Judge rejects U.S. management plan for California desert

Bureau of Land Management's proposal for the West Mojave 'does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives' to limit off-road-vehicle routes in the sensitive habitat, the ruling states.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

A federal judge has rejected key provisions of a plan for managing millions of acres in the California desert, saying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated roughly 5,000 miles of off-road vehicle routes without properly taking into account their impact on public lands, archaeological sites and wildlife.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Monday ruled that the West Mojave plan, which the bureau approved in 2006 after a decade of development, is "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit the number of miles of off-road routes.

She also determined that the bureau's analysis of the routes' impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the Mojave fringe-toed lizard was inadequate, pointing out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed."

"The court recognizes the complexity of the issues presented in this case," Illston said, "and that defendants have been given the difficult task of addressing the interests and needs of OHV [off-highway vehicle] recreationists while at the same time protecting listed species as required by law."

The ruling came in response to a legal challenge brought in late 2006 by a coalition of conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Desert Survivors.

The bureau's "planning was backwards," Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club said in a statement. "They should first analyze the resources, natural, cultural wildlife etc., and then plan the route network. They put the route approvals first."

U.S. Atty. Charles R. Schockey, who represented bureau in the matter, declined to comment on the ruling. However, Illston said she plans to schedule a case management conference to discuss possible remedies.

The plan was designed to provide a comprehensive strategy to conserve and protect sensitive species and their habitats on public lands administered by the bureau, including the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

"We believe the plan didn't go far enough in terms of protecting resources," said Lisa Belenky, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Off-road-vehicle use in the west Mojave is very prevalent and increasing, so having the proper protections in place is very important."

"We hope that in light of this decision," Belenky added, "the bureau will rethink and limit the number of routes in these sensitive areas."

Hearings to debate impact of solar farms on threatened species

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

State and federal agencies have their hands full with an onslaught of applications from companies eyeing the Southern California desert for its solar power potential.

The federal government is holding hearings beginning Monday in Riverside to get public input on the environmental impacts of solar farms, while state agencies are seeking to balance Gov. Schwarzenegger's push for solar energy with the need to protect endangered species that live on the sun-drenched landscape.

Habitat for the desert tortoise, Mohave ground squirrel and other imperiled species is scattered across eastern Riverside County and much of San Bernardino County.

"Solar projects in particular have a footprint that reduces the habitat suitability for those species; there's the potential for conflict," said Kevin Hunting, deputy director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

"It's all about planning and siting, and we believe there's room for both out there," he said Friday.

Renewable energy reduces the state's reliance on coal-generated power, a major contributor of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Such projects have been a prime focus for Gov. Schwarzenegger, who criticized the Fish and Game Department during an April speech at Yale University for slowing a solar project in Victorville to protect habitat for the Mohave ground squirrel, a species threatened with extinction.

"So a squirrel that may not exist (at that location) is holding up environmental progress on a larger and more pressing fight against global warming," the governor said.

He also voiced frustration because some environmentalists have criticized certain renewable-energy proposals because they would require new transmission lines across the very lands they fought to protect.

Five proposed solar farms, for instance, would cover some 33,295 acres near Desert Center in eastern Riverside County; two of them would sit within a mile of Joshua Tree National Park's southeastern boundary, said Claude Kirby, a realty specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is handling applications on federal land.

The hearings starting next week will be hosted by the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy to gather public input on environmental, social and economic issues that should be considered when approving solar farms in California and five other Western states.

There are 66 applications for solar farms across more than 518,573 acres in the BLM's desert district, which includes eastern Riverside County and much of San Bernardino County. The agency put a hold on any new applications until an assessment of the impacts is complete.

Donna Charpied, an activist who farms organic jojoba near Desert Center, said the solar farms would be just one more thing to mar the desert landscape near the national park where tortoises roam. She has long battled a proposal to turn a former iron-ore mine near the park into one of the nation's largest landfills. The fate of that proposal is being decided in the courts.

"What really aggravates me is, our desert is not a wasteland for urban area problems," she said. "They are exporting their pollution and importing our electricity. We just have to stop that mentality."

Charpied suggested that more projects emulate one under way by Southern California Edison to install solar panels on several warehouse roofs in Inland Southern California, including Fontana.

Extortion and environmentalism

EDITORIAL
Steve Williams, Opinion Page Editor
Victorville Daily Press

The Bureau of Land Management’s California branch manages 15.2 million acres of public lands in the state, which works out to some 15 percent of California’s total surface area. But for environmentalist activists, that’s not enough.

So it uses environmental protection pretexts to extort even more private land and place it off limits to the general populace.

