Aug. 27, '10 - Court approves settlement agreement and dismisses case. See press release.

Aug. 26, '10 - ONDA successfully finalizes settlement agreement under which BLM agrees to close and restore damaged roads.

Feb. 10, '10 - Court denies Roaring Springs Ranch's motion to intervene in ONDA's case.

Nov. 4, '09 - ONDA submits comments on BLM's related proposal to gather feral horses on Steens Mountain.

Sept. 14, '09 - ONDA files an amended complaint, adding the Great Old Broads for Wilderness as a co-plaintiff and adding legal claims to address BLM's further violations of law under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and Freedom of Information Act.

Sept. 11, '09 - Pursuant to the stipulation, BLM withdraws and vacates its decision to develop the Burnt Car Spring within the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area. 

Aug. 28, '09 - BLM agrees to temporary closures of key routes and other interim measures to protect against further illegal road building and to ensure full public notice of future route maintenance. See the parties' Stipulation and Map showing locations of unlawfully constructed routes. Press release.

July 27 '09 - ONDA files suit over road construction on Steens Mountain. See press release. 

Lawsuit challenging BLM decision to build new and expand existing routes within  federally protected wilderness areas on Steens Mountain.

ONDA filed the suit against the Bureau of Land Management after discovering extensive road construction, grading and widening on Burnt Car, Tombstone Canyon and other nearby routes on Steens Mountain. The Burnt Car route is a primitive route, completely naturally revegetated in places, that runs through the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area and peters out before reaching the boundary of the Steens Mountain Wilderness and Donner und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River corridor. Preliminary field evaluation disclosed widening and relocation of the existing route into the Wilderness Study Area, new road construction within the Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River corridor, and hundreds of uprooted junipers -- including old growth trees -- and displaced, car-sized boulders pushed to the side of the new routes.

These photographs show how this route looked before and after the new construction activities.

Construction of new roads is prohibited by law in designated wilderness areas and generally forbidden within the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area, which encompasses all of the routes involved here. Since the suit was filed, BLM has agreed temporarily to do no more work on these routes. ONDA is continuing to investigate how BLM could have authorized this major change to the landscape without public notice or opportunity to comment and without preparation of an environmental analysis under NEPA, and is asking in the lawsuit that BLM close and restore those parts of the route which were constructed in violation of the law.

Related Actions:  Burnt Car Spring Development Project; Steens Mountain Travel Management Plan.