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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- To protect two species of cactus, the federal government slapped restrictions Wednesday on cross-country motorized travel on the sprawling badlands around Factory Butte, a towering monolith in southern Utah.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management closed 222 square miles of public land except for designated routes with the publication of travel restrictions in the Federal Register, a daily compendium of government actions.
Officials said all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes still had open areas to roam including a four-square-mile natural basin along State Route 24 called Swing Arm City, plus 220 miles of dirt roads and trails.
The action has been expected for months. Last spring, a government survey found the badlands held pockets of endangered Wright fishhook and threatened Winkler cactus. But off-roaders who worship Factory Butte's wide-open terrain, about 180 miles south of Salt Lake City, were angry.
"This was what we consider to be the best solution to protect the cacti and continue to provide access for motorized recreation in the area," BLM spokeswoman Davida Carnahan said Wednesday. "There is still a lot of opportunity for quality motorized recreation within Wayne and Garfield counties."
Carnahan said vehicles were running over and crushing the delicate plants.
Rainer Huck, president of Utah Shared Access Alliance -- Utah's largest off-road group -- wasn't buying the justification for what he called BLM's "nuclear option."
Huck said BLM officials ignored every suggestion his group made for compromise while bending to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has proposed the forbidding landscape around Factory Butte for part of a larger wilderness complex.
"BLM made the right decision here and took decisive action where a much-beloved landscape was becoming scarred by relentless ORV use," Heidi McIntosh, a staff lawyer for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in a statement. "Once the BLM officials took a close look at the scars, soil erosion and damage to rare cacti protected under the Endangered Species Act, they realized that Factory Butte called out for immediate rescue."
Huck said many larger groups of cactus were found near or along heavily traveled roads, and he theorized that they were thriving from soil disturbance.
"It's a sad story. We've been working for months to get this postponed or modified, but the BLM has been 100 percent noncooperative," he said. "They had the idea what they were going to do, and nothing was going to stop them."
The action came a day after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Utah Shared Access Alliance on off-road restrictions imposed on federal lands in Box Elder and Grand counties from 1999 to 2003.
The alliance "argues that there was no substantial evidence supporting a finding of an emergency, which it contends is necessary before the BLM may place ORV restrictions on the public lands," said a 30-page opinion signed by Chief Circuit Judge Deanell Reece Tacha and two other judges, Robert McWilliams and Terrence O'Brien. "This contention is completely without merit."
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On the Net: Bureau of Land Management: http://www.ut.blm.gov/richfield/index.html
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
