Legislator Seeks to Overturn Ban on Off-Road Vehicles

Siding with off-road enthusiasts in their fight with environmentalists, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) is attempting to win congressional approval for a measure overriding the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to ban vehicles from 49,000 acres of the Imperial Valley desert.

A spokesman for Hunter said the 10-term legislator believes the agency overstepped its authority and violated the spirit of a compromise a decade ago that created a large off-limits zone in the desert but left other areas open for recreation.

Hunter is attempting to attach an amendment to a pending budget bill that would cancel the bureau’s decision and once again allow the acreage to be used by off-roaders.

A leader in the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of several environmental groups that sued the federal government over its alleged failure to protect imperiled species in the desert, accused Hunter of being “radically anti-environment.”

“It’s a disgrace that Duncan Hunter should stoop this low,” said desert biologist Daniel Patterson.

But off-roaders applauded Hunter’s effort to roll back the decision.

“The environmentalists seem to be trying to close down places where we can enjoy our hobbies,” said Bill Croak, an aerospace quality engineer from Redondo Beach. “I think they wish we were inside a mall spending money rather than outside enjoying nature.”

At issue is the Bureau of Land Management’s decision in October to settle an environmental lawsuit by banning off-road vehicles in an additional 49,000 acres of the 150,000-acre Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area near the eastern Imperial Valley town of Glamis.

Patterson’s group, the Sierra Club and others asserted in the lawsuit that the government had not done enough to protect the Peirson’s milk-vetch, an imperiled plant that grows only in the Imperial Valley desert.

Although 70,000 acres of the recreation area remained open for enthusiasts who enjoy driving dune-buggies and other vehicles over the rolling dunes, many in the off-road community complained bitterly about the new off-limits zones.

Hundreds of off-roaders violated the new zones over the Thanksgiving weekend, when an estimated 80,000 enthusiasts flocked to the desert for the annual gathering of the off-road tribe.

Part of the controversy is whether the number of Peirson’s milk-vetch plants is increasing or decreasing.

The environmentalists insist that heavy use of the desert by off-roaders has pushed the plant to the brink of extinction. But a study done by the Bureau of Land Management said clumps of the plant have increased significantly in the past two decades.

Still, the agency opted to settle the environmentalists’ lawsuit rather than go to trial. Hunter believes the agency should not have acquiesced without a trial or, at least, without more public involvement.

Several off-road groups were part of the negotiations that led to the 49,000 acres being added to the no-drive zone. The new ban is to last while a comprehensive environmental protection plan for the desert is devised.

Patterson said the Bureau of Land Management study is flawed because it uses as a baseline a 1977 consultant’s report that relied heavily on visual inspection of the desert area from a helicopter. After comparing that study with a follow-up done in 1998, the agency concluded that the Peirson’s milk-vetch is flourishing.

Patterson insists that the 1977 study was flawed and thus any comparison with the 1998 study is invalid. “You cannot compare a very dry year [1977] and a very wet year [1998] and make a conclusion,” he said.

Bob Farwell, an aerospace electrical engineer and off-roader living in Fountain Valley, said the environmentalists are deliberately exaggerating the plight of the Peirson’s milk-vetch as a way to force the government to close more of the recreation area.

“They care more about sand than people,” he said.