The Bureau of Land Management has scheduled five meetings (http://jeephorizons.com/land/nemoplan.html) to brief the public on an environmental assessment (EA), finding of no significant impacts (FONSI), and a proposed routes of travel plan amendment for the Northern and Eastern Mojave Desert (NEMO) routes planning area, which encompasses approximately 1 million acres of public lands in Inyo, San Bernardino and Mono counties.

The proposed amendment will allow BLM to complete routes of travel designations on the remaining 1 million acres of public lands within the 2.7 million-acre NEMO planning area. BLM California State Director Mike Pool issued a record of decision designating routes on approximately 400,000 acres of public lands within Desert Wildlife management areas located within the NEMO planning area In December of 2002. Approximately 1 million acres of wilderness are excluded from route designation since motorized vehicle use is prohibited by law in wilderness areas.

The proposed plan analyzes four route designation alternatives, including a proposed action that would designate 1,519 miles of routes, or approximately 91 percent of the network on public lands, open for public use. The route designations include "open", "closed" and "limited" in accordance with BLM route designation criteria. BLM anticipates the route designation documents will be available to the public in early May 2004.

The notice public meetings and all documents related to the proposed NEMO routes of travel plan amendment will be posted at the California BLM web site: http://www.ca.blm.gov/cdd when they become available. For further information, contact Harold Johnson, BLM, 2601 Barstow Road, Barstow, CA 92311; (760) 252-6000.