Roundup opposed

Chuck Mueller, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun [San Bernardino, CA]

Ken and Jennifer Foster of Hesperia are battling to save a herd of wild burros that roam freely on the lower slopes of Clark Mountain in the eastern Mojave Desert.

They are among a group of animal-rights advocates opposing a plan by a federal agency to capture as many as 150 burros in a proposed helicopter-assisted roundup Jan. 19.

The plan is to put the burros up for adoption as pets.

Three federal agencies are involved in the decision to remove the burros from land controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management: the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM.

Neither the Park Service nor Fish and Wildlife want the burros. They are banned from the national parks because they are not native and compete with native creatures for survival. Fish and Wildlife says they compete with the endangered desert tortoise.

The Fosters paint a colorful picture of the burros from Western lore. "These animals are a living heritage of the Old West," Jennifer Foster said. "It would be a complete travesty to remove them from their native range."

Her husband says: "They're as much a part of the West as the horse and wagon and should be left to graze where they've been over 100 years."

The Bureau of Land Management, which administers rangeland at Clark Mountain, sees burro removal as a necessity.

"Part of the herd area contains critical habitat of the endangered desert tortoise," said BLM's John Dearing. "And creation of the Mojave National Preserve in 1994 transferred the only springs (at Clark Mountain) with yearlong surface water to the National Park Service."

Also in 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that wild burros be banned from grazing in desert wildlife management areas, including the herd area at Clark Mountain, to help restore tortoise populations.

Meanwhile, the park service management plan for the Clark Mountain area called for removing burros from the new national preserve and fencing off burros from the water sources.

A public meeting on the proposed burro roundup will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the BLM's Barstow field office, 2601 Barstow Road. Public comments on an environmental assessment for the proposal will be accepted until Dec. 29 at the bureau's Needles field office, 1303 South Highway 95.

The bureau estimates there are 100 to 150 wild burros within or adjacent to the 233,000-acre Clark Mountain herd area. An adjacent 37,000 acres on the mountain is in the national preserve.

The bureau's burro capture plan calls for rounding up the animals and placing them in BLM's national wild horse and burro adoption program, administered at Ridgecrest.

"Under the proposal, the capture and removal of wild burros would be aided by a helicopter at gathering sites," Dearing said. "The helicopter would be used to locate and herd targeted animals to capture sites."

Wranglers on the ground would corral the burros.

Two other roundup methods are also proposed: trapping animals by enticing them with hay or luring them to water sites. Attracted by hay or water, the burros would be captured in portable pens with gates triggered after the animals were inside.

The environmental assessment of the capture plan said wranglers would ensure the burros are treated humanely.

But Jennifer Foster calls helicopter captures dangerous for the animals.

"During a roundup last September, a beautiful jack ran until it collapsed, and then was dragged by ropes by two mounted wranglers," she said.

The animals were abused by one of the wranglers, Foster said, and "one was left to die a very agonizing death over 14 to 16 hours."

The Fosters, 25-year residents of Hesperia who founded a lobbying group called Public Lands for Public Use, have owned horses and burros for three decades. They recently acquired 10 Clark Mountain burros from the bureau's wild horse and burro adoption program and plan to take them to animal sanctuaries, they said.

"We both love animals," Ken Foster said. "A big share of our lives has been devoted to riding and caring for horses and burros."

"We absolutely must stop this roundup," said Jennifer Foster. "If we don't, these living symbols of the Old West will be gone forever."

Home ownership challenged

After 30 years in the desert, she's fighting to stay

By MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise

IVANPAH - Connie Connelly balanced on her haunches, drawing deeply from a cigarette as swollen thunderclouds tinged red by the setting sun swept over her remote home in the Mojave National Preserve.

A tumble of scrap lumber, rotting travel trailers and battered furniture surround her green-and-white house. As a freight train rumbled by on tracks just a few feet away, the locomotive's piercing whistle drew howls from some of Connelly's 11 dogs as they prowled her dusty corral.

For 30 years, Connelly has lived in a rustic six-room home, a converted general store on 5 brushy acres about 23 miles from the shimmering casinos of Primm, Nev.

"When you've been in a place this long, you grow roots," the 44-year-old woman said. "This isn't for every Joe out here. You either make it here or you don't. ... I believe in preserving the simple life."

But Connelly's lifestyle is careening toward a showdown with National Park Service officials who are seeking to evict her and end a land squabble that started nearly four decades ago when her family first moved to the desert.

Connelly is to appear today before a U.S. District Court magistrate in Barstow to answer a charge of trespassing on federal land. The brief hearing will mark the first salvo in a courtroom battle to determine if Connelly will be forced from the land she asserts her father, Don, purchased in 1966.

Connelly said parks officials contend her father leased but never bought the property.

Mary Martin, preserve superintendent, declined comment, directing inquires to federal prosecutors.

