A similar situation took place two years ago on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Ever since the invention of four wheel drive, people have been driving onto the beach to fish, camp, etc. In the offseason you can even keep driving until you find a 2-3 mile stretch of beach all to yourself. These activities (and the beautiful environment) draw tons of people every year, and serve as the primary revenue source for local businesses and governments.

In the spring, just before "the season" was about to start, two environmental groups sued the National Park Service to have vehicles banned from ALL the beaches in North Carolina (we're talking hundreds of miles here) because of the supposed detrimental effect it would have on the population of some endangered species that live in the area. Keep in mind that those species are just as heavily populated in the OBX today as they were when people started driving out there, but that's beside the point to those folks.

As you can imagine, local business owners, city and county governments, and even the state got involved to lobby against the environmental groups. My aunt works for the federal judge who heard the case, and after the first few days of arguments, he privately told her that the local groups had better come up with a good case, because the environmentalists had made a number of very good arguments. Same deal here as the groups in Utah - very well funded, good lawyers, great organization. But he very wisely refused to rule on the case until the two groups had spent at least a month trying to work it out themselves.

In the end I think they came to a very fair compromise. The environmental groups identified a number of specific locations that are known to be heavily populated by endangered wildlife, then combined that with annual migration and mating season schedules to determine where/when certain stretches of the beaches should be closed. There were a few areas that were permanently roped off, but most of the beaches only have an off-limits sign during a couple months a year. On the whole, a pretty good solution.

Have any of these 4x4 groups tried to work something out directly with the environmentalist groups? Those folks can be pretty militant sometimes and refuse to do anything outside of a courtroom, but you never know.