Closures also affect camping in Grand, Box Elder counties

Closures under appeal in Grand and Box Elder counties affect more than just off-road vehicle use. They also stop dispersed camping in some high-quality camping locations on public land.

One of these areas, according to the lawyer for the appellants, Utah Shared Access Alliance, is Island in the Sky, Grand County. The area is a vast mesa with spectacular overlooks of rugged desert country. It is crowned by a section of Canyonlands National Park and by Deadhorse Point State Park.

A few years ago, people driving along U-313 on Island in the Sky could pull off onto slickrock or sand and camp pretty much at will, as long as they were on Bureau of Land Management property and not in the parks. Today, all campers in the area are restricted to a few designated sites.

Last year, visitors found they could not legally camp in isolated spots where they would be undisturbed by other campers on Island in the Sky. But at the same time, oil-drilling operations were going on in the same vicinity beside U-313.

On its Web site, www.blm.gov/utah/moab/camp-restrict.html, the BLM's Moab Field Office explains the camping restrictions:

"The Moab Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management receives about 2 million visitors per year. Many of these visitors wish to camp, and many of these want to camp in close proximity to Moab. Because of the volume of visitors to the Moab area, the BLM has found it necessary to restrict camping to campgrounds or designated sites in our very popular areas."