"She is there illegally," Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, said of Connelly. "She does not have permission to reside at that location."

Rights Expired

Mrozek said Connelly's parents and their neighbors in the sparsely populated area were allowed to continue living on the federal land when the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994.

Connelly's father died in 1990. And when her mother, Pauline, died last year, so did the family's right to live within the preserve, Mrozek said. Connelly's name is not on the lease.

Connelly, who says she cannot afford an attorney, faces up to six months in jail and a fine if convicted.

"We're not seeking to incarcerate her but that is a possibility," Mrozek said.

Just 8 when her family moved from Hemet to the desert, Connelly is fighting eviction with the help of newfound friend Jennifer Foster of Hesperia, co-founder of Public Lands for Public Use, a recreationalist organization aimed at keeping government lands open to equestrians, hunters and other outdoors enthusiasts.

They say the Connelly family's purchase of the former Aztec Mining Company store in 1966 immediately sparked a dispute with the federal Bureau of Land Management, who challenged his ownership of the property. To prove his case, Connelly's father gave his paperwork, including a deed, to the BLM, which lost the file, Foster said.

The deed apparently was never recorded, and Connelly's father signed a lease agreement with BLM in 1968, Foster said.

"People are going to wonder why she would want to stay out there. A woman. Alone. The nearest neighbor a quarter-mile away," Foster said, her voice choked with emotion. "You have to remember, it's all she's known."

Although parks officials contend Connelly's family never owned the land, they have offered to swap her home and its surrounding 5 acres for more than 7 acres of desert land in Cadiz, about 75 miles south.

But Connelly and Foster question the quality of the well at the Cadiz site, where they say summers are significantly hotter because that property sits at a lower elevation than Connelly's house.

"It's about 10 miles from Hell," Foster said.

A Simple Life

Connelly, Ivanpah's sole resident, supports herself as an artist fashioning decorative wood, furniture, beadwork and other crafts. She says she is content with her simple life in the sparsely furnished desert home she shares with her dogs, one cat and a horse.

With her well broken, she drives 17 miles to Nipton every other day to fill a pair of blue plastic 55-gallon drums with water for her and her animals. Her old Ford pickup carries her 33 miles to Searchlight, Nev., for feed and supplies.

Oil lamps light her house at night. Connelly occasionally switches on a portable generator if she wants to watch a movie. Her phone is attached to a telephone pole outside. Until recently, she had to shimmy up the pole to use the phone.

Her furniture, she joked, bears dents and divots from errant shovel strikes intended for rattlesnakes that slithered into her house.

Connelly's house in years past was considered part of Leestock, a town of about 100 residents that sprung up at a railroad stop where ranchers loaded cattle onto trains.

"It was like the Old West out here. Time pretty much stood at a standstill," recalled Connelly, whose weathered eyes convey a distant expression. But, at a friendly jibe, she breaks into laughter, revealing a warm smile.

Her father, a former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy turned part-time prospector, kept the general store open, selling food, beer and sundries. From the front porch, the family could see the trailers that made up the famed Chicken Ranch brothel about six miles down a nearby dirt road.

"Every night, we had the miners down playing cards and talking," she said. Train engineers would stop to chat as they waited for another locomotive to pass.

Bats, owls, nighthawks and coyotes are now Connelly's neighbors. Age and weather have reduced the other buildings of Leestock to rubble. Connelly's not sure why her dad moved his family to the remote desert.

"When I was small, I asked him once when he went prospecting, how did he pick a spot. And he said you just kind of get a feeling about a place," Connelly said. In the nearby corral, the breeze stirred a set of wind chimes created from long lengths of old pipe.

In 1976, the family moved about 100 miles to Newberry Springs when Connelly's mother began suffering dementia. They returned eight years later and had to chase squatters off the land.
Last year, parks rangers began stopping by, telling her and her mother that they had to leave, Connelly said.

Foster met Connelly when the Ivanpah woman called her in January, seeking help. In just seven months, the two women have become close friends.

"Connie came into my life for a reason," Foster said. "She's a special person. ... Within her still lies that pioneer spirit."

Foster and her husband, Ken, have sought help for Connelly from San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus' office and are trying to find her a lawyer.

If evicted, Connelly figures she will move to Wyoming. She holds little hope for her future.

"They'll undoubtedly get me out of here, one way or the other. It saddens the heart."

Agency claims home of woman

By CHUCK MUELLER, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

IVANPAH - A whitewashed bungalow in this old desert mining town southeast of Mountain Pass holds a lifetime of memories for Connie Connelly.

But the National Park Service says the 44-year-old woman, who came to Ivanpah with her parents in 1968, must leave the house by Friday.

The six-room cinder block dwelling, once a general store that stocked provisions for desert prospectors, is on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve, park officials said.

Connie's parents, Don and Pauline Connelly, were issued lifetime leases to live in the house by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which administered the area before the park service took over in 1994. But the documents did not include their daughter's name.

