On September 26, 2009 the BLM, Community ORV Watch and over fifty volunteers participated in a National Public Lands Day event to help remove trash, protect 100 year-old adobe ruins, erect signs and place barriers to protect sensitive habitat and historical resources from illegal off-road vehicle activity at the Poste Homestead.

A visit today to the Poste Homestead site shows evidence of heavy ORV abuse over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Off route incursion and damage is in evidence everywhere, including on all closed routes. Virtually 100 % of the vertical mulching installed during the recent Poste Homestead clean-up was destroyed. A large number and variety of ORV's visited the site; ground evidence is consistent with dirtbikes, quad runners, and sand rails.

Much of the work done on National Public Lands Day has now been ruined and further damage has been done to the Poste Homestead. We are outraged at the damage done. Is the pro-rider community outraged as well? Pro-OHV-rider groups and individuals frequently blame their bad reputation on a few "bad apples". They complain that organizations like COW exaggerate the negative effects of abusive off-road riding. They say the answer to any actual problem is "education". Here is clear example of abusive riding in a place that is clearly marked as off-limits and ORV riders, who apparently have not been effectively "educated", have plainly ignored those limits and damaged valuable natural and community resources. These riders are outlaws who feel that they can ride with impunity and without consequences.

Incidents like this along with the regular and on-going noise, dust, trespassing and harassment of citizens who object are why the efforts Community ORV Watch and others who are negatively affected by the abusive use of ORVs goes on. Please support our efforts.

Click the "read more" link below to view pictures of the damage done by this abusive riding.

Published in the Hi-Desert Start - October 5, 2007

Guest soapbox: Trashing a gift

By Russell M. Drake / Yucca Valley

Amid growing public clamor about the effect of off-road vehicles on humans (noise, dirt, vandalism and so forth), relatively little has been said about the ORV effect on the desert and the animals who inhabit it.

Within easy reach of the Mojave Desert are 595,781 ORVs registered by the Department of Motor Vehicles in seven Southern California counties, more than half of the 1,101,980 registered in the entire state.

ORV impact on the desert is huge, according to wildlife experts.

“Few vehicles could be found that are more effective in damaging soil and plant life than knobby-tired, powerful dirt bikes and four-wheel drives,” says Cal Berkely professor emeritus of zoology Robert C. Stebbins in a paper published in “The California Desert,” a 1995 book on man’s impact on the desert. “When off-road vehicles are used repeatedly in a limited area they can be utterly devastating,” says Professor Stebbins.

“It takes not more than a week for coyotes to quit denning and leave. Birds will leave even quicker,” under the impact of off-road vehicles, says Paul De Prey, Chief of Resources, Joshua Tree National Park.

“ORV activity is a destructive recreation,” says Michael Vamstad, Joshua Tree National Park wildlife ecologist. “Off-road vehicles are contributing to a lot of displacement of wildlife, particularly owls and hawks. The loss of land and resulting fragmentation of animal populations is the greatest threat to any species right now. The whole ecosystem gets thrown out of whack.”

Probably nowhere else can ORV destruction be seen so clearly as on one square mile of desert owned by the Town of Yucca Valley about five miles north of the town center. Called Section 11 by the town, and the Landau Gift by others, the land was given to Yucca Valley by Elizabeth and Edward Landau of New York City in 1996. About a third of the parcel was destroyed by a fire of unexplained origins Aug. 5, 1995.

The fire was followed by an invasion of dirt bikes, quads, pickups, four-by-fours, dune buggies, sand rails and Jeeps. Sheriff’s deputies and code enforcement officers say off-roaders are attracted to land cleared by fire because it’s easier to drive than native desert scrub.

Nesting red-tailed hawks and great-horned owls with five-foot wingspreads disappeared from Section 11, vanquished by the noise and stink of off-road vehicles. Threatened desert tortoise and other burrowing animals are uniquely vulnerable to death by ORV “dirt sports,” which crush their burrows, trapping them inside, or kill them outright.

