An update on Oceano Dunes, on California's Central Coast

I posted this about 16 months ago regarding the use of a part of California's Central Coast for off-roading.  Now, CalMatters has published a piece picked up by the High Country News, about the conflict between those recreational off-roaders and environmentalists.  The High Country News piece is headlined, "The dust-up over California's off-road beach," and Julie Cart reports.  When published in Cal Matters it was headlined, "A 40-year conflict over a state park: Has it finally reached a breaking point?"  Here's an excerpt: 

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 pull of allowing for the enjoyment of nature while ensuring its preservation is an age-old dilemma in California, but nowhere is it more fraught than at Oceano.

Now the decades-long debate over the future of these dunes has reached a climax: The California Coastal Commission has issued an unprecedented cease and desist order to its sister agency, the state Department of Parks and Recreation, signaling that the commission has moved the conflict into uncharted legal territory.