FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ONDA appeals BLM travel management decision for Steens Mountain

Map showing scarcity of areas more than three miles from a route open to motorized travel on Steens Mountain.

The Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) and four other conservation organizations filed an administrative appeal today challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) new travel management plan for public lands on Steens Mountain.  The concerns raised in the appeal focuses on the plan’s failure to include or analyze non-motorized travel and recreation opportunities, its designation of new motorized routes in existing Wilderness Study Areas, its failure to consider closing routes on Steens Mountain shown to be obsolete, redundant or causing resource damage, and the agency’s decision to leave open to motorized use more than 500 miles of motorized vehicle routes on Steens Mountain.

“Steens Mountain is an important place to many Oregonians. Unfortunately the Travel Management Plan ignores uses such as hiking, horseback riding and backcountry hunting and fishing in favor of motorized recreation users,” ONDA Executive Director Brent Fenty said.

Steens Mountain, which sits in eastern Oregon’s high desert and northern Great Basin, is a 60-mile long, nearly 10,000-foot elevation, fault-block mountain which rises on its east face more than a mile above the cracked, flat floor of the Alvord Desert. The area is home to hundreds of wildlife species, including pronghorn antelope, Greater sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, California bighorn sheep, Columbia spotted frogs, and over a hundred species of neotropical migratory birds, as well as a number of endemic native fish species.

In 2000, Congress enacted the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act and is an important designation in BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System.  The purpose of the Steens Act’s Cooperative Management and Protection Area (CMPA) is to conserve and protect the “long-term ecological integrity of Steens Mountain for future and present generations.” The Steens Act directed the BLM to prepare a management plan for the CMPA by October 30, 2004. The management was to include a comprehensive transportation plan to manage roads and trails throughout the area.

“BLM’s decision to give priority to motorized recreation is inconsistent with Congress’ decision to protect Steens Mountain as a national treasure,” Fenty said.

The Steens Mountain Travel Management Plan (TMP) will guide transportation management on about a half million acres of public land on Steens Mountain in southeast Oregon. According to ONDA, laws governing BLM’s preparation of the TMP require that the agency plan comprehensively, for both motorized and nonmotorized uses, in the travel plan. ONDA also claims BLM’s decision to designate what the agency terms “Obscure Routes”—routes that cannot even be located on the ground—is illegal within Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs). BLM must manage WSAs so as not to impair their wilderness values until Congress decides whether to designate the areas as Wilderness. ONDA also alleges BLM’s decision to leave almost all of the routes on Steens Mountain open to motorized vehicles violates the Steens Act’s requirement that BLM manage the mountain principally to protect its “long-term ecological integrity.”

“The idea of designating routes that have not been used for a decade and cannot be found on the ground as open for motorized use defies common sense,” said Fenty.

During the planning process, ONDA sent volunteers and staff out to Steens Mountain to inventory the hundreds of miles of routes to be managed under the TMP. ONDA took photographs and prepared GIS maps showing route conditions and locations, and then submitted a detailed report to BLM recommending which routes should be closed to motorized use. ONDA recommended that routes that were overgrown, impassable, redundant or obsolete, should be closed or converted to hiking trails.

The recommendations presented by ONDA and other groups were not included in the TMP; instead BLM’s plan focuses solely on motorized use.  The appeal asks the Department of the Interior to order the BLM to prepare a new or revised plan that contemplates a balance between motorized and non-motorized recreation use on Steens Mountain.

“Our hope is that the BLM will reexamine transportation issues on Steens Mountain and ensure that hikers, equestrians, anglers, hunters and other non-motorized users are given an equal voice in this process,” said Fenty.

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