Even light or moderate ORV traffic can cause lasting damage to wildlife and soils. The damage can be seen in the “edge effect” and the cryptobiotic crust, a one-quarter-inch thick “carpet” of nutrient-rich top soil that is critical to desert plant and animal life. The delicate crust is in a constant battle for survival with natural forces and when further compromised by dirt bikes can be converted into shifting sand dunes.

The “edge effect” of vehicle traffic propagating from roads like a wave into surrounding terrain has a ruinous impact on plants and animals alike. In this area, says Paul De Prey, native grasses lose the competition for water and nutrition to non-native species, such as red brome grass, which doesn’t decompose as quickly as native grasses. Instead, red brome dries out, its stalks becoming “flash fuel” that increase the frequency and size of wildfires. The effect is multiplied by roads and systems of roads created by ORV traffic on lands adjacent to highways.

“The decrease in the population of animals in a highway edge area has a trickle effect out into the desert. Put in another road, say a dirt bike trail that through repeated use becomes a road, and animal population between the roads is wiped out,” says De Prey.

Renewal of cryptobiotic crusts can take from 50 to 250 years. A destroyed ecosystem may require over 3,000 years for complete recovery, say co-authors Jeffrey E. Lovich and David Bainbridge in a 1999 article on the effect of human activity in the Southern California deserts.

From the LA Times, June 29, 2007:

Riders who stray from legal trails damage watersheds, help spread invasive species and contribute to fire hazards, a group says.
By Alison Williams, Times Staff Writer
June 29, 2007

A new group of retired land managers and forest rangers said Thursday that reckless off-road vehicle recreation was the No. 1 threat to public lands in the West.

The 13-member Rangers for Responsible Recreation said it was voicing the concerns of many federal land management employees in the West, including in California, who report that an increasing number of riders and the growing power of the vehicles are endangering natural resources and public safety.

Spokesmen for the group were participating in a teleconference from Tucson that was arranged by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. PEER, which describes itself as an "alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals," helped found the new organization.

Damage from off-road vehicles is worst when riders leave designated routes and head into sensitive areas such as fragile desert and riparian zones, members of the new group said.

Read the whole story here.

Goto the PEER site and send a message to your representative.

Read an editorial from the Salt Lake Tribune supporting the PEER efforts, that concludes:

"ATV groups rightly say peer enforcement is key, but obviously that isn't enough. Only tough laws that are enforced can keep ATV scofflaws on the straight and narrow."

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to will meet on Tuesday, July 24 August 21 to consider changes that would weaken the county ORV ordinance

Rider's groups successfully lobbied the board to take up the matter and have recommended changes that will allow for large, uncontrolled stagings of ORVs in residential areas

IF YOU VALUE YOUR PRIVATE PROPERTY, QUALITY OF LIFE AND PUBLIC LANDS YOU MUST COME TO THE MEETING AND DEFEND THE ORDINANCE.

TUESDAY, JULY 24th August 21 at the Board of Supervisors Chambers
385 North Arrowhead Avenue in San Bernardino

ORV riders have threatened to bring busloads of supporters asking to weaken and repeal the ordinance. They have sent hundreds of letters to the supervisors. We must show up in large numbers to protect our private and public lands and contact our supervisors to defend the law.

Call and write your supervisor TODAY and demand that the ordinance stay strong:

Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt (District 1) -- (909) 387-4830
Supervisor Dennis Hansberger (District 3) -- (909) 387-4833

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors
385 North Arrowhead Avenue, San Bernardino, California 92415-0181

This community resident has to keep putting up new "No Tresspasing" signs on their private property and riders repeatedly and illegally ignore it.

For your information and distribution in the fight against ORV abuse, we are providing access to the following fact sheets about how Unmanaged Off-Roading Threatens California's Natural Heritage and Rural Communities, how California's OHV Program Promotes Mainly ATVs, Dirt Bikes and Repairing California’s Public Lands for Future Generations. (Adobe Reader or other PDF program required to view.)

From an editorial letter published on 12/13/06 on the Hi-Desert Star website:

By Phillip Klasky / Wonder Valley

This is to establish a record of off-road vehicle complaints and enforcement that you have made. Please provide as much information as you can.