As the Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies have progressively barred off-road travel from more and more of the vast landscapes of Colorado and California, all-terrain vehicle owners from those states have shrugged and retreated -- increasingly packing up their stuff for the week or the weekend and repairing to Utah's desolate Factory Butte area, 180 miles south of Salt Lake City.

"If ever there was a place God created for off-road recreation, Factory Butte is it," says Michael Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance.

Northwest of Caineville, the land consists of rolling wind-sculpted hills of Mancos shale soil sliced by shallow ravines. ATV riders celebrate the lift or bounce their machines enjoy on the spongy, dry soil, comparing it to skiing on powder.

Of course, the extremists who would fence off all the wild lands have long complained that these vehicles are noisy despoilers, cutting trails that encourage erosion -- as though erosion isn't what gave these lands their distinctive character in the first place.

Ah, but while environmental degradation by "natural" wild horses (what?) and other creatures must be accepted, the works of man are a blight upon the earth, the nature cultists explained. When that didn't work, the extremists played their trump card: They went plant-hunting.

Sure enough, the little Wright fishhook cactus, listed as "endangered" in 1979, and the equally diminutive Winkler cactus, actually a succulent listed as "threatened" in 1998, turned up in the Factory Butte area.

Game, set and match.

The BLM will now issue new regulations, as early as September, designed to spare these plants from disturbance by the only species whose migrations, activities, needs and livelihood deserve no "protection" -- homo sapiens.

At the very least, the BLM should err on the side of fencing off as small a "cactus sanctuary" as is viable, while leaving as much land open for "mixed use," as possible. For one of these days, those who would fence off the American taxpayers from their own wild lands will push too far.

Private landowners quickly come to realize that "preservation" is expensive. The bulk of one's holdings have to be put to productive use to cover the costs, if one wants to indulge the luxury of setting aside and "preserving" a small swamp, pond or meadow just because it's pretty to look at.

But because these extremists enlist the might of government to do their bidding, the costs (increased resource costs because of restrictions on mining, for instance) are seldom seen, let alone sent to them as a bill. No one demands any reasonable trade-off; they're never required to mark on the map "wide open area where you can do anything you like" at least equal in area to those they wish to fence off and "protect."

At least so far.

But if the green extreme is willing to show no restraint, no moderation -- if today, while they hold the upper hand, there is a not a single acre where they cannot and will not find some sand fly or mold to "protect" -- how many of their works do they expect the other side to respect and preserve when the tide finally turns?