48 Hours of Hell
Center for Biological Diversity Sues CORVA and DPR to Shut Down Truckhaven Challenge
By Ed Waldheim, CORVA President
“48 Hours of Hell” or 48 hours of a Mind Challenge is what this event now has turned out to be. Rick Fisher, Geoff Teare and Terry Work together with their families worked their hearts out for all of us to have fun at the 12th Annual Truckhaven Challenge event that was to take place on January 20 & 21, 2007. When Rick put his team together, Geoff Teare and Terry Work are always there doing the hard dirty work. They work one year in advance on the details of the next year’s event. Then, these guys arrive a week before the event to make sure all is in order --- to lay out & ribbon the course, GPS the checkpoints, organize the starting lines, organize the registration and prizes, etc. Dozens of other volunteers show up one or two days before the event by filling in as needed, hosting checkpoints, working registration tables, cooking dinner and breakfast, helping with the huge prize giveaway.
Well 2007 will be remembered as the Mind Game Challenge. It all started years ago when we, the off-roader community, wanted to make sure we could continue to use this recreational area for years to come, as Tierra Del Sol 4x4 Club has done for the last 40 plus years. We didn’t want to lose our historical recreation areas. To do this, we, being law abiding citizens, encouraged and lobbied the OHMVR Division of State Parks and State Parks Director Ruth Coleman to help us acquire the property for continued off-road use. It was previously privately owned land.
There was a willing seller, and negotiations started to proceed with Kathy Dolinar, Superintendent of Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA) right in the middle of the negotiations. Kathy is a good steward of the land and a great Parks Superintendent. She believes that there is a place for recreation within resource protection and Truckhaven and Ocotillo Wells are the perfect place for both to occur in tandem. We thought everything was going well until Anza Borrego Desert State Parks Staff and the State Parks Foundation had other ideas. Those ideas turned out to be of no benevolent nature. They wanted the acquisition all for themselves and wanted to ban OHV from the land. They even tried to undermine negotiations by trying to raise funds to acquire the property themselves, but failed. Thus, the purchase proceeded by State Parks.
Now we all know when a piece of property is acquired management plans have to be developed and this is something the OHMVR Division of Sate Parks is always committed to doing. But the issue of use had to be dealt with, both recreational use and organized use.
In come permits. CORVA was told we needed to have insurance, we had to pay a fee and had to share proceeds with State Parks. That was a hard pill to swallow, but being law abiding citizens, we complied with all their requirements and received our permit.
On Friday, twelve hours before the event, eight Department of Parks and Recreation personnel, lead by Kathy Dolinar rode the entire 21 mile course and a biologist made adjustments to the course.
While they were doing this in good faith, the environmental zealots had a complete different idea. The environmental faction started their propaganda machine against us in the press, radio and with notice of legal action against us. That is where “48 Hour of Hell” comes in. Yes, two solid days I personally was working on this legal action with our lobbyist in Sacramento Pete Conaty and David Hubbard, our legal council for EcoLogic Partners, Inc. Mr. Hubbard had to fly to Sacramento and spend and entire day in court to find out that was a lawsuit filed which included a Temporary Restraining Order. The Temporary Restraining Order was a two part issue. One portion was against us to stop the Truckhaven Challenge and the second against the State Department of Parks & Recreation to ban all OHV use in the Truckhaven recreational area.
Now here is where the environmental zealots did just that. They have no interest in the enviroment. They do everything in their power to stop anything that has to do with OHVs. Their religious fanaticism is so strong against OHVs that they completely lose site of their actions, because if a rational person would sit back and think what they are doing, they would realize they are accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they are trying to achieve.
Let me Explain.
Environmental zealots are under the impression that if they sue and take us to
court, we are going to disappear. They are dead wrong on that one! Not one of
us is going to stop riding an enjoying the Great Outdoors because of a
lawsuit.
They are dead wrong that they think they can mandate their fanaticism in America. We are American. We are not under a religious order or Ceasar-type dictatorship in America. We love to have fun in nature and fun we will have with our off-road vehicles! Dam the environmental zealots!
