Progress for the Lane Mountain Milkvetch

I wrote about the efforts to designate critical habitat for the Lane Mountain Milkvetch (Astragalus jaegerianus) in an earlier blog post.  In a success due largely to the efforts of the Center for Biological Diversity, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed its final ruling last month declaring over 14,000 acres as protected land for the rare plant.
Lane Mountain milk-vetch flowering in the Mojave Desert. (Credit: Cynthia Hopkins, USFWS)
The primary opponents of the critical habitat designation were some off-highway vehicle (OHV) users who complained that the new protected status would deprive them of recreational activities.   However, thousands of miles of open routes remain available to OHV users on public land, in addition to the El Mirage, Stoddard Wells, and Johnson Valley Off-highway vehicle areas.

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