Rincon Flats Pits Off-Road Users, Environmentalists

Off-road-vehicle buffs call the Rincon Flats area of San Gabriel Canyon the “playpen,” a name that goes a long way toward explaining why this rugged stretch of riverbed may be Los Angeles County’s most popular off-road area.

“This is the only place around in a 50-mile radius where you can come and play,” said David Mejia of La Puente before driving his battered four-wheel drive Toyota truck across the West Fork of the San Gabriel River.

It has become so popular that the U.S. Forest Service estimates that more than 88,000 vehicles will have been driven on the rocky riverbed this year.

Challenge Is Inviting

What really makes the riverbed so inviting, said Mejia, 21, is the challenge of fording streams and splashing in the mud of the San Gabriel Reservoir’s flood plain.

But state Fish and Game Department officials and a growing number of environmentalists and fishermen see the riverbed as an area where the flora and fauna should be allowed to flourish.

They want off-road vehicles banned from the canyon and its streams, or, if that cannot be done, for the Forest Service, which manages the area, to devise a plan that will better protect the environment.

To critics, allowing off-road vehicles poses an increasing threat to plants and animals. In addition, they contend that vehicles are being allowed to enter unauthorized areas because the Forest Service is not doing its job.

At the center of the controversy is the upper portion of San Gabriel Canyon where the three forks of the San Gabriel River flow into the flood plain of the San Gabriel Reservoir. A roughly 2-mile-long stretch of this area, which runs from the West Fork of the San Gabriel at the vehicle staging area to the upper portion of the reservoir’s flood plain, is authorized for vehicle use.

Officials on both sides of the issue, including spokesmen for off-road-vehicle organizations, agree that some enthusiasts do not stay within these boundaries. Instead, they drive their vehicles deep into the reservoir itself, up into portions of the river’s East Fork and wherever they can scale the canyon’s steep walls.

Stricter Controls Sought

As long ago as 1981, fish and game officials began seeking stricter environmental protections in the area.

“We believe continued ORV (off-road vehicle) use will destroy the remaining fish and wildlife habitats and preclude the restoration of damaged habitats,” Fred A. Worthley, regional manager of Region 5 of the Fish and Game Department, wrote in a letter that year to Forest Service officials. Region 5, the department’s largest and most populous wildlife management area, extends from Mono, Inyo and and Santa Barbara counties south to the Mexican border.

Even officials of off-road-vehicle organizations are concerned about the environmental damage and stricter enforcement of what areas the vehicles should be allowed to use.

“It is really unmanageable,” Jerry Wendt, a former vice president of the Southern California chapter of the California Off-Road Vehicle Assn., said of the Rincon Flats area. “The Forest Service is at a total loss as to how to manage people who leave all their inhibitions at home and go wild.”

Have Changed Riverbed

Forest Service officials acknowledge that off-road vehicles have changed the riverbed. But they contend that there is no proof of significant environmental damage and that off-road-vehicle enthusiasts have a right to use the area. They also argue that the Forest Service has not had enough personnel to make sure that the drivers stay inside the boundaries.

The vehicles are just one of several factors that have altered what the Forest Service says is the country’s most heavily used national forest. The 6 million visitors to Angeles National Forest each year, natural and man-made floods and forest fires have also altered the habitat, officials said.

For the agency, off-road vehicles are just one form of recreation that must be balanced with multiple, and often competing, public uses of the 640,000-acre Angeles National Forest, officials said.

“Compromise is inevitable,” said William C. Woodland, the forest’s recreation resource officer. “We try to take a stand somewhere between two poles. No party will be totally satisfied.”

David Drake, a fish and game fisheries biologist who has been the most strident critic of the Forest Service, does not agree with the federal agency’s multiple-use philosophy.

Unsuited to Multiple Use

“Multiple use is not suitable for the area,” Drake said, because heavy recreational overuse, particularly from off-road vehicles, is damaging the canyon’s fragile ecology. “I will continue to fight for non-ORV use in the area unless a viable alternative is presented to me. Their non-management is not a viable alternative.”

Fish and game officials, as well as anglers and enviromentalists, claim that the vehicles pose a long-term threat to plant life, fish, amphibians, birds and other wildlife by continually damaging the canyon’s river-oriented habitats.

Drake said his immediate concern is protecting the trout population of the West Fork, one of four remaining wild trout streams in the region.

Besides smashing fish, he said, the vehicles compact the gravel in the stream and its banks. That prevents terrestrial and aquatic insects from breeding and trout lose their most important food source.

Downstream, the trout population in the San Gabriel Reservoir must contend with clouds of silt pushed into the water by vehicles, he said. The continued presence of silt in the water can cause the fish to develop abrasions on their gills, which can become infected and weaken or kill them, Drake said.

Forest Service Study

A 1984 Forest Service study of the service’s management practices in Angeles National Forest concluded that “ORV and recreational use in very localized situations has reduced streamside plant cover and affected the fishery.”

Woodland did not dispute the report’s finding. But he said that Drake still has not provided him with evidence that the trout are threatened.

If it can be shown that the vehicles are preventing the fish from surviving, the Forest Service will take additional steps to protect them, Woodland said.

