Off-Road Vehicles Banned to Protect Desert Plant

In a victory for environmentalists, the Bureau of Land Management has banned off-road vehicles on 48,000 acres of Imperial County desert to protect an endangered plant.

The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity seeking protection for Peirson’s milk-vetch, a plant that grows only in the Imperial Valley desert.

Environmentalists were exultant, but off-road enthusiasts reacted with disappointment and vowed to file countersuits.

“This is like a sock to the stomach,” said Jerry Seaver, chief financial officer of the 18,000-member American Sand Assn., whose members have made the Algodones Dunes east of the hamlet of Glamis into a major recreation spot for families that enjoy camping and four-wheeling.

The closure, announced Saturday, will be in effect while the Bureau of Land Management develops a desert protection plan with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It partially settles a lawsuit that alleged, among other claims, that the BLM violated federal law by not consulting the wildlife service on matters involving the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area.

“This is a very significant step,” said Daniel Patterson, a desert biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It (Peirson’s milk-vetch) needs protection immediately. We feel the way things were going would have guaranteed its extinction.”

The BLM agreed to the closure to avoid a trial. But an attorney for a coalition of off-road groups filed a motion Monday in federal court in San Francisco seeking to block the BLM from closing the area until a judge can hear testimony about how much real danger the off-roaders pose to the Peirson’s milk-vetch.

Before the lawsuit, 20% of the 150,000-acre desert area was closed to off-roading. That figure will now jump to 54%.

Off-roaders argue that adding to the off-limits area is unnecessary because the acreage where off-roading was already prohibited was sufficient to ensure the survival of the milk-vetch, a silvery, short-lived plant with purple flowers.

They also argue that off-road enthusiasts are unfairly tagged as despoilers of nature.

“It’s pretty easy to demonize the off-road community,” said Peter Turcke, an attorney in Boise who represents the off-road groups. “Like any group, there are some members who are organized and responsible, and others who don’t belong in any organization and are pretty ignorant.”

The issue of the milk-vetch and the off-roaders is part of a lawsuit filed in March in which the Center for Biological Diversity asserted that the Bureau of Land Management has not complied with the federal Endangered Species Act in a desert area that stretches 400 miles from the Mexican border to Death Valley and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

“It’s a shame that it takes a lawsuit and a settlement to get the BLM to do what it should have done years ago,” said Elden Hughes, chairman of the Sierra Club’s California/Nevada Desert Committee.

Negotiations are continuing over other parts of the lawsuit and proposed protection for other species, including the Colorado Desert fringe-toed lizard and the Algodones Dunes sunflower.

The timing of the BLM decision is particularly galling to the off-road community. The winter months are a high point of the recreation season, with thousands of enthusiasts flocking to the desert, particularly over Thanksgiving.

“A lot of families have been coming to the dunes for generations,” said Seaver. “Now their fun has been spoiled.”