PAUL FOY Associated Press writer | Posted: Friday, October 13, 2006 12:00 am
SALT LAKE CITY - An off-road group plans to defy federal authorities Saturday by toppling a barricade to motor along a dirt road closed by the government three years ago in southern Utah.
Go ahead and ticket us, say the all-terrain vehicle riders, who are angry over the closing of public lands, most recently around Factory Butte, a monolith that towers over the San Rafael desert and harbors pockets of protected cacti.
The Bureau of Land Management will be ready - even if rangers have to drive 2.5 hours to write tickets near the Muddy River in a far corner of Emery County.
So it's settled: They'll shove aside a 10-foot barricade at the old Hidden Splendor uranium mine, where a mining road drops into spectacular Muddy River canyon.
Richard Beardall, president of Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance, is looking for a crowd of off-roaders to drive a few hundred yards to the river and back.
They'll move the buck-and-pole barricade back into place after the protest, then accept citations that could run $300 apiece, an event others plan to videotape.
Beardall "wants a ticket to make his point and go to court on the issue. He'll get a ticket," BLM field manager Roger Bankert said.
It's a protest against rules adopted in 2003 that limited travel on the San Rafael Swell, not the neighboring Factory Butte district where the BLM just last month banned off-roading from a 222-square-mile area.
But off-roaders are angry about that, too.
"We're preparing a lawsuit against it for federal court, and we already have Wayne County on board as a plaintiff," said Michael Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance.
BLM officials say all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes still have a four-square-mile natural basin along State Route 24 called Swing Arm City, plus 220 miles of dirt roads and trails open, but it's a token concession to off-roaders.
"People not aware of that area might look at those numbers and say it's a balanced plan, but it's not so," insisted Swenson, who said the rules defeat all-day tours, forcing riders into concentrated areas or corridors.
"You might get an hour's tour out of the whole thing," he said.
BLM officials say they had to impose the first restrictions in the badlands to protect rare species of cactus - the endangered Wright fishhook and the threatened Winkler - that are indigenous to south-central Utah. Environmentalists complained that motorized vehicles were crushing them.
Swenson said the new rules will keep away off-roaders who came by the thousands each year to traverse the area's lunar-like landscape.
Noting the 120-mile indirect route from his office in Price, Bankert invited protesters to pick a closer spot Saturday - like his BLM parking lot.
"How am I going to get a citation for that to take to court?" Beardall replied.