Increased Off-Road Use OKd in Mojave

The Bureau of Land Management on Friday formally approved 1,500 miles of roads in the northern and eastern Mojave Desert, opening more than 90% of the region’s trails to off-road use.

The decision affects 1.3 million acres of the 3.3 million acres the agency manages in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and substantially increases the amount of public land open to motorized recreation in the California desert.

Even though the roads crisscross a broad area designated as critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise, officials said care was taken to exclude roads in areas where resources could be damaged.

“We don’t have to close every road in critical habitat, but we do determine how sensitive the area is and what the impacts are,” said BLM spokeswoman Jan Bedrosian.

The issue of determining which of the desert’s myriad roads are deemed open or closed to vehicles -- called route designation by the BLM -- has long been contentious.

Recreation enthusiasts complain they have fewer places to ride and drive as sensitive desert land is placed out of bounds to preserve habitat for threatened or endangered species. Conservationists complain that the agency caters to off-highway vehicle users at the expense of protecting the desert.

Friday’s ruling was immediately protested by several environmental groups.

“Everything that was out there on the ground was designated as open, and a lot of it was created by illegal roads,” said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s a big difference between access and excess.”

Bedrosian said it is possible that some of the routes the BLM declared open were created by illegal use since the last time the agency designated official routes in the mid-’80s. The new route plan will connect a network of roads throughout BLM land in the region.