Denial of Petition to List the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly as Threatened or Endangered

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found a near universal disregard for motorized guidelines when the BLM experimented with a “voluntary off-road vehicle route system” in Nevada.  The area in question serves as a refuge for the disappearing Sand Mountain Blue butterfly, a species proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act. 

A 2006 monitoring report compiled over a three year period found that “98 percent  of all existing routes continued to be used and new routes were create, indicating an ongoing expansion of habitat degradation.”  The study also found that half of the places where riders violated the guidelines were near signs that discouraged riders from proceeding into sensitive butterfly habitat.  The cumulative impacts of such “noncompliance points” were four-fold as each discouraged route experienced multiple incursions.

See pages 24260-61 of the attached.