Funds from the California Off-Highway Vehicle Commission, which manages state funding for off-road-vehicle recreation, would be used for such things as building more restrooms, hardening stream crossings and constructing more barriers to keep vehicles in non-restricted areas, Woodland said.

Tom Keeney, Southern California president of The Wildlife Society, an international organization of professional ecologists, and Glenn Stewart, a Cal Poly Pomona zoologist, said off-road-vehicle use in the canyon has reduced the kinds of animals in the area.

Stewart said that such animals as the mountain yellow-leg frog and the foothill yellow-leg frog have almost disappeared from the area.

‘Part of Food Chain’

“The fact that they are disappearing is an indication that something is wrong,” Stewart said. “To have a healthy stream community you need flora and fauna to be there. Frogs are part of that food chain.”

Keeney said that the habitat of birds such as the least Bell’s vireo, one of the state’s endangered species, is being threatened by off-road-vehicle use. These birds are dependent on river plants and trees that are being destroyed by the vehicles, he said.

But Woodland said the decreased number of plants and trees in the area can be attributed to factors other than vehicle use. For example, he said, the area has been periodically flooded when the water level in the reservoir is raised by the county.

The most recent skirmish between the two agencies occurred Nov. 13, when fish and game biologists asked the Forest Service to provide an environmental assessment of possible damage in the area before being granted state funds that would be used to help pay for management of the area.

Seeking $565,000

The Forest Service is seeking $565,000 from the California Off-Highway Vehicle Commission, whose funds are partly derived from fees paid by vehicle at locations such as Rincon Flats. The application has been tentatively approved by the commission, but must await final approval from the state Legislature, expected next June.

Woodland said the request for an environmental assessment, which could take as long as a year, could cause a long delay in the funding and postpone plans to implement new environmental protections. Rather than prepare a new report, Woodland said, the Forest Service can satisfy the request by providing fish and game officials with an environmental impact statement done in 1978.

“I haven’t seen (the 1978 statement), but I suspect it doesn’t sound like it’s adequate,” said Chuck Marshall, an associate fisheries biologist with fish and game.

The statement does not address the 20-fold increase in vehicle use since 1978, Drake said.

Woodland said he cannot confirm Drake’s estimate of vehicle use because the Forest Service did not start keeping accurate records of vehicles in the canyon until this year when it began charging fees. Previous agency estimates, he said, were exaggerated and therefore cannot be used to gauge levels of vehicle use.

Pushing for Assessment

Still, fish and game officials and environmentalists are pushing for an environmental assessment because they think it would show that enough damage has occurred to justify closing the area or requiring that stricter safeguards be implemented.

The assessment process would include public hearings and a detailed study of possible damages.

But Woodland contended that such a study would not find sufficient damage to justify closing the area.

Fish and game and Forest Service officials have scheduled a meeting early next month to continue discussing whether an assessment is needed and ways to improve a new Forest Service plan for monitoring off-road-vehicle use in the canyon.

The Rincon Flats Off-Road Vehicle Staging Area was formally opened in 1973. It is just off San Gabriel Canyon Road (California 39) about 15 miles north of Azusa. Depending on the water level of the San Gabriel Reservoir, the area can encompass as much as 400 acres.

The idea of the “playpen” developed after off-road-vehicle users had battled for years with environmentalists over where and how the vehicles could be used, said Wendt of the California Off-Road Vehicle Assn.

‘Our Position Lost Out’

“The preservationists said we couldn’t have full run of the forests because we cause so much damage,” Wendt said. “That is really nonsense. But our position lost out.” Off-road vehicle enthusiasts were obligated to go into smaller, concentrated areas, he said. “And sure enough, we are screwing up the environment.”

But Wendt and off-road-vehicle users defended their continued use of the canyon. They agree, however, that better controls should be established. Some drivers stray beyond the boundaries, Wendt said. They drive up the canyon’s walls and arroyos with their trucks or all-terrain vehicles, stripping vegetation and ripping out boundary signs and obstacles designed to maintain boundaries, he said.

Closing the area to off-road vehicles is not the answer, said Pat Davison, Southern district vice president of the California Off-Road Vehicle Assn. That would only cause illegal use elsewhere, she said.

Woodland said the Forest Service will continue to ensure off-road-vehicle access to the canyon through a recently implemented management plan. Under the plan, approved in September, no more than 2,000 vehicles can be in the canyon at any one time. The Forest Service has begun measuring environmental changes by maintaining a continuous photographic record of the area and performing periodic soil studies.

Trying to determine what environmental damage has occurred in the canyon should have started long ago, said Drake and Jim Edmondson, spokesman for the Pasadena Casting Club. Had such a record been kept from the time when off-road vehicles were first allowed in the canyon, a number of problems would now be properly documented, they said.

What Woodland said he and the Forest Service must do is reach a compromise with fish and game and environmentalists allowing many uses of the forest.

The question is, he said, “can we conserve, maintain what there is now and still allow utilization to continue?”

Keeney agreed. “We are not into locking up the forest and throwing the key away, but just ensuring that the wildlife that is there will live in perpetuity.”