More than 200 people attended a rally on Friday, June 18, outside the offices of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service here to protest a decision that, on its face, appears to violate both federal law and peer-reviewed, unimpeachable science. The Fish & Wildlife Service recently announced its intention to leave a plant called the Peirson’s Milkvetch [cq] on the federal endangered species list. This decision was issued despite a three-year scientific study by a respected biologist, Dr. Arthur W. Phillips III, that conclusively demonstrated that the plant was not just surviving, but thriving. The PMV is also prevalent in a part of the same desert ecosystem south of the California/Mexico border.

The decision to leave the plant on the list means that the large central region of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, where the Peirson’s Milkvetch (PMV) is also found, will remain an “Adaptive Management Area” that would allow a limited number of vehicles per day. An estimated 1.5 million people from around the western United States visited the area in 2003.

And while off-road enthusiasts are upset about losing a prime riding area, they see a larger and more ominous trend here.

“We have unelected, unaccountable mid-level bureaucrats working with private citizens to dictate public policy, and using junk science to justify their actions,” said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Association (ORBA), a San Diego-based trade association. “When Congress passed the Endangered Species Act and President Nixon signed it into law in 1973, its intent was to give threatened species a chance to rebound. We agree with that philosophy – all of us want to protect our environment, both for ourselves and our children. But we now have a group of bureaucrats who want to use this law not to protect endangered species, but simply cut off public access to public lands for any reason – and they apparently don’t need good science to justify their actions.”

Grant George, president of the American Sand Association which sponsored the rally, contends the law is open to abuse because it is too broad, and needs to be revamped in order to remain true to its authors’ intent.

“This issue will not go away,” George said. “On one level, you can say it is about protecting our right to ride off-highway – and protecting the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact that support a thriving, legal industry. But on a much larger scale, this is about holding bureaucrats accountable for their illegal actions, and making certain that the Endangered Species Act is interpreted and applied fairly, legally and in the spirit its framers intended.”

The San Diego Off-Road Coalition also sponsored the event, which drew more than 100 vehicles which drove past the dark Fish & Wildlife Service offices and gathered across Palomar Airport Road.

Speakers at the rally included State Sens. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside; Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta; San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn; Don Fife, an Environmental and Economic Geologist; Rick Royse, ISA Certified Arborist; and Denner. Barry Jantz, District Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa, emceed the event.

BACKGROUND:

In March of 2000, the Federal Bureau of Land Management settled a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to protect the PMV. As part of that interim settlement, the BLM temporarily closed 49,310 acres to Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) use. This was in addition to almost 30,000 acres that had been permanently closed in 1994.

In 2001, the ASA engaged a respected biologist, Dr. Arthur Phillips III of Flagstaff, AZ, to conduct an ongoing exhaustive three-year study of the PMV in the Imperial Dunes environment. Dr. Phillips’ paper, presented in July 2003, concluded that the PMV was not in any way threatened. The plant showed 71,000 viable examples in Spring 2001, plus an estimated seed bank (seeds in the sand and soil awaiting germination at the first suitable rainfall) of between 2.5 million and 5.8 million seeds during 2002 (Phillips, 2003).

Despite this finding, in June of 2004, the Fish & Wildlife Service chose to ignore this exhaustive, peer-reviewed science and announced the PMV would remain classified as an endangered species.