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Contact:  Chris Kassar, ORV Reform Campaign Coordinator, 520-623-5252 ext 317, ckassar@biologicaldiversity.org

Stop off road vehicle impacts at California’s Tolowa Dunes State Park

California Parks OHV Division seeks to establish new off-road vehicle riding areas in ecologically sensitive State Parks and Park beaches

The California State Parks Off-Highway (OHV) Division is actively championing a new and unprecedented proposal to formally sanction off-road vehicle (ORV) use within Tolowa Dunes State Park on California’s northern coast. The adoption of such a policy would cause continued damage to sensitive dune habitat, and endangered fish and wildlife species habitat, including critical habitat for the snowy plover.

Please contact California State Park Director Ruth Coleman and ask her to halt this totally inappropriate attempt by California State Park’s OHV Division to establish ORV riding areas (most specifically on park beaches or the illegal “worm trail”). Unregulated all-terrain vehicle (ATV) riding here continually spills over to other environmentally sensitive areas of Tolowa Dunes State Park and the adjoining Lake Earl Wildlife Area, and has greatly increased damage to the park--particularly since the park stopped active enforcement and issuing of citations to violators.

When the Tolowa Dunes State Park was formally designated in 2001, ORV use was expressly excluded in the documentation accompanying the park’s formal designation. Previously, it had been allowed on the beach, which led to increased illegal off-road vehicle use in the 10,500 acre park and adjacent State Wildlife Area. Most recently, California’s (gasoline tax funded) OHV Division is now actively lobbying the State Park’s Sacramento staff to adopt a new policy for OHV use at Tolowa Dunes, in total contradiction of the OHV Division’s codes, State Park policy, and the previously expressed intent of local State Park officials to try to rein in area OHV lawlessness.

Areas now proposed for continued OHV and ATV use include varying portions of the State Park beach and adjacent dunes (north and/or south of Kellogg Road). This would enable the continued destruction of sensitive and rare plant species in the dunes, and would continue to further impact the adjacent Tolowa/Lake Earl estuary, including disturbance to wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated snowy plover critical habitat in the Tolowa estuary area (south of Kellogg Road) and the Smith River mouth (north of Kellogg Road).

In the adjoining Lake Earl Wildlife Area, ORVs also have never been legally allowed, but increased illegal use on park lands regularly spills over into these state lands where California Fish and Game has been able to provide little or no law enforcement. The area’s general lack of law enforcement has on various occasions also resulted in the illegal breaching (and draining) of the Park and Wildlife Area’s Lake Tolowa and Lake Earl—which together comprise California’s and the Pacific Coast’s largest coastal lagoon.

Failure now to uphold local State Park staff’s recent 2005 attempts to stop illegal ORV riding sets an unfortunate and dangerous precedent for all other California State Parks. Please write California State Park Director Ruth Coleman specifically requesting that ATV’s not be allowed on State Park beaches--as 1) most off-road vehicle riders do not respect rules requiring that they stay on the edge of the beach (“the wave slope”) and off the dunes; 2) vehicles on the wave slope still impact wildlife on the beach and in area estuaries; and 3) ATV’s at Tolowa Dunes State Park continue to illegally destroy native and rare plants, and harm and disrupt the very resources the Park was designated to protect.