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Death Valley Showdown

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Devasurprisecny_copy    There's a unique side canyon that spills out of Death Valley National Park that's surprisingly lush with cottonwoods, willows, daisies and even waterfalls. It's a place so unique in this otherwise parched landscape that it's known simply, but succinctly, as Surprise Canyon.
    While the head of the canyon is within the park's borders, thanks to an extension Congress approved in 1994, the lower portion cascades down U.S. Bureau of Land Management land. Once upon a time, Surprise Canyon led miners into the hills around Panamint City.
    Off-roaders "discovered" the canyon in the late 1980s and, through a mix of winches and rock piles, coaxed their rigs up the canyon, climbing four waterfalls in the process. Well, along the way to having a good ol' time these boys rolled a couple of their rigs, dumped oil, gas and who knows what else, and generally chewed up the landscape.
    Six years ago conservation groups sued the BLM over this "fun," charging that the agency had failed to evaluate the impacts on Surprise Canyon and its flora and fauna. In 2001, the BLM closed the route through Surprise Canyon to motorized travel. A year later the Park Service closed the upper section.
    Today, though, lawyers are back in court, jockeying to see whether Surprise Canyon will remain closed or be reopened to four-wheelers.

    "The public shouldn't be forced to see Surprise Canyon's tremendous natural values destroyed by a handful of off-road vehicle users, especially when there are so many off-roading opportunities available elsewhere in the Mojave desert," says Howard Gross, program manager of the National Parks Conservation Association that has joined other conservation groups to fight a bid by off-roaders to gain access to the canyon.
    The off-roaders' lawsuit, filed last month, contends in part that the canyon's sheer walls and creek-bed are in actuality a "constructed highway" that they have a right to under a Civil War-era statute known today simply as R.S. 2477. Under that statute, initially created to further western expansion, some states, counties and off-road groups have claimed that washes, two-tracks, even hiking trails are "highways" that they are entitled to travel.
    "In many cases, off-road interests have viewed R.S. 2477 as a way to undermine effective protection of wildlife habitat, wilderness and other values of public lands," says Mary Wells of the California Wilderness Coalition that has joined NPCA, The Wilderness Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in a bid to intervene in the lawsuit the off-roaders brought against the BLM.
    Chris Kassar, a wildlife biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, says preserving the canyon and its riparian qualities "is critical to the recovery of the Inyo California Towhee and the conservation of other imperiled species such as the Panamint Alligator Lizard. Allowing off-roaders back into Surprise Canyon will set back recovery by decades by increasing soil erosion and polluting the waters of the creek."

Comments

There was a road up Surprise Canyon usable by mule-drawn wagons starting in 1873, and it was usable by ordinary two-wheel-drive cars as late as 1984. It was (and is) a registered road in the Inyo County roads system, registered with the State of California as part of the Inyo County highway system. In 1983 and 1984 enormous floods washed most of the lower part of the road away, cutting off access to the mines in the upper canyon. The miners and Inyo County contracted a consultant to evaluate the cost of re-constructing the road, and it came to over a million dollars. Inyo County didn't have a million dollars. The miners didn't have a million dollars. So they didn't reconstruct the road. But the right-of-way still remains with Inyo County as a highway right-of-way, albeit currently they are not exercising that right-of-way. So for over 100 years this was a road. It is hard to call this a "prestine" environment when for over 100 years it was a road so good that 2-wheel-drive cars could drive it. What the current condition of Surprise Canyon demonstrates is that, given a big enough flood, you can wash away enough of the road that it's not worth rebuilding it anymore, now that the mines at the head of the canyon are largely played out. And given 20+ years of lack of maintenance of the remainder of the road, you can make it hard to tell that there ever was a road there. But that does not change the fact that, for over 100 years, this was an active road used by mule-drawn carts, 2-wheel-drive cars, and 2-wheel-drive trucks to access the mines at the head of the canyon. I'm not sure what should be done about the road in Surprise Canyon -- whether it should be rebuilt, whether it shouldn't, whether it should stay closed, or not. But I do think that should be up to the people of Inyo County to decide, rather than some outsiders in a courtroom somewhere, because the history of the place is such that calling it a "prestine wilderness environment" is just a blatant outright lie. It can hardly be "prestine" if it was a heavily-traveled mining road for over 100 years!

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