Bracing for off-road row in San Juan

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Bracing for off-road row in San Juan
Newly released BLM Monticello draft plan lacks a recreational travel outline
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

San Juan County could be the next Moab, a fun-hog heaven for off-highway vehicle recreation. But that's not necessarily a good thing.

Conservationists say they fear a repeat of uncontrolled OHV riders mangling favorite spots in the redrock backcountry. San Juan County residents recoil at the idea of big weekend crowds. Recreation advocates of any stripe agree the U.S. Bureau of Land Management needs to come up with a coherent recreation travel plan for Utah's southeastern corner.

But the newly released BLM Monticello Field Office draft resource management plan offers only an inventory of roads and trails that could be open to all-terrain vehicles, a map the OHV community and San Juan County drew for the agency. And that sets up yet another conflict over federal land use in Utah.

The arguments are especially pitched for this land-use plan, last updated in 1991, because San Juan County looks like Moab did 20 years ago, said Liz Thomas, a Moab resident and staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Moab's BLM field office didn't plan for the recreation boom that now defines the city and its surroundings, Thomas said. If San Juan County residents don't want to see the same thing happen again, they should act now.

"If they don't want to see [their] country chewed up," she said, "they better plan."

San Juan County Commission chairman Bruce Adams said that's why the county tried to identify and map trails for OHV use. Now, he said, the county would like the BLM to put together a good travel plan for the roads and trails "and then go out and mark them . . . so the use does not become detrimental or illegal on federal land."

As for being the next Moab, Adams said the county already gets a taste of that potential future every Easter. That's when Moab hosts a big Jeep and truck safari that swings into San Juan County but doesn't drop any cash, even though San Juan is expected to provide police and search and rescue services.

While San Juan residents are open to tourism, "I don't think we want to see that happen to us, where we're overtaken every weekend," Adams said.

Even OHV advocates who are suspicious of the BLM recognize San Juan County's main selling point is scenery and solitude.

"The advantage we have is our trails are really nice to ride, even in winter. That's about the only thing we have going for us, is recreation," said Brent Johansen, a Blanding dentist and president of the OHV group San Juan Public Entry & Access Rights, or SPEAR.

Johansen believes the BLM intends to shut down OHV access. Thomas says the scales are tipped dramatically in favor of motorized recreation, even though far more visitors seek quieter recreation.

Monticello BLM field office manager Nick Sandberg seeks middle ground, a difficult proposition. Yes, he said, "we have severely changed the number of acres of the open [OHV travel] category. But that's just an evolution of the whole use."

At the same time, the BLM has permitted SPEAR's autumn safari event for four years, and plans to keep doing so, he said.

Of course, a lot more than travel is at stake in the Monticello planning area, which includes 1.8 million acres of BLM land surrounded by national parks and recreation areas, state land, national forest land and the Navajo reservation. The plan will stand for 10 to 15 years once it is final.

Lynn Stevens, the state's former public lands policy coordinator and San Juan County commissioner, wants to see an organized OHV travel plan but says the BLM and competing interests need to agree on how to manage the district for its rangeland health, with emphasis on watershed management.

"There is way too much emphasis placed on opening or closing a road," he said. "Wilderness isn't always the best solution for the life of the Earth."