BLM REGULATION

Approved Safety Helmets must be worn by all ATV/ORV operators and riders on all BLM public or leased lands and roads any time the ATV/ORV is being operated. (ATV = All Terrain Vehicle) (ORV = Off Road Vehicle)

No operator of an ATV/ORV shall carry a passenger while operating on BLM public lands and roads, except that a passenger may be carried if the ATV/ORV is designed by the manufacturer to carry a passenger.

Safety Flags are required on ALL vehicles operating off road on BLM lands in the Juniper Dunes. All such vehicles will have a whip mast and a 6 X 12 inch red/orange flag. Flags may be of pennant, triangle, square or rectangular shape. Safety flags must be attached within 10 inches of the tip of the whip mast with club or other flags mounted below the safety flag or on another whip.  Masts must be securely mounted on the vehicle and extend 8 feet from the ground to the mast tip

ATV/ORV’s and other off road vehicles must have current and valid State registration and tabs/stickers visible on the ATV/ORV.

Thanks to Jim Felton for this one…………..

NY Times November 24, 2009

Editorial

No ‘No More Wilderness’

In 2003, Gale Norton, then the secretary of the interior, and Michael Leavitt, then the governor of Utah, struck a deal that removed federal protections from about 2.6 million acres of public land in Utah that the Clinton administration had designated as potential wilderness. At the same time, Ms. Norton disavowed her department’s longstanding authority to identify, study and recommend new areas for wilderness protection.

This “no more wilderness” policy, as it came to be known, exposed huge swaths of federal land throughout the Rocky Mountain West to oil and gas drilling and other commercial uses.

President Obama’s interior secretary, Ken Salazar, has reversed many of the Bush administration’s damaging environmental policies. Maddeningly, however, the “no more wilderness” policy is still in place. It is past time for Mr. Salazar to renounce it.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from upstate New York, and 89 other House members have written to Mr. Salazar urging him to reject the Norton-Leavitt arrangement — a back-room deal with no standing in law — and restore interim protections for the land in Utah until Congress can decide whether to protect the area permanently. (Mr. Hinchey has introduced a bill — the Red Rock Wilderness Act — that would confer wilderness protections on those acres, plus about 7 million more.)

More broadly, they want Mr. Salazar to reject the destructive philosophy underlying the Norton-Leavitt arrangement by reasserting the interior secretary’s responsibility to help protect America’s fragile landscapes from oil and gas leasing, off-road vehicle use and mining.

Under the law, only Congress can designate permanent wilderness — areas where all commercial activity is prohibited. But Congress also authorized the Interior Department to periodically inventory federal lands to identify those with “wilderness characteristics” and to give them interim protections until Congress can make the final decision. These areas are known as wilderness study areas.

It is this authority that Ms. Norton said she did not want and that Mr. Salazar should promptly reclaim.