3 Races in Desert Are Banned : Environment: Conservationists consider the action a major victory. BLM cites the threat to the endangered desert tortoise.

In a major victory for conservationists, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Monday announced that it will no longer permit the running of three popular off-road vehicle races in the California desert.

Citing threats to the endangered desert tortoise and the past failure of race sponsors to follow rules designed to reduce the harmful impacts of their events, BLM officials said the venerable Barstow-to-Las Vegas motorcycle race and a second amateur competition between Johnson Valley and Parker, Ariz., will not be run again.

“Based on the cumulative environmental impacts of these events over the years, the sponsors’ continuing problems in managing the events and the emergency listing of the desert tortoise as an endangered species, we feel strongly that further consideration of these races is inappropriate,” BLM California State Director Ed Hastey said in a statement.

Hastey added that sponsors of a third annual race--a professional, two-state event scheduled Jan. 27--will be barred from using a 105-mile stretch of California territory.

That race, which is called the Parker 400 and typically draws more than 400 competitors and tens of thousands of spectators, must be run entirely in Arizona, where the tortoise has not been declared endangered.

Environmentalists--who for years have charged that off-road racing harms tortoises by crushing them outright, collapsing their burrows or destroying plants upon which they feed--called the BLM’s decision a major turning point in the fight over the California desert.

“We truly applaud the action and are gratified the BLM is finally acknowledging the damage these races cause,” said Patricia Schifferle, Western regional director of the Wilderness Society. “We only wish it had come before the Barstow-to-Vegas race was run this year and caused even further damage to desert tortoise habitat and the desert itself.”

A spokesman for the American Motorcycle Assn., sponsor of the so-called “B-to-V” race, declined to comment on the BLM action.

The Barstow-to-Vegas race, first run in 1967, is among the most popular events of its kind in the world, drawing 1,200 riders and thousands of spectators annually. Competitors use dry washes, dirt roads and trails to travel a 135-mile timed course.

From the start, the event has been dogged by environmentalists, who contend that the dirt bikes inflict irreparable harm to the slow-healing desert and its denizens.

This year, those arguments took on new urgency with the federal government’s emergency listing of the desert tortoise as an endangered species. The benign tortoise--a protected species in California--has been victimized by poachers, predatory ravens, urban encroachment and a mysterious respiratory disease.

Although federal biologists concluded that this year’s B-to-V race could be run without jeopardizing the continued existence of the species, the BLM imposed numerous regulations on the Thanksgiving weekend event.

Race sponsors agreed to flag the course, post monitors along the route to keep riders from straying and mark tortoise burrows to alert riders to steer clear. They also agreed to do a pre-race sweep to clear the course of tortoises and require each rider to read and sign a statement discussing the reptile’s precarious situation.

On Monday, BLM officials conceded that such precautions were not effective.

Hastey said “course straying and widening,” which takes racers into areas that may be inhabited by tortoise, as well as the destruction of vegetation that serves as the animal’s food source, recurred this year.

“We recognize that we are proposing to end three major historic off-road vehicle events, but our primary concern has to be to conserve the natural resources under our administration,” Hastey said.

The other amateur race that has been canceled, not as popular as the B-to-V, takes riders from Johnson Valley, east of Barstow, to the Colorado River.

As for the Parker 400, a grueling, multi-vehicle race that covers nearly 400 miles of often-rugged terrain, BLM officials said about 70 miles of the 105-mile California loop was routed through high-quality tortoise habitat. Also, a survey of the course found 52 tortoise burrows, at least 30 of which were inhabited.

Steve Kassanyi, race director for SCORE International, the event’s sponsor, called the decision “unfair” and said it will be challenged in future years. He said the race will be run this year but entirely within Arizona.

“We have not abandoned the California loop concept,” Kassanyi said. “We intend to fight the California bureaucracy and do everything we can . . . to reinstate it for 1991 and beyond.”

Despite their enthusiasm over Monday’s announcement, conservationists noted that the BLM has halted the Barstow-to-Vegas competition before--in 1975--only to reauthorize it seven years later.

“This is a major victory and we’re pleased,” said Sierra Club activist Elden Hughes, “but we’re also aware of the history here.”