Landscape Stewardship Certificates of Appreciation - 2008

Front row: Arizona Motorcycle Racing Association Award Winners Back row: Teri Raml, Steve Coen and Tom B. (BLM) and unidentified person

THE PUBLIC LANDS FOUNDATION presents the Arizona Motorcycle Racing Association with a Landscape Stewardship Certificate of Appreciation and Citation.  The Foundation grants this recognition to honor private citizens and organizations who work to advance and sustain community-based stewardship on landscapes that include, in whole or in part, public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  Candidates for the award include any private citizen or citizen group of the United States who, over the past 1-5 years, has demonstrated sustained outstanding leadership, vision, and purpose in contributing to BLM’s efforts and in motivating other citizens and institutions to work together to more effectively manage whole landscapes, including watersheds, planning or management units, and other land systems upon which people share a common interest.

The Public Lands Foundation wishes to recognize the Association’s outstanding accomplishments as an umbrella group that organized, motivated and secured sustainable volunteer time and labor of four additional Off-Highway Vehicle organizations—Arizona Trail Riders Motorcycle Club, Off-Camber Motorcycle Club, Rock Stars Motorcycle Club, and The Fraternal Order of Single Track Riders Motorcycle Club—and the Boy Scouts of America, Troup 30.

Arizona’s Hieroglyphic Mountains once were a maze of wildcat-rutted tracks which crisscrossed the landscape where desert tortoise habitat and land health standards were at great risk due to the proliferation of unauthorized trails and use by uneducated motorists.  Thanks to the Association and its partners, an area referred to as The Boulders has been transformed into an Off Highway Vehicle Ride ‘n’ Camp Facility.  This facility is a family-oriented staging area where on any day the citizens monitor and educate one another and report and fix problems.  And, it is a place where parents encourage and teach stewardship to the next generation of public land enthusiasts.

A 10-acre base camp and restroom facility, a one-acre “tot lot” where children learn the correct off-highway vehicle-public land rules in a safer, controlled and dust-suppressed area, 1.75 miles of rail fencing and 22 miles of authorized, maintained, monitored and signed trail have been built.

As a result, educated sports enthusiasts practice stewardship while riding four-wheel-drive vehicles, motorcycles and quads, meandering through the substantially improved dust-controlled hills and mounds of public land that feature and protect the classic Sonoran desert landscapes, Saguaro and Cholla cacti, desert tortoise and other wildlife.

Teri Raml, BLM Phoenix District Manager, in her nomination of the Association states, “This project and its volunteers are on the cutting edge of proper OHV management, and their strong sense of personal commitment to the stewardship of public landscapes deserves to be recognized.”  The Public Lands Foundation agrees.

The Public Lands Foundation is pleased to present the Arizona Motorcycle Racing Association with this Citation and a Certificate of Appreciation for invaluable contributions to the stewardship of America’s public landscapes.

George Lea
September 12, 2008