Environmentalist Challenge Halts ATV Mecca

A national environmentalist group called the Center for Biological Diversity has challenged a plan to build a 1-mile designated county trail through two plots of National Forest lands.

The center contends the Forest Service isn’t following its own rules. It complains the  agency failed to designate motorized trails within an allotted three-year period when the dunes NRA management plan was passed in 1994; a section of the land the trail would pass through is designated MA 10C, which is closed to motorized use; and that the trail violates the Forest Service’s 2001 Roadless Rule.

But a Biological Diversity attorney bluntly said these points of contention are just a means to an end. The group opposes ATV access into what it considers to a be a fragile and unique habitat, and will do anything it can to throw a wrench in the works.

“It’s a way to be heard,” said lawyer Andrew Orahoske, who’s heading up the group’s anti-Riley Ranch campaign. “The primary concern is that the Forest Service has done a poor job in managing offroad vehicles in the dunes since the dunes NRA was created. …

Sounds like the environmentalists won’t be happy until they’ve ruined everyone’s fun.

[Source: The World]