BLM agrees to close illegal roads on Steens Mountain

The Bureau of Land Management will close and rehabilitate roads illegally constructed last summer within a protected area on Steens Mountain in order to restore fragile, largely unfragmented sagebrush habitat.

The federal agency agreed to the restoration plan as part of a court settlement adopted by a federal district judge on Friday, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) and the Great Old Broads for Wilderness. The conservation groups had filed the suit after discovering that BLM had widened and built roads and bulldozed ancient juniper trees and sagebrush habitat in this congressionally protected area in southeast Oregon. ONDA argued BLM’s project threatened to establish illegal driving on the iconic desert mountain, destroy proposed and existing wilderness areas, fragment vital wildlife habitat and open the mountain to weed infestations. 

“This was one of the most serious instances of purposeful damage to wilderness and ecological values on public lands we had ever seen in Oregon’s high desert,” said Brent Fenty, ONDA’s executive director. “We are pleased that BLM has owned up to its mistake and decided to repair the damage done to this nationally significant landscape.”

The BLM project, undertaken without any environmental study or public involvement, widened and built roads on 28 miles of primitive routes on Steens Mountain. Some of the routes had been naturally reclaimed by native grasses and sagebrush after decades of little or no use. The routes pass through the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area, a citizen-proposed wilderness area and even into the protected Steens Mountain Wilderness Area and the Donner und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River corridor. All of the routes are within a 428,000-acre area on Steens Mountain protected from road construction and other development by a law passed by Congress in 2000.

“The indiscriminate use of off-road vehicles is one of the most serious threats to Steens Mountain,” said Fenty. “By converting primitive wilderness two-tracks into wide scars on the landscape, BLM left these remote areas vulnerable to weeds and off-road vehicle trespass. Only time will repair much of the damage, but the closures and restoration actions BLM has agreed to will guard against weed infestation and widespread motorized use.”

Under the agreement, the agency will close three route segments to protect a large, unfragmented roadless area adjacent to the Wilderness Area. BLM will then rehabilitate the rest of the routes by narrowing them, eliminating most constructed ditches, redistributing soil and rocks, reseeding with native seed, manually relocating native plants in disturbed areas and removing downed juniper trees. The agreement also calls for several years of no livestock grazing to guard against weed infestation, for BLM to re-evaluate a citizens’ wilderness proposal for the area and for the agency to provide advance public notice for all future road maintenance projects on Steens Mountain.

In 2000, Congress passed the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act. The law created a protected area called the Cooperative Management and Protection Area (CMPA). BLM must manage the CMPA to protect the “long-term ecological integrity of Steens Mountain for future and present generations.”

Steens Mountain is situated deep in southeast Oregon’s high desert. It rises more than 9,700 feet from broad sagebrush steppe interspersed with juniper woodlands, aspen groves, and relic fir stands. On its east side, a mile-high escarpment overlooks the ancient Alvord Valley below. The mountain’s various habitats and more than 100 miles of federally-designated Wild and Scenic Rivers support a diversity of fish and wildlife species.