Tolowa Dunes State Park, in Del Norte County was officially established as a California State Park in 2001 after first having been acquired by California in 1978. Initially, this park and the adjoining Lake Earl Wildlife Area were managed as a “project area” (Type C--unclassified land). Off-highway vehicle (OHV) riding, which was ONLY a minor permitted use on the beach wave slope, has illegally expanded to interior portions of the park and a nearly 12-mile area extending from Pt. St George to the mouth of the Smith River. Due to a lack of enforcement of the previous “beach riding” only policy until just recently, numerous illegal vehicle trails have been created and other damage has been sustained in many interior portions of the State Park and area estuaries.

In conjunction with the park’s formal 2001 designation, off-road vehicle (ORV) use was expressly excluded from park uses. Still, with Tolowa Dunes State Park presently lacking a general plan, there is no legal legitimacy authorizing any OHV use anywhere within the park—including the beach.

In the adjoining Lake Earl Wildlife Area, ORVs are also not allowed, but increased illegal use on park lands (which particularly accelerated between 2001 to 2005) regularly spills over into these state lands as well, 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’s and Wildlife Area’s Lake Earl—which is California’s and the Pacific Coast’s largest coastal lagoon.

Not only has a lack of enforcement significantly damaged State Park dune and meadow vegetation, but OHVs also still regularly impact the sensitive Tolowa/Lake Earl estuary. State Park and Wildlife Area estuary meadow vegetation in the summer of 2005 was again marred with extensive mud ruts and circles made by four-wheel drive and all-terrain vehicles (4WDs and ATVs), and sensitive “dune mat” community vegetation continues to be destroyed.

In 2005, the new local Park Superintendent directed the single State Park Ranger to resume the previous park policy of issuing citations to ORV violators. In response, in the fall of 2005 the Calif. State Parks OHV Division (a separate State Parks Division funded by state gasoline taxes) began actively championing an unprecedented proposal to resolve the issue (incredibly) by proposing to formally sanction (rather than disallow) off-road vehicle use within this state park.

Thus, the OHV Division of California State Parks is still presently lobbying State Park Director Ruth Coleman and her Sacramento staff to adopt a new policy for OHV use within the park. While the OHV Division claims they will keep vehicles confined to the beach, State Parks never has never been able to successfully control illegal vehicle use, and worst still this use has continually increased, particularly over the last four to five years.

In addition to advocating for the sanctioning of motorized vehicles on the beach (either north or south of Kellogg Road), the California OHV Division also is arguing to keep open an illegal ATV trail, called the ”worm trail” which spans the vegetated “fore dunes” in the northern portion of the park. Over the years this single trail has expanded in many places to two worm trails through the fore dunes. Elsewhere similar unauthorized ATV trails have criss-crossed the entire length of Tolowa Dunes State Park. It is now time that State Parks accept their legal mandate to fully protect the sensitive plant and animal resources the public comes to the Tolowa Dunes to see and enjoy, and eliminate incompatible off-road vehicle activities that create safety issues and drive other park visitors, seeking solitude, away.

You can help protect our parks by contacting State Park Director Ruth Coleman and making the following points:

· Stop all OHV riding NOW in the Tolowa Dunes State Park beaches, dunes, wetlands, and fore dunes as consistent with the rules governing the parks 2001 formal designation.

· Enforce State Parks rules consistent with State Park policy requiring that “special consideration be given to the protection of sensitive, rare, threatened and endangered species and their habitats and to the restoration of important habitats, such as wetlands, that have been degraded.”

· Allowing riding to continue on the illegally established “worm trails” on the park’s beaches and dunes will forever prevent their restoration where damage to rare and sensitive plant species has already extensively occurred.

· Allowing beach ATV riding to continue south of the primary vehicle access at Kellogg Road is equivalent to inviting destruction of federally designated critical habitat for the western snowy plover and endangered tidewater goby and threatened brown pelican habitat, and facilitates illegal breaching of California’s largest coastal lagoon. (Fish such as the tidewater goby become stranded and die in OHV caused ruts whenever Lake Earl Lagoon is legally, or illegally, breached and drained.)

· Allowing beach riding to continue north of Kellogg Road invites ongoing access into the estuary of the Smith River, where sea mammals come ashore and threatened brown pelicans and other birds rest (as they do at the lagoon to the south as well).

· Hundreds of miles of high clearance roads and ATV riding opportunities (for better or worse) already occur on the nearby Smith River National Recreation Area in Del Norte County. The State Park has no legal right to sacrifice its special park resources to provide ATV riding opportunities.