< img src="https://savageventures.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blm-moab-off-road-cover.jpg?w=1200" alt="" > A group of off-road supporters asked a federal judge last week to block the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from executing a strategy to close more than 300 miles of motorized paths near Moab, Utah.
In a news release, lawyers for the groups stated that they asked the judge for an emergency injunction due to the fact that the government’s plan would ruin the paths before the court might issue a ruling.
” The federal government has actually currently revealed that they would begin re-vegetating, bulldozing, and otherwise erasing these tracks the moment they were closed,” said Matt Miller, a senior attorney at the Texas Public Policy Structure (TPPF), a conservative think tank, and lead lawyer on the case.
The BlueRibbon Union and the Colorado Offroad Trail Defenders filed the suit about a month after the Department of Interior denied their appeal to the BLM’s Maze Canyon and Gemini Bridges Travel Management Plan (TMP), which was expected to go into effect on Sept. 28.
Nate Curtisi, another TPPF lawyer and co-council on the case, called the TMP “government overreach” and a “violation of a myriad of constitutional and statutory defenses.”
The problem declares that the BLM picked the most limiting strategy instead of picking one of the three alternatives proposed in its ecological evaluation.
The BLM’s plan was the outcome of a multi-year effort to recognize new options for handling some 817 miles of travel routes in the approximately 300,000 acres of public land. When the BLM announced the final plan, it said it that “sought to decrease impacts to resources and user disputes by focusing travel on routes where BLM’s data recommends that usage is less impactful.”
Supporters of BLM’s strategy say they are “dissatisfied but not shocked” by the lawsuit. Laura Peterson, a staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called BLM’s strategy “a thoughtful approach to managing entertainment in this popular area.”
” Sadly, there are some who will not be pleased unless every inch of Utah’s public lands are blanketed with off-road car routes, despite the damage these automobiles cause,” Peterson said.
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The groups argued they require an emergency situation injunction due to the fact that the strategy would damage 300 miles of routes before the court could release a judgment..