manno's buggy runs the course of the 4 Wheel Parts Time Trials on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. King of the Hammers event, an off-road race that combines desert racing and rock crawling on Means Dry Lake at Johnson Valley. A last-minute compromise last year saved this event after the military pushed to take this land for training. (KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

BY DAVID DANELSKI
Riverside Press-Enterprise

JOHNSON VALLEY -- They crawled up almost-vertical boulder piles. They floored it across the flats. Some of them flipped, and at least one rolled and bounced across the desert floor before settling in a burst of flames.

They are competitors in King of the Hammers 2014, an extreme off-road race in the San Bernardino County desert in which rugged terrain is the worthiest adversary. But this year’s event in Johnson Valley is much more than a week-long contest of machines, drivers and nerves — it is a triumph for public access.

More than four years ago, the world’s most formidable force — the U.S. military — announced plans to take over this off-roading mecca as part of a 424,000-acre expansion of the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center.

The same remote valleys and peaks that make for a challenging race course are a perfect venue for live-fire training exercises for tank battalions, the Marines said.

Many figured the base expansion was a foregone conclusion to be made in the interest of national security. And it would be tough luck for some 200,000 people who hauled their motorcycles, jeeps and four-wheelers each year to Johnson Valley, a designated off-roading area southeast of Barstow and north of the San Bernardino Mountains.

But the off-roaders rallied in force. They signed petitions, attended public meetings, submitted written comments and gained support from elected officials. Environmentalists also wanted the off-road area to stay open, so fewer off-roaders would be tempted to disturb sensitive wildlife habitat elsewhere in the Mojave Desert.

The Department of Defense agreed to a compromise.

Under a law approved by Congress in late December, 99,870 acres will remain part of the Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area, open to the public and under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Marines can use about 56,000 acres of the valley for training twice a year, for a total of 60 days.

On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the victory meant that 7,000 people could be there to witness qualifying rounds for the 100-mile-plus King of the Hammers. Organizers expected the crowds to swell beyond 40,000 for the final race on Friday.

VIDEO: Car crashes, flips at King of the Hammers

“It’s just great,” said John Miller, 62, of Running Springs, standing at his dusty campsite with the race roaring in the background. “I am not against the military, but there is a lot of land where they can do their stuff.”

“We’re just getting ready to head up there and watch,” he added. “We have one, two, three generations here,” he added, pointing to himself, his son, Trevor, 38, and his grandson, John, 11, who sat on a 65cc Kawasaki mini-motorcycle.

Trevor Miller said he and his son get to Johnson Valley at least two or three times a year. “It’s always families out here,” he said.

A short ride away, Raul Vega, 33, of Orange, sipped beer from a can as he watched one driver after another attempt to climb a rock-face peak dubbed “The Waterfall.”

“We are happy to see it stay here,” Vega said of the Hammers event. “I took my vacation time to be here. This is one thing I plan for all year.”

His friend Kurtis Magargee, 22, of Yorba Linda, added that participants take care to leave the valley as they found it. Many will spend Saturday, the day after the races, picking up cans and trash. Race organizers have shovel-equipped vehicles ready to scoop up motor oil if it should spill, he added.

Magargee and hundreds of other spectators cheered as one driver attempted to power up The Waterfall, only to slowly roll upside down. It took two vehicles with winches to right the buggy so the trials could resume.

Racer Kevin Sacalas and his co-pilot, Tim Carlson, both of Riverside, had one of the more spectacular crashes. After bumping down a steep hill, they were picking up speed across the flats when their buggy flew out of control and flipped end over end five times before landing in a brief spout of fire. Sacalas wasn’t hurt, and Carlson had only scratches, according to Sacalas’ brother, Robert.

The vehicle, the “Big Ugly,” was a total loss, Robert Sacalas said.

Racers can spend as much as $250,000 to build one of the specialized machines from the ground up, explained driver Crystal Crowder, of Ridgefield, Wash., who was watching this year because her rig needs work.

Just being there was a big win, she said.

“Public land should stay public,” she said. “And this ultimate off-road race is the best in the United States.”

OFF ROADING: Pact mostly preserves Johnson Valley for recreational use

Johnson Valley: Deal will have Marines, public sharing access

There were many twists and turns leading up to the compromise between off-roaders and the U.S. Marine Corps over access to Johnson Valley. (Pirate 4X4)

Written by K Kaufmann
The Desert Sun

A nudge from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., may have helped seal a compromise between off-roaders and the U.S. Marine Corps, ensuring that more than half of Johnson Valley’s 188,000 acres of prime off-roading trails and desert vistas will remain open to the public most of the year.

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, recently announced the deal that would limit an expansion of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms into the valley to 88,130 acres and create a federally designated off-roading area on the remaining 99,690 acres.

Located in the high desert about 20 miles north of Yucca Valley, Johnson Valley is an off-roading mecca known worldwide for its mix of dry lake beds, open desert and rock-crawling trails — called the Hammers — where custom-built vehicles with massive tires fight their way up hills littered with rocks and large boulders.

But the same terrain that draws off-roaders and its location due west of the combat center also made it prime real estate for the Marines. The Corps has been working for years to expand the base at Twentynine Palms to allow for live-fire combat training exercises it has said are critical for its post-Mideast role as a streamlined expeditionary force.

Its plan for the valley, which the U.S. Navy approved earlier this year, would have appropriated more than 103,000 acres of the off-roading area for training at the base, plus another 43,000 acres that off-roaders would be allowed to use 10 months a year.

The deal, part of the National Defense Authorization Act the House passed late Thursday, would also allow the Marines to use 56,439 acres of the off-roading area for combat training up to 60 days a year but limits the kind of live ammunition that can be fired during combat exercises.

