Budget Bill Includes Reopening of Trail in Anza-Borrego

Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) said he was only doing what thousands of Californians do for fun when he took his four-wheel-drive pickup for an 80-mph spin on a dry desert lake bed early this year.

Unfortunately, Morrow, whose district includes south Orange County, chose to drive on a lake bed in Anza-Borrego State Park, where motor vehicles are prohibited for environmental reasons. He was cited by a park ranger and told to get off the lake.

Now Morrow, a longtime critic of off-road-driving restrictions in Anza-Borrego, is behind a push to force the park to reopen a popular four-wheel trail through a canyon that state and federal biologists regard as one of the park’s most sensitive wildlife areas.

Morrow’s bill to reopen the trail sailed through the Republican-dominated Assembly. After it stalled in the Senate, Morrow incorporated the bill’s language into the budget bill that is now awaiting action by Gov. Pete Wilson.

Morrow insists that getting the ticket had nothing to do with his efforts to open up Coyote Canyon. “I’ve been on record for a long time opposing that closure,” he said.

The 3.1-mile section of trail in the canyon was closed in January. Park officials took the action to protect two endangered bird species as well as bighorn sheep who lamb in the area.

Although there are about 400 miles of off-road trails open to motor vehicles in the park, the 26-mile Coyote Canyon route is a favorite because of its scenery and because it allows travelers to drive from the northern Anza end of the park and exit in Borrego. The three-mile stretch of closed road is in the middle of this route.

“This small section of Coyote Canyon is being ambushed by Morrow in a self-serving abuse of power,” said a statement issued by the Sierra Club.

“This portion of Coyote Canyon was closed for very good reasons,” said the organization’s Lawrence Lingbloom. “Vehicles were destroying sensitive plants and the habitat of endangered species and scaring off bighorn sheep coming down from the peaks to drink.”

Morrow said he wound up on the dry lake only after park officials thwarted his efforts to inspect the Coyote Canyon trail.

“I had asked for permission to drive through and have them [officials] justify to me why full closure was needed,” he said Tuesday.

Park officials turned him down, he said, although they offered to walk the three-mile stretch of canyon with him.

“It was too steep and it didn’t fit into my plans,” Morrow said of that option.

Instead, he said, he drove to the lake bed, where he was ticketed. He said he wouldn’t have driven on the lake had signs been posted properly. “I was halfway across the lake before I saw the first sign,” he said.

Morrow’s legislation would reopen Coyote Canyon to motor vehicles until the state Department of Parks and Recreation is able to build a bypass that would allow drivers to traverse the canyon without driving down a fragile stream bed that is currently unavoidable.

Morrow said his bill would keep the controversial stretch off limits for part of the year: the four months in and around the summer when newborn lambs need unrestricted access to the stream.

However, Ken Colombini, a spokesman for the parks department, said Tuesday that the language of the measure, as it appears in the budget bill, would order the immediate, year-round reopening of the trail.