DesertBlog

And now the bad news

While the Senate acted yesterday to protect wilderness across the country, one area supposedly protected in the landmark California Desert Protection Act of 1994 is now under threat. Karen Schambach of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reports that Red Rock Canyon State Park, which was transferred to California’s state park system to better protect its scenic values and fossil treasures, could be opened to greater use by dirt bikes and ATVs. Your comments are needed by January 31 to speak up for greater protection for this outstanding state park.

More from Karen, including how you can help the Parks Department come up with a better plan:

California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park, a resource-rich and stunningly beautiful park in the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave Desert, is now threatened with becoming yet another ORV-ruined landscape. These desert canyon-lands, which were supposed to receive “maximum protection” when they were transferred to State Parks in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s 1994 Desert Protection Act, are about to become ground zero in a face-off between traditional park users and off-road interests.

The Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) is cash-strapped, while the Off Highway Vehicle Division of State Parks is flush with funds, thanks to generous transfers from the state’s fuel tax revenues. As a result, a General Plan amendment for Red Rock appears headed for allowing dirt bikes and ATVs to use more areas of the park than they already do, possibly even including the park’s current “preserves,” in exchange for funding from the OHV Division.

Red Rock Canyon is a spectacularly beautiful canyon-land, sandwiched between Jawbone Canyon and Dove Springs Canyon, both on Bureau of Land Management lands. These two areas were designated by BLM for ORV use years ago and are both now largely denuded landscapes, the result of thousands of ORVs racing up and down hill slopes and across the desert vegetation. Users of these two areas now want unfettered access to Red Rock, which BLM transferred to the state to ensure protection of its abundant natural and cultural resources. Unfortunately, some in DPR seem willing to sacrifice this beautiful area to ORV destruction.

Red Rock Canyon State Park includes some of California’s richest fossil sites (including the premier sites for Miocene-age fossils), as well as numerous historic and prehistoric sites. It hosts several sensitive wildlife and plant species, and springs in its canyons create rare desert riparian areas. All of these resources are currently threatened by off-road vehicles, which are allowed on some of the park’s dirt roads but also ride illegally in areas closed to vehicles. Opening more of the park to them would be disastrous.

In the General Plan Amendment process initiated this fall, PEER is heading up an effort to ensure Red Rock does not meet the same fate as Dove Springs and Jawbone Canyon’s. An earlier attempt at a General Plan Amendment was aborted in 2003 when DPR Director Ruth Coleman refused to send a compromise plan to the Parks Commission unless OHV Deputy Director Daphne Greene agreed to the plan. Greene, at the urging of her ORV constituency, refused, and the plan died. (See PEER News.)

A new planning effort faces the same fate, unless conservationists and traditional park users weigh in strongly against turning our State Parks into ORV play areas. Scoping for the project has been extended to January 31; if you’re reading this after that date, we still encourage you to submit a comment. E-mail your letters urging maximum protection for Red Rock Canyon’s cultural and natural resources to Russ Dingman: “rdingman AT parks.ca.gov” or to “redrock AT edaw.com”. You can also ask Mr. Dingman to add you to the mailing list for Red Rock Canyon, as there will be opportunities later this year to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

For more information, please e-mail “capeer AT peer.org”.

Photo of Red Rock Canyon State Park’s scenic cliffs by Karen Schambach.

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