A case in point is what’s going on with offshore drilling in California, particularly areas directly west of Santa Barbara. There, a Houston oil company, Plains Exploration & Production Co., has agreed — in exchange for the right to slant drill from one of its four offshore platforms to tap into an undersea oil field — to donate 200 acres of oceanview property along the Gaviota coast, and an additional 3,700 acres it owns in Santa Barbara’s wine-growing region. Both the oceanview and wine-country acreage would be used for public parkland.

Since 1969, when an oil spill off Santa Barbara helped launch the modern environmental movement in California, environmental groups have fiercely — and almost always successfully — opposed any development of offshore oil deposits along the California coast, including using protracted litigation, congressional moratoriums and bureaucratic delays. But PXP, lured by the skyrocketing price of oil, made the offer of the land — plus donating millions of dollars to fund projects aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, including low-emission public buses.

The extortion — which is basically what this is — has apparently worked. A lawyer for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center has said the Center supports the “deal”. The inescapable conclusion, of course, is that if the money — or the land — is right, environmental groups are more than willing to look the other way.

And who will ultimately pay for the environmentalists’ extortionate ways? You. In higher gasoline prices.

And then there’s this example, much closer to home.

Back in April, Arnold Schwarzenegger ended a speech on California’s role in fighting climate change by singling out the Mojave Ground Squirrel’s role in delaying construction of the new power plant on 388 acres at Southern California International Airport (formerly George Air Force Base). The plant will include a solar facility which will generate about 50 megawatts of the plant’s eventual 700-megawatt capacity.

But the solar part is to be built on land where rumors exist that once upon a time Mojave ground squirrels were seen in the area, and because of that the California Department of Fish and Game has slowed the approval process. That drew Schwarzenegger’s ire, and he said so. The delay, Schwarzenegger said, is “because of an endangered squirrel, an endangered squirrel which has never been seen on that land where they're supposed to build the solar plants. But if such a squirrel were around, this is the kind of area that it would like, they say.”

Final approval will no doubt eventually be given, but not without a little more environmentalist extortion. Victorville has agreed to “set aside” about three acres for every acre used up by the plant, for a total of 1,315.5 acres, some of which might have to be acquired through eminent domain, i.e., the city will pay off any property owners who lose their land to protect Mojave ground squirrel habitat. So taxpayers are going to fund one more bit of environmental extortion. And never mind what it’s costing to delay the project because of the imagined existence of a ground squirrel.

Actions Renew Tensions Over Use of Desert Land

Release of the west Mojave plan and a judge's rejection of a proposal for the Algodones Dunes reignite debate.

By Janet Wilson, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A pair of decisions in the last two days governing recreation, conservation and development across several million acres of California desert are reigniting tensions over endangered species and motorized access in the fast-growing region.

Late Tuesday, U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials signed the west Mojave management plan, designed to streamline construction and map areas for motorized recreation and wildlife protection on 9.3 million acres of public land in five counties and 11 cities. Parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern and Inyo counties are included in the plan, which took 12 years to craft.

"You have tremendous, growing populations in … the west Mojave, and then you try to balance that with conservation of species, and it becomes a very, very delicate balancing act, and that's what we think this plan achieved," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the bureau's California office. The plan identifies vital areas for the threatened desert tortoise, Mohave squirrel and 98 other species, pinpoints off-road trails, and lays out areas that could be developed.

But the plan was promptly lambasted by environmentalists and off-road vehicle groups, who said that thousands of miles of riding trails had been improperly mapped, that there were no funds for enforcement or implementation, and that lawsuits were inevitable.

"They don't have a nickel — not a nickel — to implement any of it," said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Assn., who was appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to serve on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council and who has monitored the plan closely.

"It wasn't done well," he said. "What they were trying to do — and it's pretty naive — is they were trying to provide for every kind of environmental concern they could with the idea that it would prevent lawsuits, and it's just the other way around. They're going to get sued by the environmental extremists … and off-road access is going to be cut off. It's a joke."

Tom Egan, a former bureau biologist who worked on the early stages of the plan before leaving the agency, called the final version "egregious," and said it would lead to the disappearance of the tortoise in many areas and leave other species "on hospital beds." He noted that the plan included measures for placing signs indicating trails were open to off-roading, but none to say which areas were closed.

A spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity — an environmental group that has long opposed the expansion of off-road driving in the desert — said that the plan would harm the desert tortoise in particular, and that the organization probably would sue to stop it.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston threw out another bureau plan and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological report for the Algodones Dunes to the south that would have greatly expanded off-roading, saying that the plan would harm the federally protected Pierson's milk vetch wildflower and the desert tortoise, and that the agencies had wrongly interpreted the Endangered Species Act.

The judge "basically shredded their plan," said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Noting that about half of the most popular parts of the dunes remain open to riders, he said: "It's time for them to compromise and recognize that 50% is enough."

