A 40-year conflict over a state park: Has it finally reached a breaking point?

Enjoying nature while preserving it is an age-old conflict in California, but nowhere is it more fraught than at Oceano Dunes. Can Mad Max-like racing and endangered species coexist? At the end of an arcing sweep of shoreline tracing the pocket coves and steep cliffs of the Central Coast lies Oceano Dunes and its rippling sea of sand.

The park south of San Luis Obispo is the last state beach where visitors can legally race their 4X4s, dirt bikes and monster trucks. At night, thousands of visitors fire up RV generators or pitch tents, creating bustling mini-cities on the sand. But these same 1,500 acres of dunes and six miles of beachfront are also home to two federally protected birds that build their nests in the sand, making them extraordinarily vulnerable.

Every year at Oceano, some of the rare birds are inadvertently squashed under the wheels of off-road vehicles racing across the dunes. Oceano Dunes is arguably the most contested stretch of sand in California, an unlikely stage for 40 years of broken agreements and laws, governmental infighting, serial lawsuits and charges that the state has prioritized motorized recreation and imperiled endangered species and other beachgoers. The push and […]

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