Animal Predatory Behavior Decreases Near Desert Wind Turbines, Study Finds

"These findings could be helpful in assisting managers to design future wind energy facilities with species in mind."

Wind turbines overlooking Whitewater Creek and Interstate 10 near Palm Springs, California. (PHOTO: David McNew / Getty Images News / Getty Images)

By Patch CA (Patch Staff)
Patch Banning

PALM SPRINGS, CA – A study conducted at the windmills near Palm Springs showed that predators are less likely to attack prey living near the wind turbines, including desert tortoises that burrow in the Coachella Valley.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis and the U.S. Geological Survey employed motion-activated cameras facing the entrances of 46 active desert tortoise burrows at the 5.2-square-kilometer wind energy facility.

They found that predators are far more likely to visit the tortoises' burrows near dirt roads and far less likely to visit burrows close to turbines.

The five predator species monitored included bobcats, gray foxes, coyotes, black bears and western spotted skunks, who scientists say were not actively hunting the tortoises but seeking smaller prey that frequently live in desert tortoise burrows.

"These findings could be helpful in assisting managers to design future wind energy facilities with species in mind," said lead author Mickey Agha. "There may be benefits to adding space between turbines and increasing the number of dirt roads, to potentially provide habitat for sensitive terrestrial wildlife."

Scientists behind the study -- which was published in the April issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management -- say the findings show that the design of wind energy infrastructure impacts animal behavior, an area of study rarely touched on.

"There is little information on predator-prey interactions in wind energy landscapes in North America, and this study provides a foundation for learning more," said Jeffrey Lovich, USGS scientist and study co-author.

"Further investigation of causes that underlie road and wind turbine effects, such as ground vibrations, sound emission and traffic volume, could help provide a better understanding of wildlife responses to wind energy development," he said.

Guarding against overreach of the Endangered Species Act

Sue McCrum
Drovers Cattle Network

Recently there have been media reports that have highlighted the dangerous overreach of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Desert Tortoise, Delta Smelt, Sage Grouse, and the Lesser Prairie Chicken to name a few species, are being respected over the value of the human species as various actions are being taken across the United States to severely curtail or eliminate the use of land, water, timber and mineral resources in deference to these species. These resources are vital for the security and economic solvency of the United States as they provide food, fiber, shelter and energy for our people.

The situation cements the fact that American Agri-Women (AAW) urges that the existing Endangered Species Act be repealed. At the very least, AAW supports a requirement that the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Critical Habitat designations be completed before restrictive regulatory action is taken. Concurrent social, economic and environmental cost/benefit analyses and compensatory adjustments for takings deemed necessary for species protection is required, and should be enforced.

AAW supports allowing a state or private property owner who is accused of an ESA violation to continue with existing farming, logging, fishing or mining practices until the suit is resolved. No fine should be assessed unless a violation is proven.

AAW opposes expansion of habitat area designations for endangered species without peer-reviewed scientific data showing the additional acres are necessary.

With an ever increasing world population that will need to be fed, clothed and sheltered land being taken out of productive use for the benefit of people will regrettably result in an endangered species listing for the human race.

Sue McCrum, President of American Agri-Women, the nation’s largest coalition of farm, ranch and agri-business women.

Before Nevada Cattle Rancher Standoff, BLM Killed Hundreds of Endangered Desert Tortoises

Endangered tortoise used as justification to assault Nevada rancher’s property rights

700-to-840 endangered tortoises face BLM euthanization, “...because that’s the sensible thing to do.”

Adan Salazar
Infowars.com

Months before the heated contention between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, purportedly over protecting an endangered species of desert tortoise, the BLM was euthanizing the tortoises in droves.

On Saturday, the BLM, with the help of helicopters, low-flying aircraft and hired cowboys, began rounding up Bundy’s cattle, and forbade him from interfering with the operation, as Bundy announced he was prepared to weather a full-on assault.

