California officials violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing off-road vehicles to zoom across sand dunes inhabited by western snowy plovers, a federal judge ruled late last week.
In a victory for environmentalists, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang on Nov. 20 ruled that the California Department of Parks and Recreation improperly allowed the motorized vehicle use that harms federally protected shorebirds at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.
“Despite State Parks’ natural resources management program, State Parks has documented incidents in which snowy plovers have been killed and harmed due to motorized vehicle use,” Hwang noted, adding off-road vehicles “can and do drive through flocks of roosting snowy plovers.”
Hwang added that the harm to a species listed as threatened under the ESA resulted from the “inherent conflicts” that exist between off-road vehicles and “the snowy plovers that travel to the area occupied by park users.”
