Re: BLM WEMO OHV plans

Article Published: Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 9:04:18 PM PST

Groups feuding over desert route plan
By CHUCK MUELLER, Staff Writer

VICTORVILLE - Environmentalists and off-highway vehicle users are at odds over a proposed network of back roads in the west Mojave Desert, ensuring a tussle as the plan for desert routes undergoes final review.

"Off-road recreation is a right and we must protect it,' said Jim Arbogast, the California Off-Road Vehicle Association's vice-president for land use.

Peter Kiriakos, conservation chairman for the Sierra Club's San Gorgonio Chapter, views the proposal differently.

"This plan is long overdue,' he said. "With our population growth, wildlife habitat is threatened more and more, and must be protected.'

After 18 years of study, an environmental assessment analyzing off-road vehicle routes on public land in the west Mojave has been released by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as part of a proposed amendment to the California Desert Conservation Area Plan.

The assessment looks at alternate route designations for 3.2-million-acres of federal land in the region, spelling out options that would open roads for vehicles, close them to protect ecosystems, or establish a compromise plan.

The bureau has scheduled public meetings on the environmental assessment and proposed plan amendment on April 8 at the Best Western Green Tree Inn in Victorville, and April 15 at the Kerr McGee Center in Ridgecrest. Both meetings will begin at 6 p.m.

Written comments can be sent by May 2 to the bureau's California Desert District Office, 22835 Calle San Juan de Los Lagos, Moreno Valley 92553.

Representatives of several environmental and off-road vehicle groups are critical of the environmental assessment.

"We're working hard to keep public lands open to everybody,' said Big Bear Valley resident Eddie Phillips, who founded Americans for Forest Access. "It's unbelievable how many routes have been closed, denying access to many people. A high percentage of them are elderly or handicapped.'

Phillips said he fully supports opening public lands for public use, "as long as use is dispersed, allowing lands to be in a constant state of recovery.'

Desert ecologist Daniel Patterson fears that routes created by off-road vehicle buffs in recent years will be accepted in the route network.

"The Bureau of Land Management needs to identify these routes, which were created after the California Desert Plan was approved in 1980,' he said. "It is unacceptable for the BLM to legitimize these routes. The bureau needs to distinguish between these routes and legitimate ones, such as original routes and trails.'

Dee Stapp, vice-president of Public Lands for the People, said closing vast areas of public land "with no scientific backing is absolutely wrong.

"It's about time sanity has been restored concerning ill-conceived closing of public lands without good science behind it,'said Stapp, a San Bernardino resident.

But Kiriakos, who spent six years studying the plan as the Sierra Club's representative, said the proposed route network and an accompanying habitat conservation plan should have been drawn up decades ago.

"I support the alternative that enhances the protection of the ecosystem,' he said. "It's long overdue.'

The environmental assessment looks at the potential impact of incorporating existing off-road vehicle routes into the plan as well as their impact on 1.4 million acres of habitat of the desert tortoise and other sensitive species.

"As the bureau designates a vehicle access network (for the west Mojave), it must take into account the conservation of threatened and endangered plant and animal species and their ecosystems,' said bureau spokesman Tony Staed in Sacramento