Travel Photography > Great Basin > Loneliest Road

Off-roaders have been run down and chased away by environmentalists nearly everywhere. In Southern California’s Imperial Sand Dunes, a hotspot for the off-road circuit, the BLM closed much of the dunes in order to protect a threatened plant species called Pierson's milk vetch.

As if refugees, the off-roaders fled places like California, which were filled with ‘extremist environmentalists’. The answer became the last place in America where freedom is truly free. Off-roaders began turning to the giant Sand Mountain at the end of the loneliest road.

The problem with the California exodus means weekends like this – thousands of off-road vehicles. Heavy traffic.

Sand Mountain is the only known home of a subspecies of the Pallid Dotted-Blue Butterfly (Euphilotes pallescens). The contentious violence-inducing butterfly offshoot is called the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly.

Extensive off-road use, possibly in addition to invasive plant species; maybe even drought, means the landscape of Sand Mountain is changing rapidly. But what's clear is that off-roading has been directly responsible for decreasing the habitat of the blue butterfly.

So obvious, that the same environmental group that had been forcing off-roaders from the dunes in other southwestern states are back again, getting fired up to....sue the BLM. The country's most aggressive environmental organization, The Center for Biological Diversity is a small group from Tucson, Arizona whose mission is keeping any endangered species alive. Their chosen method, lawsuits.

I ask Dean, isn’t it completely nuts that these environmental groups actually sue your agency?

Dean says, “The reason they might sue us is that the BLM is not supposed to authorize any actions that would allow a species to get listed on the endangered species act."

Dean is precise in his words, and as a public officer, he never reveals personal feelings, like a soldier he serves. He says, "The BLM should not authorize any recreation if it degrades the habitat. On the other hand, other groups could equally say that the BLM is not managing this public land on a multiple use basis. You see, the Bureau of Land Management is charged with the task of managing the multiple use of public land, so we are supposed to allow recreational activities while protecting cultural resources as well: wildlife, wildlife habitat and planned diversity. They sue us because they feel we are not doing the job we are supposed to be doing.”

I tell him that Jon Crowley Jr., who is considered the off-roader’s expert on the Sand Mountain issue, told me that the BLM and the environmentalists have “no baseline to know if there is any decline” of the subspecies. Crowley contends there is no scientific evidence to prove that the butterfly is being harmed by off-roading. He also contends “…the Endangered Species Act goes too far to protect subspecies. There are only very slight variations between subspecies of Euphilotes pallenscens.”

Dean says that the butterfly exists on a thousand acres of habitat. I ask him where. He says, “This is it. Right here.” Between the grommets and the screws, there is a piece of dust. That is the blue butterfly habitat.

He points to the area around us, which is just sand.

”A couple years ago, this was all Kearney buckwheat, which is the larval host plant for the sand mountain blue butterfly. But with the increased traffic, they’ve taken out a lot of it.”

Dean shows me a BLM map depicting an aerial view of Sand Mountain. The detail of the map is astounding. Dean has gone so far as to make notes about individual remaining Kearney Buckwheat plants.

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