A federal judge has partly ruled in favor of environmental groups challenging what one called a vast "spaghetti" network of popular off-road vehicle routes in the Mojave Desert, which they charge are pushing desert tortoises and other threatened and endangered species toward extinction.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled on Tuesday that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and federal fish and wildlife officials violated federal policy and law by designating the routes in 2019 without using adequate criteria to minimize damage to the tortoise, its habitat, and rare plant species like the endangered Lane Mountain milk vetch, which is found only in the western Mojave Desert. Instead, reclamation officials overseeing the desert public lands attempted to apply optional mitigation measures after the routes were designated.
But the judge denied some of the environmental groups' claims, saying the federal agencies had made a good-faith effort to do an in-depth environmental review after an earlier negative ruling stretching back to 2006. She set a November meeting to determine next steps. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Jessica D'Ambrosio with the Carlsbad office said "We do not comment on litigation." California desert district BLM spokesperson Michelle Van Der Linden said "BLM respectfully declines to comment on ongoing litigation."
But environmentalists called the ruling "a victory for conservationists" in a news release.
“I’m grateful the court found that federal officials can’t just make empty promises to protect desert tortoises and other wildlife on our public lands from off-road vehicles,” said Lisa Belenky, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity working on the case. “The Western Mojave’s desert tortoises are sliding toward extinction, so it’s long past time for the Bureau of Land Management to curb these vehicles’ threats to the tortoises and all the rare plants and animals in California’s beautiful deserts.”
The environmental groups, which also include the Sierra Club, Desert Survivors, California Native Plant Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Desert Tortoise Council, sued the federal agencies in 2021 over the 2019 West Mojave Route Network Project, which they said had failed to minimize off-road vehicle impacts to public lands or protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats. They said that regulations require BLM to block areas to off-road vehicles where they are causing or will cause negative impacts to soil, vegetation, wildlife, wildlife habitat, cultural resources, wilderness suitability, or threatened and endangered species.
Crushing numbers of desert tortoise deaths
The organizations said that off-road vehicles cause deadly harm to the Mojave desert tortoise in particular, and that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the Endangered Species Act by not including in a required biological opinion recent damning scientific research that motorized recreation is a prime cause of tortoise deaths in a required biological opinion. Judge Illston agreed, though she rejected other claims.
The lumbering tortoises typically emerge from their burrows in October and remain above ground through the cooler months, when off-roading is most active. They are hard to see, and are often crushed by heavy tires.
Last year, the groups submitted data to the judge showing that there was a decline of almost 50% in Western Mojave adult tortoises from 2004 to 2014, and that more than 67,000 tortoises were killed. There was also a decline in juveniles, which are critical to the species' survival and recovery.
“The court got it right in finding that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion ignored the best available science that shows the need to proactively protect rapidly declining desert tortoise populations and habitats in the Western Mojave Desert,” said Ed LaRue of the Desert Tortoise Council. “The Bureau cannot continue to prioritize recreational vehicle opportunities in fragile desert tortoise habitats over the species’ survival."
The judge also ruled that the bureau wrongly assumed that there would be no growth in off-road vehicle activity or harm to air quality from adopting nearly 6,000 miles of dirt roads for off-road vehicle use. The environmental groups said it's actually led off-roaders to create hundreds of new illegal roads in fragile habitat that is supposed to be protected for desert tortoises.
“The Mojave Desert is one of North America’s largest remaining areas of connected habitat, and the BLM’s management decisions have consequences,” said Nick Jensen, conservation program director at the California Native Plant Society. “This ruling is a reminder that we must do more to protect sensitive ecosystems and imperiled species."
In addition to the deaths, the groups said loud off-road vehicles can also alter the tortoise’s behavior and degrade their habitat. soil and introduce and spread non-native plant species in its environment. They are native to southeastern California and portions of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. The Mohave desert tortoise is designated as federally threatened, and was declared endangered in April by the California Fish and Game Commission.
“This ruling makes clear that the BLM hasn’t done nearly enough to minimize impacts from off-road vehicles in the West Mojave,” said Tom Budlong of the Sierra Club. “The BLM’s empty promises and Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to use the best available science have allowed increasing degradation of our public lands and pushed the desert tortoise closer to extinction.”
“Yesterday’s court decision is the culmination of our 18-year legal battle to adequately protect the threatened desert tortoise and its critical habitat from off-highway vehicle use on public lands in the western Mojave Desert,” said Jeff Aardahl, senior California representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “This is clearly a win for the desert tortoise, which has been on a path toward extinction for decades.”
The groups are represented by the Stanford Law Clinic and the Center for Biological Diversity.
( This story was updated to include a response from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)
Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun, and co-authors USA Today Climate Point , a weekly newsletter on climate, energy and the environment.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Federal judge rules off-road plan illegal, environmentalists see victory for desert tortoise
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