Picketers protest dune closure to offroaders
People gather on Hidden Valley Road on the north side of Palomar Airport Road in Carlsbad and protesti the closing of sand dunes in Imperial County to off road vehicle recreation use.
By: TIM MAYER - Staff Writer
CARLSBAD ---- Local politicians joined about 100 people and an almost equal number of Jeeps, 4-wheel-drive pickups, dune buggies and campers Friday to protest a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep a plant on the endangered species list, a decision they believe could shut them out of a huge tract of sand dunes in Imperial County.
Picketers carried signs and vehicles were liberally decorated with slogans, including "Plants Don't Pay Taxes," "Preserve Our Offroad Lifestyle" and "Plants Don't Vote."
Pointing to the wildlife agency's nearby regional offices on Hidden Valley Road, county Supervisor Bill Horn said "these people, they are after your property. If you own property in San Diego County, they are after it."
State Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, brought his mud-splattered Chevy 4X4 to the demonstration and told the crowd that "in a way, we're fighting for our lives, something near and dear to our lives."
"Our opponents ... want to prevent all human access to public lands," he said.
State Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, who also attended Friday's demonstration, said he believes the federal Endangered Species Act "has been fundamentally broken for a long time."
A spokesman for an environmental organization involved in a years-long legal battle to protect the dunes and their native plants and animals called the demonstration "just a temper tantrum."
"Offroaders already have access to (more than) 50 percent of the dunes," said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It seems they are really about excess, not access."
The protest was organized by the American Sand Association, a national group representing offroad fans and related businesses. It came after the announcement early this month that officials with the wildlife agency had rejected a petition by the sand association and other organizations to have the plant known as Peirson's milkvetch removed from the federal endangered species list.
The flowering plant species is found only in the 300-mile-long, five- to eight-mile-wide area known as the Algodones Dunes in California and an extension of the dune system in Mexico called the Gran Desierto, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Jane Hendron.
The plant has been listed as endangered since 1998. About 49,000 acres of the 185,000-acre area of 200- to 500-foot tall dunes has been closed to vehicles since 2000 by the area's manager, the federal Bureau of Land Management. The ban is temporary while studies of the plant and area continue, officials said.
About 26,000 acres of the dunes were also set aside as a permanently protected wilderness area by the state in 1994, Hendron said.
American Sand Association officials said they hired their own scientists to evaluate the plant over the last three years and contend the plant is not endangered and that the dunes should be opened.
Mark Briant, spokesman for the Sand Association and the San Diego-based Offroad Business Association, said their scientists had counted more than 71,000 plants in the dunes.
"The plant isn't endangered," he said. "It's thriving."
Hendron said wildlife agency officials had carefully reviewed the information from the offroad groups as well as all other information available and concluded that the plant still requires protection as an endangered species.
"We recognize this is one of the most popular off-road vehicle places in the Southwest United States," she said. "We are all working and doing our best to make sure we are bringing good science to our decisions."
Part of the problem is the very popularity of the dunes, Hendron said.
Bureau of Land Management officials have said that during a typical weekend in the winter ---- the most popular season ---- as many as 180,000 people will visit the dunes. They have said that 2.3 million visit the dunes from Halloween through Easter.
Offroad enthusiasts, who have played in the dunes for generations, on Friday said they are afraid the plant and the federal Endangered Species Act will be used to eventually shut them out completely.
"I hate to see environmentalists take it away from us," said Bridget Thorne of Valley Center. "We are not radicals. We just want to keep our sport."
Gary Haugley, owner of B&R Buggies of Oceanside, said a lot of his customers are "sand people" and that he believes the wildlife agencies want to close off all the wild, public lands.
Standing by her black Jeep, 19-year-old Jessica Patten of Valley Center said she had "grown up with the dunes and now they are trying to close it down."
"I want my kids to grow up there," she said.
Contact staff writer Tim Mayer at (760) 901-4043 or tmayer@nctimes.com
Won't make that mistake again...
) and none of the signs were offensive, the media STILL managed to find something that might be considered by the average person to be a little out of the ordinary.