Fines, penalties, proposed for illegal off-road riders
By Rebecca Unger The Desert Trail | Posted: Wednesday, December 31, 2014 1:38 pm
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Sign of the times
This sign on Twentynine Palms Highway at Mojave Ranch Road on Monday, Dec. 29, urged holiday off-roaders to obey laws and respect the neighborhoods they ride in.
WONDER VALLEY — Phil Klasky of Wonder Valley has been fighting illegal off-roading for several years. He was instrumental in organizing Community ORV Watch to bring neighborhoods and enforcement agencies together to combat destruction on private property and fragile desert lands by off-roaders who ride in non-designated, private or protected areas.
On Monday afternoon, Dec. 29, Klasky and the like-minded group Alliance for Responsible Recreation organized a forum at the Palms Restaurant in Wonder Valley so the community could air their off-roading problems with officials from county, state and federal agencies.
Klasky started the meeting with a reading of a Dec. 1 inter-office email by Chief BLM Ranger Patrick Chassie of the Barstow field office. Chassie’s office estimated 33,000 off-roaders used designated areas over the recent Thanksgiving holiday but added that there were “incursions” into several wilderness and desert wildlife management areas containing “sensitive sites and cultural resources.”
The ranger said 300 illegal off-roaders used the Sunfair dry lake in Joshua Tree and 150 were riding throughout Wonder Valley. Chassie said there were illegal riders at Giant Rock in Landers and the 100-year-old Poste Homestead outside of Wonder Valley and “heavy illegal OHV use” in the Marine base expansion area in Johnson Valley.
Chassie’s report claimed the recent Marine base expansion into more than 100,000 acres of Johnson Valley legal off-road riding areas has increased illegal off-road use into “non-traditional” areas of sensitive biological and cultural significance.
Attendees from every corner of the Hi-Desert were given the chance to share their experiences and frustrations. They told of fences on private property ignored, dust clouds rising and lingering, lack of response from enforcement agencies at night or on weekends and ineffective kiosk signs. One presentation included a photo of a crushed tortoise in the tire tread tracks.
“We have some recommendations to law enforcement for increased coordination between agencies, increased fines and penalties, confiscation of vehicles by the sheriffs,” Klasky said after the speakers finished. “If the BLM cannot protect an area, they’ve got to close it to all off-road vehicles.”
Klasky gave lists of recommendations to Sheriff Capt. Dale Mondary, BLM special agent in charge of California Kynan Barrios and county Supervisor James Ramos’ field representative Mike Lipsitz.
During department reports, Mondary asked why only a handful of the 45 attendees were legal off-roaders.
Klasky had not invited any off-road groups to take part in the forum.
“If they are the problem, then we need to make them part of the solution,” Mondary stated before he addressed his list of recommendations.
“I admit that we should have had the electronic signs out for Thanksgiving; sometimes we made mistakes,” Mondary said, adding that the mobile signs are not county property. “But the signs are window dressing and weekend trespassers are going to ignore those signs.”
Mondary also pointed out that the OHV team is not full-time, that there is a high turnover of deputies and the majority of them come from urban areas, that there could be “due process issues with yanking people’s vehicles,” helicopter patrols cost $2,500 to $5,000 an hour and policy doesn’t allow pursuit of illegal off-roaders into the open desert.
He advised callers who felt they were getting handed off from one deputy after another to ask to speak to the watch commander or to have the watch commander return their call.
“Don’t stop calling, because if you stop calling, the illegal riders win,” Mondary said.
County code officer Ignacio Nunez said his department cannot issue citations, make arrests or pursue offenders; it can only hand out brochures for education.
Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent David Smith said there are only seven rangers to patrol the park’s 800,000 acres against off-road use but that BLM has even fewer resources for patrol.
BLM’s Kynan said partnerships with the community and stakeholder groups like Friends of Jawbone have been successful in the Barstow area.
Ray Pessa, a member of Friends of Giant Rock, was one of the handful of legal off-roaders who came to the meeting, even though they weren’t invited.
“We’re all about enforcing the laws,” Pessa said after the meeting. “We work a lot with the sheriffs, BLM and code enforcement. We’ve done a lot on education in the community and with our members who aren’t local.”
