Ask Ellie - Volume 2

issue 1 [0] of Ask Ellie.)

Wisdom: Make sure your land is legally posted. (See the legal requirements for posting your land elsewhere in this issue.)

Beauty: Build wildlife friendly acacia brush piles and fences across traveled routes. Most will go to another location rather than continually fight thorns. Contact a local landscaping company for leads on acacia, cholla and other prickly plant parts. Many will deliver to you.

Get law enforcement on your side.

Wisdom: Be a squeaky wheel as well as a friend. Develop a personal relationship with the law enforcement in your area, go explain your problem to them in person.

Beauty: Take a plate of brownies or stop for doughnuts to make it a friendly and memorable meeting.

Document everything.

Wisdom: Make notes, take photos, take movies, use a sound recorder.

Beauty: When law enforcement comes and/or you get to small claims court, you will have all the evidence you need.

Take legal action.

Wisdom: The courts are there to serve us, you can use them in two ways. Law enforcement will file charges with the DA and the DA will prosecute (really, they did for me) if you can prove your case. File a small claims case for being deprived of the peaceful enjoyment of your property.

Beauty: Work with absentee landowners and post their land as a free service to them. Post any BLM land near you as a public service.

Insist on Enforcement.

Wisdom: Report every trespass and ask for and keep the incident number. Keep calling until they come to the house if that is what you want; if you give up, the outlaws win. If the dispatcher won’t take the report ask to talk to the watch commander or supervisor. Call or better yet write ORV enthusiast and San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod [(909) 387-3545; 655 E Third St San Bernardino, California 92415], he is an elected official and is responsible to you as a voter.

Beauty: Each report is worth money in the enforcement fund to support the overworked law enforcement authorities in this important work.

Stop them in their tracks.

Wisdom: Fence the property, hire big scary armed guards, put up barriers.

Dear Ellie,

I feel so hopeless? Are there any success stories you can share to help me feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel?

Waiting for word

Dear Waiting,

The folks in Gammel Township registered a big victory. Over Veteran’s Day weekend twenty riders and a dozen vehicles arrived in the ‘hood.

Within a few hours they had begun to tear up public roads and trespass, throwing a dust cloud three-miles long into the clear air. They destroyed berms and habitat in a frenzy of near perpetual motion.

The neighbors called for backup and got great response from Code Enforcement and the Sheriff who arrived together to educate and sedate.

Although the problem has not been completely resolved yet, it was reduced by more than 80% to the happy satisfaction of all the neighbors concerned.

Keep Fighting!!

Ellie

Posting Private Property

Theoretically, a judge can choose to dismiss a complaint because the signs are not designed and posted according to law. Here are the requirements for legally posting private property in the State of California. Although some of the spacing rules are a bit different for large tracts of acreage, no other size, type, color, spacing, or wording meets the letter of the law.

Source URL:
http://www.orvwatch.com/node/35