Bush Opens Way for Counties and States to Claim
Wilderness Roads
Policy could allow vehicles into vast areas of wilderness, some in national parks. Critics fear harm by miners,
off-roaders and others.
By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- From most perspectives, this
windblown landscape is the definition of off the beaten path. Sandy hummocks
give way to flinty mountain ranges and a seemingly impassable expanse that is
home to herds of bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and a universe of heat-loving
plants.
But others see the preserve's 1.6 million acres of creosote bushes and ribbed
desert washes and envision thousands of miles of roads. Ditto for Death
Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, along with wilderness areas in the
Sierra Nevada and along California's rugged northern coast.
That vision — of
unfettered motorized
access to remote
country that has for
decades been the
province of wild animals
and a few hardy
backpacking humans —
is a lot closer to reality
thanks to a Bush
administration policy
quietly adopted earlier
this month.
Bowing to long-standing
pressure from several
Western states and counties, the Interior Department's new policy gives local
decision-makers the opportunity to lay claim to tens of thousands of miles of rights of way across
federal land. Ultimately, it will be up to the Interior Department to determine the validity of the claims.
Enacted through a rules change, the new policy has the potential to open millions of acres of land in
national parks and federally designated wilderness areas to motorized transportation. By providing
access to isolated holdings, it could also open remote country to drilling for oil and gas and other
commercial development.
The policy does not automatically convey rights of way to local jurisdictions. The U.S. Bureau of Land
Management must rule on the validity of each claim. The agency is virtually certain to face legal
challenges to any rights of way granted through parks or wilderness areas where motorized
transportation is now prohibited.
Nonetheless, wilderness advocates have cause for alarm. The Bush administration has made its
preference clear for granting state and local authorities increasing say in the way federal lands are used.
Deputy Interior Secretary Steve Griles recently told a group of Alaska mining and energy executives
that the administration would soon approve rights-of-way claims from that state.
Alaska, Utah and other states, as well as a handful of Southern California counties, are asserting the
rights-of-way claims under a little-known 1866 law titled RS 2477, which was designed to encourage
the development of the rural West. The law was repealed in 1976, but states and counties were still
able to make claims if the roads existed before 1976.
Wagon Trails
In many cases, what authorities are claiming as roads amount to little more than wagon tracks, livestock
paths and even dogsled routes in Alaska. But with muscular, four-wheel-drive vehicles, even the most
primitive routes can allow access to untrammeled places.
The issue heated up during the 1990s as off-road vehicle enthusiasts, hunters, ranchers and mining and
energy interests became increasingly concerned about the Clinton administration's efforts to curtail road
building in national forests, restrict mining near national parks and create parks and monuments.
The new policy does not take effect until Feb. 5, but already its implications are being felt across the
West.
In California, San Bernardino County has indicated its intent to claim nearly 5,000 miles of rights of
way — more than twice the total mileage of maintained roads in the entire county. The county is
pressing claims to 2,567 miles of roads within the Mojave National Preserve, acting at the behest of
off-road enthusiasts, ranchers and mining interests.
Riverside and other counties have documented claims to rights of way in Joshua Tree and Death Valley
national parks and 21 wilderness areas in the Southern California desert.
Counties such as San Bernardino say they are simply securing legitimate claims that they may or may
not intend to exercise.
"These are blanket assertions," said Brad Mitzelfelt, chief of staff for San Bernardino County
Supervisor Bill Postmus. "It's a matter of defending local prerogatives and local rights. If you have a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to protect rights that you may lose forever, you've got to take it."
Park and wilderness advocates fear it will disrupt wildlife habitat, turning 19th century wagon ruts into
paved roadways, allowing cars and their pollution into unspoiled places.
"We're concerned about highways, but in a way that's just the tip of the iceberg," said Heidi McIntosh,
conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has been monitoring RS 2477
claims for more than a decade.
McIntosh said one of the right-of-way claims in Utah leads down a waterfall and another through a
4-foot-wide slot canyon.
"With roads comes pollution, wildlife fragmentation, off-road vehicles, the loss of solitude and quiet.
