Report: BLM not protecting wilderness

Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

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The Bureau of Land Management has failed to protect deserts, canyons and range land in Nevada from off-road vehicles, which cause pollution and erosion that threaten wildlife, environmentalists say.

This failure has resulted because the BLM has not properly posted its off-limits acreage and is not properly supervising the land it manages, the environmentalists say.

A report released today documented off-road tire tracks in areas that are supposed to be off limits to all motorized vehicles, including the BLM's Clover Mountains wilderness study area near Caliente, 149 miles north of Las Vegas.

"Dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles are out of control in Nevada's wilderness study areas," said John Wallin, director of the Nevada Wilderness Project, a statewide group dedicated to protecting public lands.

The BLM manages 49 million acres in Nevada. Of that total, 5.1 million acres are under study for possible designation as wilderness. All wilderness acres and acres under study for that designation are off limits to motorized vehicles.

Yet only the 44,000 acres actually designated as wilderness are posted with signs warning dirt bikers and others with motorized vehicles to stay off, Wallin said.

The BLM counters that it has issued draft guidelines for local district managers to handle off-road vehicles.

"The guideance is a disappointment," said Shaaron Netherton, executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. "It fails to offer any substantive protection to any places, even wilderness study areas."

Protecting public lands from off-roaders is a question of staffing and funding, said David Wolf of the BLM's Las Vegas District Office.

"I guess I would say there are cases where people have gone off existing routes and into wilderness study areas," Wolf said.

But with each BLM ranger in Nevada assigned 1 million acres to protect, it's easy for a dirt biker or off-roader to slip onto wildlands, he said.

"Short of putting barbed wire fences around all our wilderness study areas, someone somewhere will run off the road into them," Wolf said.

BLM rangers have witnessed motorcyclists in the McCullough Range, south of Las Vegas, Wolf said. But rangers in four-wheel drive vehicles are no match for the motorbikers, he added.

"They scoot away from us," Wolf said.

John Holton, of Nevada Offroad Buggy, a group that participates in up to 30 off-road races a year in Southern Nevada, said that racing drivers know not to leave a designated trail.

Off-road races take place along existing fire roads or in dry washes. "If we get off the track, we're disqualified," Holton said.

The BLM warns racers about sensitive areas and can track the cars by the big numbers painted on the side, he said.

"Those guys know the BLM is watching," Holton said.

"There's always a rotten egg in every batch, but off-roaders aren't looking to try to hit a turtle or a snake or run over bushes," he said.