Silence at Anza-Borrego

There is no reason that unlicensed dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles should be able to roar up and down every single mile of the 500 miles of road in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in eastern San Diego County.

The off-road play vehicles have been banned from the 600,000-acre park since last May because riders were going off the trails and damaging archeological sites and environmentally sensitive areas. But Henry Agonia, the new director of the state Parks and Recreation Department, has moved to reopen the park to off-road vehicles under a permit system. Off-road enthusiasts had protested Agonia’s confirmation by the state Senate until he promised to grant them greater access to Anza-Borrego.

Agonia’s action has angered park rangers and officials, who sent him a letter of protest. The ban has been highly popular with other park users, Mark Jorgensen, a naturalist, told The Times’ Ralph Frammolino. He said, “The general user comes out, flags you down on the roadway and says, ‘Thanks for letting us have our park back’.”

The noisy, uninsured all-terrain vehicles have no place in Anza-Borrego at all. If Agonia is determined to allow them, he should confine them to certain areas where they will not torment other park visitors. Such action has been taken by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management elsewhere in the desert, in the East Mojave National Scenic Area.

BLM officials banned all-terrain vehicles from 3,000 miles of roads and trails in the region without special authorization after visitors and local ranchers complained about disruptions caused by the off-roaders. The roads are for access and not for play, the federal officials said.

Agonia said the proposed Anza-Borrego permit process would give rangers greater control over who rides off-road vehicles in the park. Even more important, however, is to control where they ride them. Best of all would be to ban them altogether.