The management objective for the Spanish Point Karst area is the protection of the cave and karst system, important aquifer recharge zone, sinking stream segments, and the groundwater quantity and quality the area provides. Impacts from the management of the Spanish Point Karst area do not vary by alternative. Pursuing agreements for the cooperative management of surface activities in watersheds on USFS-administered and private lands in and adjacent to the Spanish Point Karst ACEC would result in beneficial impacts to the values of concern in the area by coordinating management for the protection of water resources. To the extent possible, the BLM also maintains compatible management prescriptions between these lands and those administered by the BLM.
Under Alternative A, restrictions on minerals development would result in adverse impacts to these resources in the ACEC. Restrictions on minerals development would benefit the values of concern by reducing potential activities that could degrade these values. Restrictions on minerals development include withdrawing the ACEC from appropriation under the mining laws, making it administratively unavailable to mineral leasing, and closing it to geophysical exploration. The potential for all mineral resources in the ACEC is low to very low, which minimizes adverse impacts to minerals development.
Managing the Spanish Point Karst ACEC as an ROW avoidance/mitigation area and closing it to motorized vehicle use would result in adverse impacts to these resource uses by limiting these activities in the ACEC. Restrictions on these resource uses would benefit caves, opportunities for primitive recreation, and water quality by minimizing surface disturbance and the potential for erosion and vegetation loss that would adversely affect these values.
Under all alternatives, managing basal vegetative cover to maximize (or maintain) ground cover in good or better ecological condition would benefit water quality by reducing erosion and the movement of sediment into water resources.
This area would be designated an ACEC under all the alternatives, but the BLM would manage it within the existing boundaries under alternatives A, C, and D (5,517 acres) and expand it by 15,246 acres under Alternative B. Management of this ACEC would vary by alternative. The values of concern managed for in both the existing and expansion area of the Brown/Howe Dinosaur Area are paleontological resources, most notably dinosaur fossils from the suborder Theropoda and Sauropoda. Threats to the area proposed under alternatives A, C, and D include surface disturbance from mineral and ROW development, and theft and vandalism; threats to the area proposed for expansion under Alterative B do not include theft and vandalism.