I am a series director for Southwest RallyCup Series and a organizer for Desert Storm Rally. I also help out the whole region for any Rally America sanction rallies. I went through a enviromental impact study this past year and I had to pay out some money for road surveys to happen and now certain roads are off -limits until other roads have been surveyed for enviromental impact and for possible historic sites...but we have been fortunate to use county roads to steer from most of this and we are able to continue onward with Desert Storm with over 100 stage miles this year and looks very good for the future since we now have a very good letter from BLM about how well we are able to be a "good neighbor" to the environment. Which I am keeping this like GOLD.

NOW, another Rally America sanction event outskirts of Las Vegas came under the same set of problems that I encountered and been telling all rally organizers to get prepared for this.....

Clark Couunty has to now do ALL environmental impact studies with their biologist and the Fish and Game, etc to see what off-road events do all if any impacts to the land.

I got the call from the organizer to tell me..."Denise...it has hit my area now." So he had to get prepared for the Clark County BLM meeting last week. It turned out better for him since we only use dirt roads that are established...BUT we have to do a couple of things to make sure we do not impact the outskirts of the land that attaches the road....and he does not have to worry about road surveys...only to possibly change the date of the event when the desert tortise stays in its burrows.

This DOES now hits any off road events in Clark County and each event will be assessed for enviromental impacts....I would suggest that all of the off-roaders to pay attention to how reports are coming along for the county and how they will be permitting ANY off-road events in that county.

We have been talking about this for a LONG time since I was a co-organizer for a national event Rim of the World in the Angeles National Forest and after 28 years of that event happening...it was finally disbanded by the forestry service and not allowing anymore premitted events. It was a big blow to the rally community when this happen back in 2006.

I hope that off-roaders and ralliest can band together to show we are "good neighbors" to the land and we want to be welcome back each and every year on public lands.

If we ALL can show we will clean up after ourselves and not out to tear up the land or roads and that we can work together.

Thank you...
__________________
Denise McMahon
Chairperson- Desert Storm Rally


From Race-Dezert

They went over this at the Driver's meeting. They had to spend over 20K on the study and ended up splitting the cost with SNORE and SCORE. Then the have biologists everywhere actually relocating turtles that get too close.