From the California Association of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs:
Thanks to all of you who attended the recent public open house meetings held in the East Bay Area to detail the Draft Preferred Concept for the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area General Plan (DPC). Draft Preferred Concept.
Members of extreme anti-OHV groups were also there to try to impose their closure agenda on the OHV community and DPC planning team. Over the last seven years, those closure advocates have worked with East Bay Regional Parks on a massive and fraudulent campaign to build political support for an outright ban of OHV use on the Tesla property. They have been making weekly, if not daily, visits to the offices of State Senator Mark DeSaulnier and Assemblymember Joan Buchanan demanding legislation to enact an outright ban of OHV use at Tesla.
It is critically important that we counter that smear campaign by sending comments to the SVRA planning team and the aforementioned legislators.
Jay Gamel, reporting for the Kenwood Press, writes that uncertainty, objectives and habits all play a part in daily operations:
More than 85,000 acres of magnificent desert are open for off-highway exploration and recreation within the boundaries of Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area. Ocotillo Wells SVRA is operated by California State Parks. To the south and east large tracts of BLM land (U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management) are also open to off-highway vehicles. The western boundary and part of the northern boundary of Ocotillo connect with the half-million acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which is closed to off-highway recreation, but open to exploration by highway-legal vehicles along established primitive roads.