“My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley ever since 1877. All these rights I claim have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and water. I have been here longer. My rights are before the BLM even existed,” Bundy said.

The BLM says they’re moving in, not to encroach on the man’s property rights, but because Bundy didn’t pay “grazing fees,” which the Bureau has imposed on land developers “who disturb tortoise habitat on public land,” according to the Associated Press.
Throughout the housing boom in the 2000s, the Bureau was earning enough to fund the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC) in southern Las Vegas, a habitat “created in 1991 to house wild desert tortoises removed from the path of development and to use those tortoises to aid recovery of the species.” Its operating budget was about $1 million per year.

But the recession that followed dwindled the number of developers, and in turn funds for the DTCC.

So, facing the prospect of shutting their doors, the DTCC began releasing healthier turtles into the wild, and euthanizing some of the sick ones.

From the AP, August 25, 2013:

Back at the conservation center, a large refrigerator labeled “carcass freezer” hummed in the desert sun as scientists examined the facility’s 1,400 inhabitants to find those hearty enough to release into the wild. Officials expect to euthanize more than half the animals in the coming months in preparation for closure at the end of 2014.

“It’s the lesser of two evils, but it’s still evil,” Roy Averill-Murray, tortoise recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert, told the AP.

Averill-Murray estimated 50 to 60 percent of the facility’s 1,400 tortoises were stricken with disease and could not be housed near healthy tortoises. Others were “too feeble to survive,” according to the AP, and could not be adopted out.

“The ones that don’t get better and that are sick and suffering will probably be euthanized because that’s the sensible thing to do,” Allyson Walsh, associate director for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, said.

News that the tortoises were going to be set free or killed spurred people around the world to contact the refuge in attempts to adopt death row tortoises, and donations began flowing in hopes to keep the DTCC afloat, but the BLM estimated it wouldn’t be enough to sustain it overall.

“Although it’s wonderful that people want to give money, it won’t change the outcome for the Desert Conservation Center,” BLM Communications Chief Erica Haspiel-Szlosek stated. “There just isn’t money to keep it going, nor is it really the best use of conservation funds.”

The tortoises’ average 100-year life span also doesn’t exactly make them the most ideal pets.

Despite the imminent closing of the DTCC’s doors due to lack of funding, the BLM has gone on to round up about 234 of rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle at gunpoint claiming they’re helping protect the tortoise and also claiming he owes them over $1 million in grazing fees.

At the same time, seizing and impounding all 908 of Bundy’s cattle would cost the government an estimated $3 million, a figure that would keep the DTCC thriving for another three years.

Interestingly, the BLM is also facing a lawsuit from various environmental groups suing on the grounds that the bureau “has failed to track the effects of a wide range of human activities in the California desert on the tortoise.”

All of this illustrates how the BLM’s dispute with Mr. Bundy has nothing to do with saving or protecting tortoises (most of which were given to the facility by people who owned them as pets, and which the BLM is either killing or releasing into the wild – animals raised in captivity don’t usually fare well in the wild) as they claim, and everything to do with making an example out of Mr. Bundy for having the gall to stand up for his property, bullying him into submission by brute force.

Mohave County may join tortoise coalition

A wild desert tortoise photographed during the summer of 2009 east of the Hualapai Mountains. (JC AMBERLYN/Miner)

Kim Steele
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - The Mohave County Board of Supervisors has been asked to consider joining forces with other counties to push for the removal of the desert tortoise from the endangered species list.

The Board recently received a letter from Steve Sisolak, a member of the Clark County Board of County Commissioners, which includes Las Vegas, seeking to gauge interest among the 12 counties affected by the desert tortoise's protected status. Those counties include three in Nevada, one in Utah, one in Arizona and seven in California.

The Board will consider Sisolak's request during a meeting at 9:30 a.m. today in the Mohave County Administration Building, 700 W. Beale St.

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service couldn't be reached for comment.

