Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
In a rather predictable — but still maddening — move, the off-road-vehicle lobby is suing the Bureau of Land Management over the agency’s Labyrinth Canyon and Gemini Bridges travel plan for off-highway vehicle use.
The BlueRibbon Coaltion, Colorado Off-Road Trail Defenders, and Patrick McKay are challenging the “illegal and arbitrary” closure of 317 miles of motorized routes on about 468 square miles of public land north and west of Moab between the Green River and Highway 191. The off-road coalition was already shot down once by the Interior Board of Land Appeals; now they’re taking their gripes to federal court, using the same spurious arguments.
Of course, these groups have every right to challenge federal agencies’ decisions; environmentalists do it all the time. But what’s maddening about these motorized-access groups is their intransigence — even arrogance — and stubborn unwillingness to compromise. They promise to “Fight for Every Inch” of motorized access to public lands, not for any real reason but as an end in itself, damn the consequences to the environment, the public, and wildlife.
The kerfuffle over the Labyrinth/Gemini plan is a perfect example.
Over the last couple of decades, vehicle traffic — and the impacts — have burgeoned on some 1,100 miles of motorized routes in the management plan’s area. The type of traffic has changed, too, shifting from the relatively slow-going and quiet jeeps and SUVs to the dune-buggyesque side-by-sides that have become increasingly popular in recent years. They go faster, are noisier, and kick up more dust than other vehicles. They also carry more people into the backcountry than a motorcycle or old-school ATV, thus multiplying the adverse effects.
For years, river runners, public lands advocates, and local residents and elected officials have been pushing the agency to get a handle on the traffic on the 300,000-acre slickrock expanse. Last year, the BLM came up with four alternatives, ranging from keeping the status quo to closing up to 437 miles of trails. Yes, the strictest alternative would have closed less than half of the routes to vehicles, leaving almost 700 miles open to some form of motorized travel. In other words it was a compromise that favored the motorized crowd.
But even that went too far for the BLM, which ultimately shut down just 317 miles of motorized routes, while limiting motorized travel (to motorcycles or smaller ATVs, for example) on 98 miles. In other words, you can still burn gasoline and spew exhaust on more than 800 miles of routes on this one relatively small swath of public land. Meanwhile motorized travel remains mostly unrestricted on more than 10,000 miles of roads, two-tracks, and old trails in southeastern Utah.
That’s not enough for the BlueRibbon Coalition and friends, however; it’s never enough for them. They are ideologically opposed to decommissioning even the most insignificant road spur, and they and their allies in local and state government will squander millions of taxpayer dollars to fight the closures. Their reasoning? Because OHV recreation is, in the words of the lawsuit, “a way of life in the American West.”
Really? I mean, it’s the same trope rolled out whenever someone tries to get a coal plant to stop belching pollution all over folks or a mine to stop defiling the streams. In those instances it may have some validity: The move could affect the miners’ or the coal plant workers’ livelihoods, and therefore their way of life. But these folks will still be able to ride their noisy machines around on hundreds of miles of roads. Believe me: Nothing about this plan will affect their way of life.
I highly doubt the motorized coalition will prevail; even the most conservative judges are unlikely to fall for their faulty legal reasoning. And so, the plan likely will remain in place, as it should. It’s a compromise, and an admittedly crappy one for those of us who would like to see a lot fewer vehicles — and people — trampling the landscape. After all, it still leaves the sprawling road network mostly intact. But maybe it’s the best we can expect, and at least it does something. And it will make it just a little easier for the quiet users, the bighorn sheep, the coyotes, and the silence to find a bit of refuge from the incessant whirr of combustible engines and the humans driving them.
