There’s a time and a place for almost everything, including off-road driving. After a recent legal ruling, however, there’s one place where that is distinctly not the case: a sizable stretch of the Mojave Desert. A federal judge’s ruling in the Northern District of California held that off-road vehicles could cause “likely irreparable harm to the desert tortoise” that call said desert home.
Writing at the Los Angeles Times, Alex Wigglesworth discussed the ruling and its implications. The federal judge, Susan Illston, ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to shut down a number of existing trails and come up with an alternative plan for trails in the region by 2029. Judge Illston’s ruling revisited and, in many cases, overturned a set of off-road vehicle (or “OHV,” an abbreviation for “off-highway vehicles”) trails established in 2019.
Wigglesworth’s reporting points to the different ways that off-roading can make life harder for tortoises, from destroying the entrances to their burrows to displacing the plants that they eat. The Times also reports that members of the local off-roading community plan on appealing the ruling via the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Off-the-Grid Guide to Enjoying the Mojave Desert
RCL adventure correspondent Kinga Philipps takes you off the beaten path.The ruling went on to make the case that this ruling achieved a balance between preserving desert tortoises’ habitatrs while still giving off-road drivers plenty of space for off-roading. “[T]he Court finds it significant closure of OHV routes in desert tortoise critical habitat would still leave 63% of OHV routes available for OHV use, and that 271,661 acres of OHV ‘Open Areas’ would remain accessible to OHVs,” Judge Illston wrote.
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