The U.S. Forest Service this week designated about 10,000 acres in the San Bernardino National Forest off limits to motorized vehicles and development following lawsuits claiming a 2006 land-use plan failed to adequately protect wildlife habitat.

The land is mostly adjacent to or near established wilderness areas in the high terrain above Rancho Cucamonga, Palm Desert and the Banning-Beaumont area.

“These are areas that are still basically untouched,” said Mary Beth Najera, a forest resource officer for the Forest Service.

The designation will prohibit road building, mining and other forms of development to keep the areas pristine enough so they may later qualify as protected wilderness areas, Najera said.

Hiking and bicycling will be allowed, though mountain bikers must stay on trails, she said.

The new designation is in response to a 2009 ruling by a federal judge who found the service did not adequately consider potential wilderness areas in a 2006 land management plan for four Southern California national forests.

The ruling stemmed from separate lawsuits filed a year earlier by a coalition of environmental groups and the California Natural Resources Agency over the service’s decision to allow road building, oil drilling and off-highway vehicle use in these remote areas. The groups argued such uses would harm endangered species and threaten forest health.

The court found that the Forest Service violated federal law by failing to consider cumulative environmental damage that new roads would cause in those areas. The ruling forced a redo of the land management plan for the the San Bernardino, Cleveland, Angeles and Los Padres national forests.

Amy Granat, managing director of the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, said the decision means many citizens won’t be able to access public lands. Many people, she said, use off-road vehicles to access these high-country areas for fishing, hunting, rock collecting and other activities.

She added, though, the decision left unchanged the network of trails and dirt roads now designated for off-road vehicles. The paths are coveted by those who ride motorcycles, quads, jeeps and other four-wheel drive vehicles, she said.

The affected lands are important to bighorn sheep, rare plants and at least two endangered birds, the least Bell’s vireo and the southwestern willow flycatcher, among other wildlife, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued.

She hopes to eventually see these areas get wilderness designations, which imposes more protection for wildlife.

“This is a step in the right direction,” she said.

Other environmental groups involved in the lawsuit were the Los Padres ForestWatch, Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, California Native Plant Society, California Wilderness Coalition and The Wilderness Society.

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