Off-roaders make sand, citations fly But officials say event quieter than last, despite arrests, death reprinted from the San Diego Union-Tribune By Jeff McDonald UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER November 29, 2000 Dune buggies and motorcycles in tow, a slow parade of recreational vehicles wound its way out of Imperial County early this week, closing one of the busiest off-roading feasts of the season. Even though there were twice as many arrests and tickets issued, Thanksgiving weekend at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area was far quieter than a year ago, officials said. One man was killed and 80 people were injured or became ill at the Glamis Sand Dunes near the California-Arizona border. "The crowd this year, compared to last year, I thought was relatively good," said Roxie Trost, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees millions of acres of the California desert. More than 80,000 people jammed the usually quiet recreation area over the holiday weekend, down about 20 percent from last year, the bureau estimated. A year ago, groups of drunken and rowdy off-roaders set fires, threatened rangers and caused other problems, leading to three dozen arrests and some 580 citations, according to the Bureau of Land Management. This year, with huge new tracts of desert off limits, rangers arrested 73 people and issued more than 1,000 tickets. The vast majority of off-road enthusiasts are responsible desert users, officials and off-roaders say. Most violations are committed by small groups of off-roaders who take advantage of the relatively low number of peace officers assigned to patrol the vast desert. Yesterday, the bureau was not able to say how many tickets -- if any -- were issued to off-roaders who had ventured into closed-off areas. Environmentalists who monitored the new borders, however, said hundreds of drivers ignored signs warning them to keep out of sensitive habitats. Not only that, rangers refused to ticket those who strayed off limits, they said. "People riding right past signs that marked the area as clearly closed, they didn't cite," said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. "That provides very little incentive for people to obey the closures." Rangers opted not to ticket many violators because the bureau did not finish posting warning signs around the five new closure areas, Trost said. "When the signs are adequate and the education is completed, we'll start issuing tickets," she said. The Sierra Club, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit early this year against the government, claiming that it had failed to enforce the Endangered Species Act. In a partial settlement of that case, the government agreed to close about 49,000 acres of dunes to motor vehicles. Less than half of the 150,000 acres of sand dunes are open to off-roaders. The busy holiday weekend prompted a strange marriage of environmentalists, off-road volunteers and law enforcement officers monitoring the new borders, each for different reasons. Off-roaders worry that if the boundaries are not honored, environmentalists will return to court seeking to close the entire dunes. "I thought the compliance was excellent," said Vince Brunasso, the American Sand Association president who helped patrol the dunes by air over the long weekend. "We had a very small number of incursions, considering the large number of people and the poor boundary markings." A 41-year-old San Pedro man was killed Saturday when the Jeep he was riding in rolled over, the Imperial County medical examiner's office said.