His plan falls under a larger issue, because he has been encouraged by Bush’s controversial Gale Norton, the Secretary of the Interior who ultimately affects BLM policy. Norton believes that environmental issues should be handled privately, between local groups, whenever possible.

In a letter to his local congressman, John T. Doolittle, Crowley Jr. writes, “I am very excited that President Bush was…reelected, and that Republicans have an increased majority in the House and Senate.  I am hopeful that much can be accomplished during the President’s second term. I am writing today to ask for your help in protecting our ability to use off-highway vehicles on public land. Specifically, we need legislation to reform the Endangered Species Act, and release Wilderness Study Areas.”

Some rather wayward groups don’t agree with Crowley Jr. at all. And in Washington D.C., a concurrent debate over the future of the endangered species act is awakening.

A lot of people have strong words for his ideas. Some strange bedfellows are descending on Sand Mountain, in a debate where off-roader violence has only focused more national attention on a very small butterfly, which sprouts its wings and then dies.