Travel Photography > Great Basin > Loneliest Road

Suckling says, "It's frankly a stupid plan that ignores everything we know about conservation planning. The unique thing about these areas is that the location of the vegetation is constantly changing. When you are talking about managing a dune system, you aren't just talking about managing an ecosystem but the ecosystem processes. So you cannot just put a fence around a small area where a species occurs. Come back to that area in 15 years and it will be under 15 feet of sand. You have to manage large landscapes that are big enough to capture that ecosystem process. These plants have evolved to live in a highly dynamic landscape. Little boxed in areas don’t work…little zoos don’t work. These are not zoo animals. You need an environment that is allowed to evolve naturally. Some plants will die and some will get buried, and that’s fine…but you have to protect it enough so that you have that right balance."

When I ask him what and how he wants to accomplish at Sand Mountain, he says, "For the BLM to develop an ecosystem management plan for the entire dune system that ensures the ecological process can continue so the species are allowed to thrive. Once we establish that, only then can the areas that are not critical be used for other purposes. We want the BLM to start from the perspective of the ecosystem."

Over a year ago, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups petitioned the Department of the Interior (the BLM's head office), to list the Sand Mountain blue as endangered or threatened. The result is today's warring factions. The BLM approached the problem the way the Department of the Interior's Gale Norton would like these things settled: Unenforced guidelines about where the duners should and shouldn't ride.

The events at Sand Mountain mimic the debate in Washington DC., because our Secretary of the Interior wants BLM policy to be freer, more multiple-use based. Endangered species questions should be resolved locally, less lawyers. Think: people-first. Think: off-roaders should be responsible for saving the species. Crowley Jr. and the off-roaders are encouraged by this, because it means the survival of the butterfly is more up to them.

But the problem is, Norton keeps losing. And Suckling keeps winning. In court, each time a Norton policy affects a wolf or a sea otter or an owl, Suckling draws his sword.

I ask him, "I understand the Center of Biological Diversity uses lawyers and lawsuits a lot, isn't that kind of backwards?"

"We litigate as a last resort," Suckling says. "If you look at Algodones, for many years, environmentalists and scientists tried to argue with the BLM about what needed to be done and they said, 'we will not do it.' And when the agency says we refuse to do it, that’s when you go to court. I certainly hope that the BLM has learned its lesson and be more receptive at Sand Mountain, but if at the end of the day the agency refuses, then we have no other choice."

I say, "But Jon Crowley Jr. says the endangered species act needs to be reformed?"

"No, I think he doesn’t like it precisely because it does work. The Endangered species act is successful because it changes the way we manage the land. When he says let's reform it, he means let's gut it. It is a very successful act precisely around off road issues such as this."

I ask him, but why should we save subspecies?

“At the Center for Biological Diversity, we don’t just look at the species. We look at the subspecies and populations. Because if you look at the patterns of extinction, it begins with the populations, then the subspecies, and then soon enough the species is gone.”

In a less populated world, a sole off-roader rummaging across a dune is of no consequence. It is these vast numbers and their collective preference for small biological islands, that make them guilty of damaging ecosystems. Regular off-roaders, who tread thousands of miles through the wilderness, are often regarded with little concern by environmentalists. Their route, no impact. Those off-roaders are many times our environmental leaders, our cheerful outdoorspeople.

Next

1234567891011121314151616