Bedrosian said bureau officials had not seen the decision and could not comment immediately. She said officials thought they had adequately protected species by calling for tightly controlled riding on designated routes with heavy monitoring.

Vince Brunasso of the American Sand Assn., which intervened on the side of the government to have 49,000 acres of the popular dunes reopened to riding, said: "I agree. Let's compromise. Let's have 50% of the dunes in North America reopened then, because if you do the math and add up all the acres we have access to, it falls far short of 50%."

Brunasso said the Algodones Dunes "are different, and they're beautiful, and we can't go to the deep center section. The American people are being robbed of the ability to enjoy that beauty … we're not done fighting."

He said his group would try to have the Pierson's milk vetch delisted as an endangered species.

"The BLM counted 1.8 million milk vetch last year. I don't know how many you have to have before an official person would say its not endangered or threatened" and off-highway vehicle use can coexist with it, he said.

Patterson and others have said the wildflower is doing better for now because of good rains last year and because off-roading has been banned in key areas.

Federal Plans Aim to Control Use of the Desert

Development and off-road use in the Mojave and Algodones Dunes would increase. Critics threaten to sue.

By Janet Wilson and Julie Cart, Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times

Federal officials on Thursday released a pair of desert management plans to accommodate recreation, development and wildlife in the booming western Mojave and in the Algodones Dunes, a popular destination for off-road vehicles in far southeastern California.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said its design for 9.3 million acres of the western Mojave Desert is the largest habitat conservation plan in the United States, encompassing parts of four counties and numerous towns.

The plan, one of nearly 500 around the country, is aimed at expediting development in western San Bernardino, Kern, Los Angeles and Inyo counties while seeking to preserve more than 100 rare plant and animal species, including the threatened desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel.

Such plans allow home builders, miners, water and sewage companies, and others to destroy endangered and threatened species in exchange for setting aside or paying to preserve wildlife habitat elsewhere.

"Everybody out there in this tremendously large, 9-million-acre area will know which areas are targeted for conservation and which areas would be allowed for development," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management's California office, which began developing the plan a decade ago.

Larry Lapre, the BLM staffer overseeing final development of the plan, said the fast-growing area covered under the plan stretches from the San Gabriel Mountains east to Baker, and from Olancha in the Owens Valley south to Joshua Tree National Park. It takes in Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Apple Valley, Lancaster, Palmdale and Ridgecrest.

"It's an hour away from 15 million people," he said.

"Lancaster and Palmdale in particular are experiencing very rapid growth, and Victorville is too…. It's suburban sprawl."

"Every time you do a subdivision in Victorville, you have to do a tortoise survey and a ground squirrel survey and a burrowing owl survey, and usually you find one of each," Lapre said. "Then you have to go get permits, and there's hundreds of those pending. Hundreds of housing projects are being delayed."

Under the new plan, developers could pay fees or set aside land, then acquire one "take" permit covering all the species.

Lapre, a biologist who has worked on such plans for years, said the large swaths of land that would be set aside for the tortoise and other wildlife would help preserve them.

But environmental groups disagreed sharply. Daniel Patterson said the Center for Biological Diversity would sue if necessary to block the plan, which, he said, would ignore an existing recovery plan for the tortoise.

The BLM plan for the Algodones Dunes, long a mecca for off-road vehicle enthusiasts, calls for opening all of the areas that were placed off-limits as a result of a temporary court settlement five years ago.

However, Bedrosian of the BLM said the closures on slightly less than one-third of the area — 49,300 acres — would remain in place until at least Oct. 15 while a federal judge considers competing lawsuits from off-roaders and environmentalists.

Most of the currently restricted area — about 33,000 acres — will be opened to limited motorized use. The BLM said it would issue up to 525 permits per day for that part of the dunes, prohibit overnight camping, and close the area from April to mid-October.

For the time being, the BLM proposes instituting a zoning system that divides the entire 160,000-acre dune system into eight management areas. The 26,000-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area would be closed to any motorized travel, for example, and the 21,000-acre Gecko area would be open to unlimited off-road use.

Altogether, more than 85% of the dunes would be open to off-road vehicles.

Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, assailed the plan as a reversal of the 2000 court agreement and said it fails to provide protection for a threatened plant.

"The worst part is that the plan fails to deal with the crowds," Patterson said. "They totally failed to consider the carrying capacity of the dunes. The caps are only for a small area. It's a paper plan that will have no on-the-ground enforceability."

On holiday weekends, as many as 250,000 people roar over the dunes in sand rails, trucks and dune buggies. Four years ago, three people were killed and dozens injured, including a park ranger who was run over during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Bedrosian said the agency considers the 33,000 acres of limited use a "laboratory," adding that vehicle limits could be adjusted if necessary.