Sued out of existence: First tobacco, then handguns and now... sand
dunes?
That's right. Unable to close the Glamis Sand Dunes through legislation,
the Sierra Club and other opponents of the off-road area have taken
to the courts. Friday, they forced the federal Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) to agree to a settlement to their lawsuit that closes about 36 percent
of the central dunes area to public use.
Also affected are areas at Buttercup, and a large chunk of Mammoth Wash that
was a popular camping area. The suit was filed to protect an endangered
species which exists only in the central Algodones Dunes. The Friday, October
20 settlement still has to be approved by a federal judge.
'Endangered' plant is
poisonous
The Sierra Club filed the lawsuit to protect the Pierson's milkvetch,
a poisonous plant regarded as a weed by farmers. Milkvetch kills cattle,
horses and sheep by paralysis resulting in respiratory failure.
Though reports are scanty, it should be assumed that the milkvetch toxin
affects humans, also. The plant kills within 3-4 hours and there is
no known antidote. More information about the toxicity of milkvetches can
be found here.
The Pierson's milkvetch (also spelled Peirson's) is a variety of milkvetch
so obscure it does not come up at all in a search using
google.com, a search engine which
has 1.24 billion pages indexed.
Though the lawsuit settlement does not affect the high traffic areas
of the Glamis recreational area, the same arguments can be used to close
those areas also in the future.
UPDATE 16 AUG 2001: More land
taken from the public
TIn order to protect an endangered species of desert tortoise, about
49,000 acres of flatland east of the dunes,
around Boardmanville north to Mammoth, has been closed "temporarily" to camping.
The area had already been closed to riding.
