SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 3, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has lauded the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s decision to close 120 miles of off-road vehicle routes in the San Rafael Desert.
“We’re pleased to see the BLM decided to revise the San Rafael Desert plan to reflect what was evident all along: under the prior administration, it designated a significant number of routes for motorized use that just didn’t exist on the ground,” said Laura Peterson, SUWA staff attorney, in a press release on SUWA.org.
“Removing these routes from the travel plan means that some of the San Rafael Desert’s wildest corners will remain just that way — without the sight and sound of motorized vehicles.”
Calling it an overdue corrective action in its Monday press release, SUWA said the BLM’s Oct. 29 decision revised the San Rafael Desert Travel Management Plan by closing 120 miles of erroneously designated off-road vehicle routes in the remote San Rafael Desert area of southeastern Emery County. “As the BLM acknowledged, the wrongly designated routes are reclaimed, redundant or nonexistent on the ground. It also agreed there was no public purpose or need for these ORV routes.”
The BLM approved the original “San Rafael Desert Travel Management Plan” in the last few months of the Trump administration and “selected the most radical management scheme for this area,” SUWA said. Its plan emphasized maximum mileage available for ORV recreation and more than doubled the miles of dirt two-tracks and trails for motorized use from 300 miles to more than 765 miles.
SUWA challenged the plan in federal court in 2021 and alleged it violated several federal environmental laws. SUWA and the BLM settled that lawsuit in February 2022, the BLM agreeing to reconsider the San Rafael plan.
“The San Rafael Desert is a sublime area of Utah’s backcountry, encompassing the newly-designated Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness and wilderness-quality lands such as Sweetwater Reef and the San Rafael River,” SUWA said. “It features stunning redrock canyons, important cultural sites, and an outstanding diversity of native species, many found nowhere else but this corner of Utah.”
The San Rafael Desert Travel Management Plan is one of 11 such plans totaling more than six million acres of federal public lands in Utah that the BLM is required to finalize by 2024.
