Crowdog
05-28-2004, 08:11 AM
http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040528/News/105280001
Memorial Day weekend will test 'voluntary' Sand Mt. OHV regs
Cory McConnell
May 28, 2004
Federal land managers and motor-sport recreators are ramping up for the biggest weekend of the year at the off-roading mecca of northwestern Nevada - Sand Mountain.
The Bureau of Land Management, which administers the popular recreation area about 30 miles east of Fallon, is expecting 5,000 to 7,000 visitors with stockpiles of off-highway vehicles in tow to flock to the massive dune for Memorial Day weekend.
One BLM official said Thursday that more than 2,000 people had already arrived and there was a steady stream of motor homes and trailers still pouring in.
The BLM has scheduled nine rangers to patrol the recreation area, with several other bureau officials on hand to keep an eye on rider habits around the area's still-vegetated land this weekend.
The BLM views the upcoming holiday as a major test of its "encouraged route system," in which off-roaders are asked to stay on certain trails and off others through the area's declining vegetation.
"This is kind of critical for us, and for the riders out there," said BLM spokesperson Mark Struble.
The future of the voluntary program is tenuous, with the proposition of more stringent restrictions to protect the area's habitat looming.
The BLM is considering designating the still-vegetated area around the 3-milelong dune as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, which wouldn't itself bring new restrictions but could set the stage for later action.
Causing even more alarm to OHV enthusiasts, a petition to list the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly as endangered or threatened is weaving its way through the bureaucracy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The butterfly is only known to exist near Sand Mountain, and its sustenance is the vegetation that has steadily declined as the popularity of Sand Mountain has increased with off-roaders.
While some people opposing OHV restrictions have claimed to have seen huge populations of the butterfly far away from Sand Mountain, BLM biologist Claudia Funari said the insect is indeed distinct from those that flutter about the rest of Churchill County.
"There's a lot of other blues out there," she said. "This blue butterfly is paler than most others."
The tiny butterfly, with a total wingspan of less than an inch, is most often mistaken for the far more common Pygmy Blue, she said.
Bureau officials, along with representatives from the USFWS and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, tried to find other populations of the Sand Mountain Blue, or at least its host plant, last year. They ventured out to dune systems within a 100-kilometer radius of the recreation area.
"We didn't find any Kearney Buckwheat," Funari said.
A second scouting trip was made to the Blow Sand Mountain dune system, south of Carson Lake, with representatives from the U.S. Navy and a conservationist group, a University of Nevada professor and the state museum zoologist George Austin, who first suspected the butterfly was a unique subspecies in 1983.
That trip also came up empty.
If there are buckwheat plants in any other areas that could host the butterfly, they are likely too small to sustain a whole population, Funari said.
With current evidence pointing to Sand Mountain as the only home of the little butterfly, the BLM and off-roaders hope to stem the die-off of plants near the dune with the voluntary trail closure program - and head off the drastic restrictions that will likely follow a listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Bureau officials, however, say the discouraged route system hasn't been getting the results they'd hoped for when they put up signs and markers on trails early this year.
The off-roader advocacy group Friends of Sand Mountain has criticized the route system as marking too much land "discouraged," and for what it says is confusing signage that adds to compliance problems.
Group members have purchased about $450 worth of reflective metal signage they hope will better explain the route system and the reasons for it. FOSM President Richard Hilton said the group will try to put up the signs before the heavy traffic of Memorial Day weekend hits, but BLM officials may object to the advocacy group's signage being posted on public lands.
FOSM members will also hand out educational pamphlets to off-roaders coming into the recreation area, Hilton said.
The BLM estimates about 85 percent of Sand Mountain visitors trek in from California, and Hilton said many of them still don't know about the OHV vs. butterfly controversy.
"A lot of people only come up for one weekend a year, and this is probably that weekend," Hilton said.
Cory McConnell can be contacted at cmcconnell@lahontanvalleynews.com
Memorial Day weekend will test 'voluntary' Sand Mt. OHV regs
Cory McConnell
May 28, 2004
Federal land managers and motor-sport recreators are ramping up for the biggest weekend of the year at the off-roading mecca of northwestern Nevada - Sand Mountain.
The Bureau of Land Management, which administers the popular recreation area about 30 miles east of Fallon, is expecting 5,000 to 7,000 visitors with stockpiles of off-highway vehicles in tow to flock to the massive dune for Memorial Day weekend.
One BLM official said Thursday that more than 2,000 people had already arrived and there was a steady stream of motor homes and trailers still pouring in.
The BLM has scheduled nine rangers to patrol the recreation area, with several other bureau officials on hand to keep an eye on rider habits around the area's still-vegetated land this weekend.
The BLM views the upcoming holiday as a major test of its "encouraged route system," in which off-roaders are asked to stay on certain trails and off others through the area's declining vegetation.
"This is kind of critical for us, and for the riders out there," said BLM spokesperson Mark Struble.
The future of the voluntary program is tenuous, with the proposition of more stringent restrictions to protect the area's habitat looming.
The BLM is considering designating the still-vegetated area around the 3-milelong dune as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, which wouldn't itself bring new restrictions but could set the stage for later action.
Causing even more alarm to OHV enthusiasts, a petition to list the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly as endangered or threatened is weaving its way through the bureaucracy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The butterfly is only known to exist near Sand Mountain, and its sustenance is the vegetation that has steadily declined as the popularity of Sand Mountain has increased with off-roaders.
While some people opposing OHV restrictions have claimed to have seen huge populations of the butterfly far away from Sand Mountain, BLM biologist Claudia Funari said the insect is indeed distinct from those that flutter about the rest of Churchill County.
"There's a lot of other blues out there," she said. "This blue butterfly is paler than most others."
The tiny butterfly, with a total wingspan of less than an inch, is most often mistaken for the far more common Pygmy Blue, she said.
Bureau officials, along with representatives from the USFWS and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, tried to find other populations of the Sand Mountain Blue, or at least its host plant, last year. They ventured out to dune systems within a 100-kilometer radius of the recreation area.
"We didn't find any Kearney Buckwheat," Funari said.
A second scouting trip was made to the Blow Sand Mountain dune system, south of Carson Lake, with representatives from the U.S. Navy and a conservationist group, a University of Nevada professor and the state museum zoologist George Austin, who first suspected the butterfly was a unique subspecies in 1983.
That trip also came up empty.
If there are buckwheat plants in any other areas that could host the butterfly, they are likely too small to sustain a whole population, Funari said.
With current evidence pointing to Sand Mountain as the only home of the little butterfly, the BLM and off-roaders hope to stem the die-off of plants near the dune with the voluntary trail closure program - and head off the drastic restrictions that will likely follow a listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Bureau officials, however, say the discouraged route system hasn't been getting the results they'd hoped for when they put up signs and markers on trails early this year.
The off-roader advocacy group Friends of Sand Mountain has criticized the route system as marking too much land "discouraged," and for what it says is confusing signage that adds to compliance problems.
Group members have purchased about $450 worth of reflective metal signage they hope will better explain the route system and the reasons for it. FOSM President Richard Hilton said the group will try to put up the signs before the heavy traffic of Memorial Day weekend hits, but BLM officials may object to the advocacy group's signage being posted on public lands.
FOSM members will also hand out educational pamphlets to off-roaders coming into the recreation area, Hilton said.
The BLM estimates about 85 percent of Sand Mountain visitors trek in from California, and Hilton said many of them still don't know about the OHV vs. butterfly controversy.
"A lot of people only come up for one weekend a year, and this is probably that weekend," Hilton said.
Cory McConnell can be contacted at cmcconnell@lahontanvalleynews.com