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Protect the Canyon

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Sheep’s Canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park has been a remarkable oasis of trees, flowers, small wildlife, enchanting pools and waterfalls (not to mention the sheep and the endangered vireos). The Sheep’s Canyon that we saw recently is a battered and bruised version of its former self: littered, trampled, struggling to stay alive, but probably dying.

What happened? Our State Park service has built a road and opened up Coyote/Sheep’s Canyon area to four-wheel drive vehicles under virtually no supervision. This brings in droves of careless, littering marauders to whom the word “wilderness” probably means a type of RV. (Apparently these drivers are so feeble they cannot manage to walk a few miles to get to the canyon.)

The canyon simply will not survive the number of visitors it now gets.

To make matters worse, state Senate bill 603 would allow unlicensed vehicles in the Anza-Borrego Park.

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Does anyone really think that people who drive dune buggies and dirt bikes are going to stay on the road? These people have hundreds of acres of desert that they’ve already destroyed available for their use. Once driven on, the desert vegetation takes centuries to recover, if it ever does. Why give them the small, beautiful portion that is left?

It is a literal crime against nature to turn a hiker’s paradise into a four-wheel drive playground.

Why would anyone want to see dunes rather than vistas of flowers and delicate plants? Why trample the fragile vegetation of the canyons and cause further impurities in the once-pristine streams? Why not save even a small area of beauty for our children?

The most important question is: What kind of government officials, given the responsibility of protecting a park, would expose it to the danger of becoming a sandy parking lot? Certainly not the ones I want in office.

JOHANNA JONES

San Diego

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