On March 18, 2021, the California Coastal Commission made the historic decision that off-road vehicles must be removed from Oceano Dunes, because off-road vehicle use jeopardizes one of the world’s rarest coastal ecosystems and endangered wildlife (not to mention harming local public health and air quality).
Four years later, the court struck down the Coastal Commission’s ruling—overturning the historic win for protecting Oceano Dunes and local communities. But don’t worry, the fight isn’t over yet. The court did not challenge the commission’s reasons for removing vehicles from the dunes (i.e. that off-highway vehicle impacts in the Oceano Dunes environmentally sensitive habitat areas do not align with the Coastal Act). Instead, the court ruled on a point of procedure, putting much of the decision-making power to close Oceano Dunes back into the hands of the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. This has left the decades-long environmental and public health issues in the Oceano Dunes unresolved.
The Oceano Dunes debacle is playing out in more than one arena. Concurrently, the Center for Biological Diversity sued State Parks in an Endangered Species Act case. In November 2025, the court ultimately agreed with the Center for Biological Diversity that the Oceano Dunes off-road vehicles’ well-documented damage to threatened and endangered species is a violation of the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits the “take” of listed species (i.e. killing, harming, harassing, etc.). To continue operating the park, State Parks must submit a new habitat conservation plan to reduce or eliminate the “take” of those species, which must be approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In this case, calling the recently released habitat conservation plan (HCP) “new” is a relative term. In 2004, the Sierra Club sued State Parks for the same reasons and secured the same promise of a HCP. The “new” HCP is a slightly revised version of the old HCP (which was finally completed in 2020, but then withdrawn), but it retains the same deep flaw: The HCP should focus on reducing harms to endangered species, not be a blueprint for additional violations of the Endangered Species Act.
But State Parks’ new draft HCP is doing just that. It focuses a lot on avoiding impacts on recreation, a category of environmental review that State Parks made up based on a misapplication of the California Environmental Quality Act. It’s allowing the pretense that eliminating 109 acres of habitat intended for protection of endangered species habitat somehow makes sense in a document called a habitat conservation plan.
State Parks’ draft HCP justifies this contradiction as follows: “The 6 Exclosure has been the most productive nesting area of all the seasonal exclosure locations in the park. …. The area occupied by the 6 Exclosure is very popular for both motorized and non-motorized recreation, including camping. Overall, reducing or eventually eliminating the 6 Exclosure ensures [State Parks] can better meet the recreational needs of the public under the HCP as proposed.” (Exclosure means habitat areas closed off to the public, intended to protect wildlife.)
The HCP admits that wildlife and air quality would benefit from keeping habitat protection in place year-round (not just during nesting season), but the HCP rejects this alternative because “this loss of recreation opportunity under the permanent year-round exclosure alternative would combine with the dust control program recreational acreage reduction to potentially create a significant and unavoidable cumulative loss of recreation opportunity.” Again: This is supposed to be a habitat conservation plan.
The HCP also notes the potential for adding a southern entrance to the Oceano Dunes riding area. The best case scenario (still bad): This would move a problem from one location to another, reducing traffic in Oceano by worsening it in Guadalupe and bulldozing an entrance through acres of environmentally sensitive habitat. The worst case scenario: this would expand the vehicle park and its negative public health and environmental impacts in the Dunes, Oceano, Guadalupe and communities in between.
Now we sit at a crossroads. When the court overturned the commission’s decision to remove vehicles from Oceano Dunes, they put the power in the hands of SLO County, saying the commission must “submit recommendations of corrective actions that should be taken to the local government.” Specifically, San Luis Obispo County has the ability to amend its Local Coastal Plan (LCP) to end the harm to endangered species, the environment, and the community of Oceano.
Last month, the Oceano Beach Community Association, Northern Chumash Tribal Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Concerned Citizen for Clean Air, and the Sierra Club pointed this out to the SLO County Board of Supervisors, urging the board to initiate a periodic review of the local coastal plan, make amendments to phase out off-highway vehicle activities in sensitive areas, and impose a strategic moratorium in the interim, as allowed by the South County Coastal Area Plan.
County supervisors: Fixing the problem is down to you, and now is the time for courage to defend our environment and our communities.
Community members: you can review and comment on the draft habitat conservation plan by Friday, Jan. 23, at 5 p.m., at oceanoduneshcp.com. You can also tell your supervisors why you care about protecting Oceano Dunes and local air quality. ∆
Gianna Patchen is chapter coordinator for the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club. Andrew Christie served as chapter director from 2004 to 2023. Send comments in response to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in 2025 Year in Review.
Not be be insensitive, but I’ve been listening to this argument over snowy plovers for about three and a half decades. During that time, I’ve been blessed to live, surf almost daily and enjoy life on the beaches of SLO, Ventura, LA, Orange and San Diego Counties. Do you know what they all have in common? Dedicated preserves set aside for snowy plovers. Anyone paying attention will see snowy plovers constantly running up and down our CA beaches up and down the state. In the counties I named – plus Santa Barbara County – there are about two-dozen official preserves set aside for them. More in the Channel Islands. And that doesn’t take into account rugged, empty coastal areas such as Vandenberg, around Point Conception, Point Mugu, all up and down Malibu, San Onofre, Pendleton, all of Baja, etc., etc., etc. You’ve got one and only one beach from Monterey to Mexico where families can come drive out on the sand for a stretch of only a few miles – with nothing on the beaches at all between Oceano and Goleta, or Oceano and Carmel – open stretches of 60+ miles in either direction. Families have been enjoying these beaches literally for generations. The dang plovers can go find another stretch of sand – there is absolute zero shortage of empty space for them. I’ve spent decades on the sand and see them everywhere all the time – as common as kelp. Granted, I’m not counting them and tracking their migrations, I’m no expert, but when it comes to snowy plovers – when I hear the word “endangered” I can only scratch my head and wonder.