They are dead wrong to call themselves environmentalist. They are zealots, they have no clue about environmental issues. Why? Because of their actions, they are undermining every single government land management agency and volunteer group that is working to manage our sport and our natural resources. Agencies are having to spend millions on legal fees, thus nothing is getting done on the ground -- no trail maintenance, no enforcement, etc. Agencies just don’t have the money. It all goes to lawyers. And speaking of, when the environmental groups win in court, the losing party, usually our government agency has to pay the environmentalists legal fees! That in turn funds their next lawsuit against our government agencies!
Volunteer organizations, such as CORVA and others, are doing everything in their power to help manage public lands, but at every turn the environmental zealots try to undermine the very organizations that are the true environmentalist. We are managing our sport; we are managing our events and protecting resources at the same time. We are providing off-roaders a safe place to ride at Truckhaven and other locales, while managing the environmental impact. Organized events are just that… “organized”.
At the Truckhaven Challenge this year, we agreed to return the permit back to State Parks Dept. because all the paperwork was not complete. This is absolutely no fault of CORVA’s. Since the property acquisition, there now is a line on a map showing that some of the area at Truckhaven is in Big Horn Sheep Critical Habitat area. How that line got on the map and where the documentation is for this line that is an entire different story. But for the time being, let’s assume there is a line there. The permit had to show how we are not affecting the Habitat. That documentation from State Parks was not there, thus we, being the law-abiding citizens we are, felt we best stop the event.
Since I was not at the Truckhaven site, I made every effort to contact via cell phone all BOD members and volunteers that I knew who were enroute to the event. I made sure they understood the event was cancelled in order to comply with the court ruling.
Now when I told Fisher, Teare and Work this, they all became ballistic – understandable since they worked so hard to hold a legal, permitted event. They said, “What do you mean you stopped the event?” Well, we do not have a permit which is a requirement.
Thus, we now had to pull all our stakes out and pull ribbon down off of the very course that one hour before was covered by State Parks Staff as being accurate and resource protected.
I left home at 1:15 a.m. Saturday morning January 20, 2007 and headed for Truckhaven. 210 miles later, I got there and at 6 a.m. started informing all those who pre-registered and new folks that had just showed up that there was no event. It did not get back home until 22 hours later and 450 miles of driving. This being an OHV area they were welcome to ride at their pleasure as individuals. It was just that CORVA was not hosting an event today.
Now here comes the true environmental effect. We, as CORVA, could not host an “organized event”, because the environmental zealots stopped us due to a technicality. We had planned to have all participants ride on an approve course, which was cleared and adjusted by the biologist of State Parks Dept. Now, we had to remove the markings of that very course that was approved and just tell riders, as does the general public, “Ride all the trails and have fun.” Now you tell me who the true environmentalists are here. Those escorting riders on a biologist’s approved marked course or on any trail of the riders’ choosing.
This same scenario has happened over and over again with the environmental zealots. They think they know what they are doing, but in fact the very opposite is happening. More areas are being ridden on without management than with management of a government agency. But they don’t get it. And they think they are so smart.
Environmental zealots true to their colors came snooping around our NON-event like little dogs they are, taking pictures and high tailing it out of camp as someone spotted them. In other words, they act like spies like we had during World War I and II. They are cowards. Why? Because they don’t feel we have a right to exist and no intention of sitting at the table and talking about how to improve recreation. Even if they did, they would only do so to try to cheat us.
Where do we go from here? We are proud of the CORVA members and general public who were present during this environmental showdown at Truckhaven. Everyone was compliant to the non-event. They all understood the actions and understood what CORVA was going through and what Fisher, Teare and Work had to endure and why they were so upset with the legal challenge.
In the long run, CORVA did the right thing for the long term benefit of OHV recreation. We bought the Truckhaven recreational area with funds from our State-managed “Green Sticker” OHV funds, and we want to make sure that State Parks does everything in their power to fight these misguided environmental zealots, by “Taking the High Road” and doing everything that is according to the law. We are the true environmentalist. They are nothing but fanatics. As we currently see all over the world, they are proving themselves to be fanatics on a daily basis. That is why we have also termed them as the “Unbalanced Environmentalists”, because they don’t know the definition of the term “balanced”.
I encourage you all to join CORVA and any other off road organization you have faith in. To those who questioned, “Why do I have to belong to CORVA,” well, if you still don’t get it send me an e-mail at ed@corva.org. I am always willing to work with any reasonable person who believes in OHV recreation.