You can the way this one is going from the 2nd paragraph...
Sand dunes emerge as environmental battleground
Seth Hettena
Associated Press
Jan. 2, 2004 12:00 AM
GLAMIS, Calif. - A small, broomlike plant found in the dunes of California's Imperial Valley has turned this vast and desolate landscape into one of the nation's unlikeliest environmental battlegrounds.
The fight pits those trying to protect the fragile habitat of Pierson's milk vetch against the huge crowds of off-roaders headed to Algodones Dunes to drive and party in the desert.
The plant, protected by the powerful Endangered Species Act, is keeping dune riders out of an area 3 1/2 times the size of Manhattan.
Off-roaders say the milk vetch is emblematic of what's wrong with the Endangered Species Act, which marked 30 years Sunday. They contend it locks up huge areas of public land with what they call "bad science."
Environmentalists counter that the protection given to the plant is keeping life in the nation's biggest and most popular set of dunes from being ground beneath the vehicle wheels.
To protect the plant, the Bureau of Land Management agreed to ban vehicles temporarily from 49,310 acres of dunes in 2000 as part of a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and two other groups. Traffic was barred in 1972 from a separate section later designated a 32,000-acre protected wilderness.
BLM says protecting plants sometimes takes a back seat to keeping the peace when huge crowds flock to the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, 160 miles east of San Diego and a few miles west of the Arizona state line. The mix of crowds, drinking, drugs and fast driving has been a recipe for chaos.
"It was straight out of a Mad Max movie," said Paul Spitler, the chairman of the seven-member California Off-Highway Vehicle Commission, who monitored the closures during a wild Thanksgiving 2001 that saw a fatal shootout. Spitler says BLM needs to limit the area's 1 million visitors to get a better handle on the situation.
Authorities say they have cracked down on the wild mobs that once pelted rangers with cans and bottles and put a stop to strong-arm robberies in broad daylight. These efforts mean no officer can be spared to protect endangered plants.
"We're kind of short-handed on officers when there are so many people out there," said Bob Zimmer, BLM's chief ranger at the dunes. "We still have a have a lot of drunk driving, drugs and assaults."
On the 30th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, led a visitor to a narrow strip of sand that's home to a few Pierson's milk vetch.
The area is off-limits to the vehicles that buzz past on both sides, but rangers concede restrictions often are violated.
"There's been a blatant disregard for habitat protection in parts of the dunes," Patterson said. "Anybody who goes in knows that this area is closed."
While 68,000 acres remain open to vehicles, dune riders chafe at the closures. They paid for a study that found the vehicles haven't harmed the plants.
"I'm not in favor of decimating endangered species, but I think a lot of this stuff has been a bunch of hooey," Jim Broxholme said from behind a stand where he sells snacks and auto supplies to off-roaders.
For all the fuss about the plant discovered in 1927, little is known about milk vetch. It shares part of its name with the family of plants that some believed would increase the milk yield of goats.
No one is sure how many of Pierson's milk vetch are in existence. Complicating things, the plants have a boom-and-bust cycle that corresponds to rainfall. BLM estimates it will spend $850,000 in 2004 to send employees to walk a total of 1,700 miles - the distance from San Diego to Vancouver, Canada - counting milk vetch.
"This is probably the most expensive monitoring that's ever been done for a listed plant species," said John Willoughby, BLM state botanist.
Evidence to date shows that the numbers of milk vetch have not changed much in 25 years. That's not to say vehicles are good for the plants, he says. Rather, the dunes are so vast that most of the plants don't see many off-roaders. The plant also grows in dunes within Gran Desierto, in the northwestern portion of Sonora, Mexico.
Off-roaders successfully have petitioned for a federal review of the science that led to listing Pierson's milk vetch as a threatened species five years ago. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to issue its determination in May.
"We're going to see this through," said Greg Gorman, of the American Sand Association, a group mounting a challenge to the Endangered Species Act. "If we get this plant delisted, everybody wins."
Patterson says the Center for Biological Diversity won't give up, either. "The stakes are way too high," he says.