1. Travel Management Planning in Utah
BRC is the defendant intervenor for the legal settlement that was agreed to by the BLM and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. This means we will be invited to participate across from SUWA at all levels of the planning process. At the end of August the first of thirteen travel management plans was released for the San Rafael Desert. In short, we won. The BLM decided to adopt the alternative that included recognizing the most off-road trails – nearly doubling the mileage of recognized trails in the area. As with all access fights, it wasn’t 100% of what we wanted, but we can proudly say this area will be open for adventure for years to come because of your support and our involvement. There are still twelve more plans that are being reexamined. SUWA was not happy about the decision in the San Rafael Desert, and they will be gunning for more closures in the upcoming plans. We learned a lot from the San Rafael Desert plan, and we’re ready to take what we learned to do even better on the upcoming plans, but we will need resources. We know for an absolute fact that SUWA will invest significant resources to use this process to close more areas, and no one is better positioned than we are to meet them head on. But we need your help: https://secure.anedot.com/blueribbon-coalition-sharetrails/utah-tmp
2. OHV Grant Audits in California
Several OHV groups in California have recently been victims OHV grant audits where they are being asked by the state of California to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars back on grants where the state found the performance requirements were initially satisfied. In many cases the volunteer groups assisting with the execution of the grants exceeded the performance requirements. Not surprisingly, the fallout has been that many groups are choosing to no longer volunteer to maintain trails. A grant program that was designed to benefit the OHV community has now been weaponized to discourage their participation in the public land management effort. As many of these areas have been devastated by wildfires, we will need our volunteer groups to help reclaim the areas that have been burned. The timing for these reckless audits couldn’t be worse. We are in the initial stages of assisting these groups in making a legal challenge to the audits.This fight will be in addition to the work we are already doing to save Oceano Dunes, protect snowmobile access in several National Forests in California, and participating in various planning processes throughout the state. Click here to contribute to our Access California Fund: https://secure.anedot.com/blueribbon-coalition-sharetrails/access-california