West Mojave Plan FEIR/S - Desert Managers Group

As shown in Appendix L, Johnson Valley exceeded the following average impacts givenin parenthesis in the previous sentence: trails (22/mi 2 ), tracks (180/mi 2 ), litter (41/mi 2 ), targetpractice (17.4 compared to 16.2/mi 2 ), and camping (3.1 versus 2.4/mi 2 ). Johnson Valley was theonly open area to exceed the average number of tracks among the five open areas.Heavy OHV Use Areas: Impacts in these three regions were intermediate to open areas(where more impacts were observed) and residential areas (where there were relatively fewerimpacts). Both target shooting (6.7/mi 2 compared to 13.9/mi 2 on average) and hunting (1.6/mi 2compared to the average of 2.0) were relatively lower in heavy OHV use areas than in open areas(16.2/mi 2 shooting, 2.1/mi 2 for hunting) and residential areas (18.2/mi 2 shooting, 2.4/mi 2hunting). Heavy OHV areas were also slightly lower in terms of camping (1.5/mi 2 compared toaverage ofg 2.2/mi 2 ) than in open areas (highest at 2.4/mi 2 ) and residential areas (1.6/mi 2 ).Among the three heavy OHV use areas, California City into the Rand Mountains is themost impacted in terms of trails (8.0/mi2 compareed to Edwards Bowl, the next highest heavyOHV use area was highest in terms of litter (47.6/mi 2 compared to California City/RandMountains at 21.1/mi 2 ) and target practice (7.8/mi 2 compared to 6.5/mi 2 at California City).Residential Areas. Importantly, all three residential vehicle impact areas are insideDWMAs, and cumulatively affect 107 mi 2 . They are all about the same size (i.e., 35 mi 2 ). Thereis also a spatial importance among the three areas; impacts from Silver Lakes are mostly affectthe DWMA from the east, whereas Hinkley is partially within the DWMA, and Coyote Corner isfully within the DWMA.Seven dumps were observed on 107 mi 2 surveyed, and were unique to this impact area,having not been recorded in either open areas or heavy OHV use areas. This is a significantfinding relative to raven management, suggesting that dump clean up activities should be focusedin these areas, all of which are within DWMAs.Interestingly, both target shooting (18/mi 2 compared to 16/mi 2 in open areas) and hunting(2.4/mi 2 compared to 2.1/mi 2 in open areas) had the highest incidence of occurrence inresidential areas. Again, on BLM-managed lands, this may help direct law enforcement to focalproblem areas, which correspond to west of Silver Lakes in the Fremont-Kramer DWMA, northof Hinkley and in the Coyote Corner, both of which are within the Superior-Cronese DWMA.Of the three residential areas, Hinkley was the highest for trails (5.1/m 2 compared to3.6/mi 2 in Coyote Corner) and litter (104/mi 2 compared to 53/mi 2 in Coyote Corner). CoyoteCorner was significantly higher in track counts (57/mi 2 compared to 15/mi 2 in Hinkley) andtarget shooting (37/mi 2 compared to 6/mi 2 west of Silver Lakes). Coyote Corner was alsonoteworthy for the amount of dumping, where 6 of 7 incidences (86%) were observed; theremaining dump was seen west of Silver Lakes, although dumping is far more common there,particularly just north of Shadow Mountain Road (LaRue, pers. obs.).Chapter 3 3-134