Multiply that by 10,000, the number of claims here in Utah, and you have a mess. I can't think of an
issue the Bush administration is working on that can have a longer or more serious impact on public
lands."
Impact Assessed
Ten years ago, the National Park Service evaluated potential RS 2477 claims and found that if the
roads were allowed, the impact would be devastating. The report noted that the claims could cross
many miles of undisturbed fish and wildlife habitat, historical and archeological resources, and sensitive
wetlands.
"If a court were to decide that the law says the right-of-way roads have precedence over legally
designated wilderness, that would have a catastrophic effect on wilderness," said David Graber, senior
science advisor at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and a member of the park service's
wilderness steering committee.
The Clinton administration proposed a rule that would have prevented footpaths, dogsled tracks and
other primitive routes from being turned into roadways but met resistance from Congress, and the issue
went unresolved.
Today, Interior officials say the change is needed to streamline time-consuming disputes and lengthy
legal proceedings. The new rule removes public comment and judicial review from the process and
gives the Bureau of Land Management sole authority to validate right-of-way claims.
Nationally, some of the most celebrated public landscape could be affected. Alaska has asserted claims
over 22,000 waterways and 2,700 miles of roads in 13 national parks and preserves, including Denali
National Park and the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
In Utah, many of the rights of way crisscross southern Utah's spectacular red rock country — where
local officials contend that the cluster of half a dozen national parks and proposed wilderness areas
stand in the way of access to cattle grazing, minerals, and oil and gas deposits.
There and elsewhere, off-road enthusiasts as well as cattle, mining and ranching groups and hunters
have lobbied hard for the rights of way, in some cases filing claims themselves.
"It's been a long and arduous fight because the previous administration wasn't cooperating. Now, we've
found willing ears," said Clark Collins, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a Pocatello,
Idaho-based organization representing motorized recreation interests.
"In rural areas, people are very interested in this issue, it means so much to all of us," said Ron Schiller,
who heads a recreation group in Ridgecrest, Calif., that supports rights-of-way claims. "Up here in the
high desert, this is what we have to recreate. We don't have a lot of miniature golf courses or big
theaters or theme parks."
In the Mojave Preserve, hunters drive abandoned mining roads and hike to get closer to their quarry:
bighorn sheep and deer. For much of the preserve, the old routes weave through low brush and serve
to keep visitors from more sensitive desert areas.
The Blue Ribbon Coalition's California chapter has made three rights-of-way claims, pushing for
motorized access across hundreds of miles of wilderness in Sequoia National Forest, through the King
Range National Conservation Area on the north coast and in non-wilderness tracts in the Six Rivers
National Forest.
"We don't want to undo vast sections of wilderness, that's not our intent. We do intend to protect our
access," said Don Amador, the group's Western states representative.
But access carries implications for altering landscapes. Roads through wilderness create traffic
corridors and make adjacent areas more accessible. Miners or others who own land within federal
preserves may decide that new roads will make it economically feasible to develop their land
commercially, or explore for oil and gas.
Implications Feared
"Once Interior opens the door, it's a free-for-all," said Keith Hammond of the California Wilderness
Coalition, whose volunteers are walking thousands of miles of RS 2477 claims in the state to inventory
the condition of the routes.
Mitzelfelt said San Bernardino County doesn't know which of its current claims would be pressed.
With a budget of$30 million for maintaining the county's existing roads, Mitzelfelt said, he was unsure
what the cost would be for new roads or how to pay for them.
Across the country there is no indication how many claims will be validated, and critics acknowledge
their concern, at this point, is based on the potential for damage.
So far the Interior Department has offered no clear direction on the rule's most potentially explosive
aspect — what to do about rights of way that cross the borders of wilderness. Under a federal law,
motorized travel is not allowed in wilderness areas.
"We're wondering how this is going to work out," said BLM spokesman Jeff Holdren. He said the
nitty-gritty details of implementation of the rule change have not been worked out, including how to deal
with right-of-way claims in wilderness areas.
"We didn't expect anyone to want roads in wilderness, but technically it can be done. I suspect we will
be in court pretty soon over such a situation. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there pulling their
hair out."
This is really DEPRESSING@!!
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