calamaridog

OK all, just wanted to share the bad news with everyone. Mods, please feel free to move this to the correct folder. I don't see a "land use" folder, so I put this in the most popular place. The reason? Hopefully people will get off their dead asses and help "fight the good fight". Join Blue Ribbon Coalition, Cal4WD, or some other group who fights to preserve your right to recreation on PUBLIC lands.

For those of you who belong, thank you. For those of you who write letters and help out, thank you even more. If not, then get involved before it is too late.
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From the San Diego Union Tribune

By Terry Rodgers
STAFF WRITER

January 6, 2005

A federal judge has banned off-road vehicles from 571,000 acres of desert in Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties until biologists determine whether the areas are crucial to the survival of the threatened desert tortoise.

Off-roaders were infuriated by the ruling.

"The impact of this will be devastating to our sport or anyone else who wants to go sightseeing in the desert," said Harold Soens, president of the San Diego Off-Road Coalition.

Those who get their thrills riding on the dirt are vocal and well-organized. About 300,000 off-road vehicles are registered to residents of San Diego and Riverside counties, Soens said.

The restrictions are the result of a lawsuit by environmentalists who challenged the Bush administration's management of the tortoises' habitat.

The dispute focused on a U.S. Bureau of Land Management policy implemented two years ago allowing off-roaders unfettered access to desert drainages or washes.

"We'd warned the government that their policy allowing off-roading in virtually all desert washes was going to be challenged in court," said Daniel R. Patterson of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. "They just ignored us."

Environmentalists said the restrictions are a reasonable and necessary measure to ensure that off-road activity isn't accelerating the decline of the desert tortoise.

"This decision is not about limiting off-roading," Patterson said. "It's about making sure that critical habitat for the desert tortoise is protected so the species can recover. That's in everyone's best interests, even the off-roaders."

Off-road access still is allowed along more than 1,700 miles of designated trails within the two desert management districts affected by the ruling.

In addition, more than a half-million acres within Southern California's 10 million acres of publicly owned desert is open to unlimited cross-country off-roading.

Stephen Razo, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management's Riverside County office, said the restrictions could be lifted or reduced in March when U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists are expected to finish their analysis of the tortoises' habitat.

The new areas now off-limits are remote and not as popular with off-roaders as the 188,000-acre Johnson Valley or 25,000-acre El Mirage area west of Barstow, Razo said.

The Dec. 30 injunction, which was made public this week, was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco. It follows her ruling in August striking down opinions by federal biologists that allowed off-road vehicles in the tortoises' habitat.

Leaders of off-roading groups say environmentalists have unfairly blamed them for the tortoises' decline. They cite government studies that attribute the declining number to drought, disease and increased predation by an over-population of ravens attracted to the backcountry by open trash bins.

"The environmentalists have an agenda," Soens said. "They don't want a footprint or a tire track anywhere in the desert. They want it all closed, basically."

The desert is vast enough to accommodate off-roaders, but sites needed by endangered or threatened species should be given priority, Patterson said.

"The issue here isn't access, it's excess," he said. "Far too many off-roaders believe they have a right to drive anywhere on public land, and that's not right."

Patterson said off-roaders are in denial about the impact their activity has on the delicate desert ecology.

In addition to tortoises that are inadvertently crushed by off-roaders, the vehicles devastate the desert's sparse vegetation, which the tortoises use for food and as cover to hide from predators.

While the population of tortoises is not certain, studies have estimated their number has declined by 90 percent in the past 24 years.

State and federal agencies have spent $100 million on recovery efforts in the past 13 years.

Ardent off-roading advocates such as Soens say the rulings have less to do with ecology than political philosophy.

"You can't win anything in court with the judges that are there today," he said. "We will never give up."