"But it has been my home since I was 8, and all my memories are there," said Connie, who shares the five-acre site with 12 dogs, a cat and a horse.

Her father, a former sheriff's deputy in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, died in 1990 at age 80. Her mother died last year at age 81 after a long illness that had required the family to move to Newberry Springs to be closer to medical care. While they were away from Ivanpah, another family occupied the house, and the Connellys had to buy it back for $8,000.

PAPERWORK PROBLEMS

"It appears that the bureau did not update the lease after it was granted to the parents in 1986," said Jennifer Foster, co-founder of Public Lands for Public Use, a 6-year-old watchdog group that investigates the use and misuse of public land.

As a consequence, Connelly does not possess a current lease or title to the land where the bungalow sits, said Chief Park Ranger Dennis Ziemann.

Without the lease, she is residing illegally on federal land, Ziemann said in a March 18 letter to Connelly that demands she leave the 71-year-old house.

"Failure to comply will result in criminal prosecution and removal of all property on the premises," Ziemann said.

That could mean the park service intends to tear down the house, which qualifies as a historic site because of its age, Foster fears.

"When a structure is over 50 years old, it could be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places," said desert historian Dennis Casebier.

STANDING FOR HISTORY

Public Lands for Public Use plans to stand at Connelly's side on Friday and over the weekend and longer if necessary, said Foster's husband, Ken, who co-founded the group with his wife.

The Fosters filed a notice of intent Monday to appeal the issue in Connelly's behalf with the U.S. Department of Interior's Board of Land Appeals, claiming the BLM's legal description for the bungalow site is inaccurate.

"The coordinates cited in the bureau's lifetime lease of 1986 are wrong," Jennifer Foster said. "The lease says the house is in Section 32 of Township 15, but it really is in Section 31."

"Accordingly, the Bureau of Land Management may never have had the right to charge the Connelly family for a lease in the first place," Jennifer Foster said. "The federal government may owe Connie a ton of money."

"The bureau later corrected the erroneous section numbers, but the coordinates are still wrong. Her house isn't where the lease says it is. It's a mile away, across the (Union Pacific) railroad tracks on patented (private) land."

Documents in the San Bernardino County Recorder and Assessor's offices show that Connelly holds possessory rights to the house, and her tax payments are current.

Ziemann said Connelly has refused to comply with procedures that would allow the park service to provide her with relocation assistance.

Mary Martin, superintendent of the 1.6 million-acre national preserve, told Jennifer Foster in an April 5 letter that she wants to see "a positive resolution to this issue."

"(But) all the information in our records and those of (the) county and Bureau of Land Management clearly indicate that Ms. Connelly is illegally occupying federal land."

A PRICE FOR MEMORIES

Martin could not be reached for further comment this week, but park service spokeswoman Holly Bundock in Oakland said, "We've offered Connie Connelly relocation costs, including rent for 2 years and moving costs. In lieu of rent, we would buy a like house somewhere else. But she has declined that."

Connelly acknowledges she met with Martin and a park service real estate official Jan. 7.

"They wanted me to file a disclaimer and sign it over to them," she said. "They offered me $3,000 to relocate. But you can't put value on your childhood home. You can't put a price on memories."

The diminutive woman, who claims Mandan and Sioux tribal heritage, lives on occasional sales of her watercolor paintings and from jobs as a horseshoer and store clerk.

Her Spartan surroundings at the 2,400-square-foot bungalow include a wood stove and oil lamps. She hauls water from Nipton, 17 miles away, in two 55-gallon drums mounted in the bed of her 1973 Ford pickup. And every six weeks she shops for groceries in Nipton or in Searchlight, Nev.

When mid-summer temperatures climb to 110 degrees, Connelly turns on a generator to power a couple of fans in the bungalow.

"I'm not fussy about anything," she said. "It's not necessary to have a new wardrobe or newfangled gadgets."

The eviction controversy has sparked interest in Washington and Sacramento.

"We are aware of the situation," said Jim Specht, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who represents the east Mojave. "He has asked his staff to look into it."

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, who represents some San Bernardino County desert areas, said he was told by a Lewis staff member that the congressman would work with local officials to ensure the issue is resolved consistent with the law and that due process is followed.

Bob Smith, area representative for county 1st District Supervisor Bill Postmus, said he has asked a survey team to study the coordinates to determine if the bungalow is on private or public land.

"If it's on private land, we would intervene to determine the legality of a federal agency being involved," Smith said.

Connelly's five acres lie within a 40-acre tract that was privately patented under the Homestead Act, according to an original land patent signed on March 7, 1912, by President William Howard Taft.

"Accordingly, the Bureau of Land Management may never have had the right to charge the Connelly family for a lease in the first place," Jennifer Foster said. "The federal government may owe Connie a ton of money."