A Senate vote on the bill could occur sometime this week, said Matthew Groves, Cook’s legislative counsel.

While labeling the deal a victory, off-roaders also said the land the Marines will take includes some of the region’s most popular trails and isolated, back-valley areas.

“The trail systems we fought so hard for are still there,” said Larry McRae, an avid off-roader and president of Poison Spyder of Banning, a company that builds custom “armor” for the Jeeps and other off-road vehicles that batter themselves against the rocks in the Hammers.

“There’s a lot of open desert that’s been taken. What it takes away is some of the exploration opportunities. A lot of people enjoy the trail-making process.”

“Saying we lose 70-80,000 acres and calling that a win is tough,” said Dave Cole, co-founder of King of the Hammers, a week-long off-road racing event that yearly draws tens of thousands of visitors and significant tourist dollars to surrounding high desert communities.

The area going to the Marines also contains about 85 percent of the 112-mile course that was used for the King of the Hammers in 2013, he said. While the 2014 event, set for Jan. 31-Feb. 8, should not be affected by the Marines’ move into the valley, Cole said a new course on the remaining land will have to be developed for future races.

Residents of the small community of Johnson Valley, located across the highway from the off-roading area, also have mixed feelings about the deal. Many already experience noise and rattling windows during training exercises at the base, including recent combat exercises that ended Monday.

“I’m glad the Hammers were saved,” said Jim Hanley, 74, a Marine vet who served in Lebanon in the 1970s. “The shared use — it will bring the noise closer to us. The other night I thought something had hit the house, the noise was so bad.”

Keeping residents and off-roaders safe, while ensuring the Marines could train, were the issues allowing Cook, a retired Marine colonel, and Feinstein to find common ground during a recent meeting.

Feinstein had previously pushed the Corps to find a way to share the valley with off-roaders, representatives from her Washington office said.

The Corps also cited safety in their reasons for accepting the compromise.

“We feel this course of action is the best balance for military and recreational use of the land,” Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, wrote in an email response to questions from The Desert Sun.

“Safety is a high priority for the Marine Corps and we want to ensure that both Marines and recreational users stay safe throughout the year.”

Many details of how the shared-use arrangement will play out are still to be determined, but Johnson Valley will not be the first time the Marines have shared land for recreational use, Krebs said.

The Marines share 45,000 acres of Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada, where they conduct mountain warfare training, and hunting and fishing are allowed on a number of bases across the country, she said.

Marines, offroaders reach compromise on Johnson Valley

Detailed final Johnson Valley OHVRA map available here.

by K Kaufmann
The Desert Sun

It’s not often a bunch of off-roaders can wrestle the U.S. Marine Corps to a compromise, but that seems to be exactly what’s happened as U.S. Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, on Wednesday announced a deal on Johnson Valley that allows both the Marines to conduct live ammo training in the region, but still preserves more than half of its 188,000 acres for off-roading and other recreation for 10 months a year.

Located in the high desert about 20 miles north of Yucca Valley, the disputed land has been an almost sacred site for the off-roading community, known worldwide for its unique mix of wide open desert and rock-crawling trails – dubbed the Hammers – where drivers in custom-built four-wheelers bump and grind their way up hills strewn with massive boulders.

A yearly week of racing called the King of the Hammers draws tens of thousands of visitors to the area, turning the valley floor into an encampment called Hammertown, which is half Coachella and half “Road Warrior.” The 2014 Hammers is scheduled for Jan. 31-Feb. 8, and event organizers have said the deal will keep the race rolling for years to come.

The off-roaders and the Marines have been in a standoff for a couple of years over whether the Corps would take over more than half of valley, 103,618 acres, for expanded training exercises involving three tank battalions, helicopters and a whole lot of live ammunition. The Marines argued such training exercises would be critical to their post-Mideast evolution into a streamlined expeditionary force, and nowhere else offered the land they needed.

Off-roaders are generally a patriotic bunch, lots of former military, but the threat to Johnson Valley sparked a determined opposition, backed up by the multimillion-dollar offroading industry. The Marines attempted a compromise, offering with a 43,049-acre shared use area, including the Hammers, open to off-roaders 10 months a year.

The remaining section of the valley, open to off-roaders year round would have been all but separate from the shared use area, connected by only a narrow corridor of land.

High desert communities, led by Yucca Valley, also got behind the off-roaders, noting that the King of the Hammers and other off-roading events in Johnson Valley meant full hotels and a boost for small businesses in the region. Residents of the small community of Johnson Valley, located across the highway from the off-roading area, have also opposed the expansion, mostly because current training exercises on the base already set their windows and furniture shaking.

A map of the deal announced Wednesday cuts the Marines back to 88,000 acres covering the north central and east sections of the valley. The off-roaders get a total of about 100,000 acres starting in the southeast corner of the region and curving up to the northwest, including a 56,000-acre shared-use area the Marines will be able to use for training for two months a year, again with limited types of ammunition.

Cook, a Vietnam veteran and retired Marine colonel, emerged as the mediator between the two camps earlier this year, after a visit to the 2013 King of the Hammers.

He authored a bill in the House, passed with bipartisan support and inserted in the Defense Authorization Act, that would have kept the whole valley under the jurisdiction of the Burea of Land Management, with the Marines allowed to train twice a year, but not allowed to use what is called dud-producing ammunition, that is bullets larger than a certain caliber.

Meanwhile, the Marines got their plan through a first hearing in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Nov. 14.

What happened between then and Wednesday is unclear. Cook’s release announcing the deal contains congratulatory quotes from all the stakeholders but no details of how the deal was struck.