People are drawn to Steens Mountain to experience its natural wonders. Existing roads and trails provide access to many parts of the mountain, while still preserving the wilderness character and wildlife habitat in more remote expanses of the mountain. ONDA is a leading and effective voice for mapping and managing this system of roads and trails that balance access with protecting the environment from off-road vehicle use.
Protecting Wildlife and Wilderness Values on Steens Mountain
Designated as the nation’s first and only Cooperative Management and Protection Area, Congress directed the Bureau of Land Management to protect the long-term ecological integrity of Steens Mountain. In 2009, ONDA filed a lawsuit alleging that the BLM’s travel plan failed to do so and is unlawful because it establishes roads where none exist on the ground and where they are barred by law. BLM had, in effect, approved a new and broader motorized road network that would harm wildlife and wilderness values. ONDA also argued that BLM didn’t follow required procedures that ensure meaningful public participation and informed decision making in adopting its new plan.
The suit encompassed multiple agency decisions that approved two interconnected plans: the Steens Mountain Travel Management Plan (TMP) and the Steens Mountain Comprehensive Recreation Plan (CRP). Together, the TMP and CRP comprise BLM’s travel plan for the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area.
In 2015, a federal judge ordered the BLM not to allow motorists to drive on about 36 miles of primitive routes on Steens Mountain. Because most of the routes do not, in fact, exist on the ground, the court agreed with ONDA that motorists searching for them would create new routes through the sagebrush, introducing weeds and carving up roadless areas. This ruling ensured that some of the most vulnerable places on the mountain remain off-limits to vehicles, protecting wildlife habitat temporarily until the court made its final ruling.
A federal appeals court restored a long-standing driving and maintenance injunction in 2018 that would be in place while the case is on appeal. Then, in 2019, the court vacated the Steens Travel Management Plan and Comprehensive Recreation Plan and sent those plans back to BLM to re-do in their entirety.
Since then, ONDA has surveyed and extensively photographed dozens of miles of questionable routes on Steens Mountain and provided that information to the BLM to support a new planning effort that charts a road network appropriate for this special landscape.
Thanks to ONDA’s decades-long commitment to sustaining the mountain’s ecological integrity, Steens remains a haven for wildlife that is beloved by local communities and visitors alike. This effort to uphold the sanctity of the mountains and its wild character is a prime example of the importance of ONDA’s sustained advocacy for conservation.
Legal Documents and Links
- Opinion – April 2019 – 18-35258
- Oral Argument before the 9th Circuit
- Motion for Summary Judgment – April 2017 – 09-369.pdf
- Opinion and Order – June 2015 – granting modified injunction – 09-369 Docket 238
- Opinion and Order – April 2011 – 09-369
