It was a little on the cool side today out in Juniper Flats and the friends of juniper flats were out and about. Plenty to document today and we did get to talk to several people in our education efforts. We did notice a BLM ranger presence in the area. Ranger Nelson was observed lounging at the Bowen Ranch at 2:45 this afternoon talking with Mike Castro. One can only speculate about the topic of their conversation.
Shortly after that, we observed 3 motorcycle riders heading into the ACEC on the illegal J1299. I did give the Ranger a call and so far I haven't heard back from him. We did get pictures however should Ranger Nelson be interested. It wasnt the first time we have observed these three riders on this trail. The rider wearing black replied "yep" when he was asked if he knew the trail was a close route. He kept on riding into the ACEC.
It came to my attention that the BLM is short a few patrol rangers and this excuse has been used for suporting their lack of enforcement. It turns out that it is not due to a lack of funding. Other areas have a full compliment of Rangers and extensive OHV enforcement is going on in other districts. One has to wonder why the Barstow office is having trouble recruiting law enforcement Rangers.
In the interm, our group of volunteers will continue to assist the Barstow BLM office by documenting and reporting all illegal OHV use we find.