Off-roading is now off-limits on routes spanning 1 million acres of the Mojave Desert after a six-year legal battle over whether adding thousands of miles of new dirt roads would harm the desert tortoise.

Back in 2019, during the first Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management approved the West Mojave Route Network Project, a proposed network of roads for off-highway vehicles, or OHVs, criss-crossing the inland California desert. The routes would traverse various BLM-managed lands that included areas near Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park, in the mountains north of Barstow, and in the desert around Ridgecrest off Highway 395, along with other regions. All told, the road network includes public lands in Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern and Inyo counties, LA Outdoors reported.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and several other environmental groups sued the BLM and other federal agencies over the project in 2021, arguing that the bureau approved the plan without fully considering potential damages to the desert landscape and wildlife, including the desert tortoise.

In a court ruling last week, a federal judge agreed, prohibiting off-road vehicle use in areas deemed critical habitat for the desert tortoise and the Lane Mountain milkvetch, an endangered desert plant. The decision partially undoes the BLM’s approval of the route network project by reversing the adoption of any routes within those critical habitats.

All told, the reversal applies to approximately 2,200 miles of the nearly 6,000 miles of dirt roads initially approved.

Story Date: February 9, 2026