"It's been more than 20 years since the desert tortoise was listed as endangered and as far as I know, the federal government hasn't saved any," said Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson, District 3. "They keep placing restrictions on us, but they won't share any of their information. I'm all for saving the desert tortoise, but they've got to tell us something. Right now, we've got nothing that shows anything they're doing is helping them."

In his letter, Sisolak noted that Clark County has been a dedicated partner in the protection, conservation and recovery of the desert tortoise since it was added to a list of endangered species on an emergency basis in 1989 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sisolak said Clark County has done its part to minimize and mitigate impacts from urban development on the tortoise, spending about $16 million since 2001.

"Clark County has watched patiently as the federal government has spent more than $100 million on tortoise recovery efforts but is unable to report what progress, if any, has been made towards the recovery and delisting of the desert tortoise," wrote Sisolak. "If the FWS and federal land management agencies had properly invested the $100 million available and implemented effective recovery actions since 1989, the tortoise would presumably be on the cusp of recovery."

Sisolak added the FWS suggests that in order to recover the tortoise, it has to measure stable or increasing populations for a generation of tortoises, which is about 25 years. Instead, Sisolak wrote, the FWS released a revised recovery plan in 2011 that suggests it will take another $159 million and another 25 years to recover and delist the tortoise.

With virtually no progress to report in the first 25 years, questioned Sisolak, why would anyone have confidence that after another quarter of a century and $159 million, the results would be any different? Sisolak said the FWS estimates there are 295,000 tortoises across the 26,000 mile area of the 12 counties, and based on that number, it would seem reasonable that FWS declare the desert tortoise recovered and remove it from the list of federally threatened and endangered species.

Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to make adjustments to accommodate the desert tortoise, although he wasn't sure of the financial impact of those changes over the years. Mohave County Administrator Michael Hendrix also couldn't put a price tag on how much the county has spent. Johnson said the cost for Mohave County has been much less than that of the counties in Utah, Nevada and California, which have more tortoises.

Johnson also is chairman of the Quadstate Local Government Authority, which is composed of counties from Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. It provides a multi-county voice on federal natural resource management and public land issues primarily in the Mojave Desert region, including the desert tortoise.

Mohave County restrictions have included placing special fencing around various areas to keep the tortoises away. Also, cattle in the north end of the county were moved to keep them from stepping on the tortoises. That caused other problems, said Johnson, because the cattle ate invasive grasses there, and after their removal, those grasses overran the species eaten by the tortoises.

Also, the county is banned from doing road grading during tortoise mating and breeding season because it may endanger them. And Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to hire turtle herders from time to time to keep them off the roads.

County gives up Mojave Preserve roads

San Bernardino County no longer will handle their upkeep, which will now be the domain of the National Parks Service

The National Park Service will take over a dozen San Bernardino County roads in the Mojave National Preserve.

BY IMRAN GHORI
Press-Enterprise

San Bernardino County turned over about a dozen roads in the Mojave Preserve to the National Parks [sic] Service this week, fulfilling one of the requirements in a legal settlement it agreed to last year.

The county sued the federal government in 2006 over its rights to the roads because county crews had been maintaining them for decades before the preserve was created as part of the 1994 Desert Protection Act.

In the settlement last year with the Department of Interior and three conservation groups, the county agreed to give up its claims to the roads. In turn, the federal government agreed to maintain them and keep them open.

The Board of Supervisors formally approved the agreement at its Tuesday, Sept. 10, meeting.
Environmental groups had backed the settlement, saying it would keep the roads open while also protecting desert tortoises, bighorn sheep and other sensitive species along the routes in the eastern Mojave Desert.

County officials were concerned about the federal agency maintaining the roads, some of which cross private lands, and on which many residents rely.

Don Holland, special assistant to Supervisor Robert Lovingood, whose 1st District includes the preserve, said a separate agreement with the federal agency fully protects county residents. The road must be kept to a “commercially viable” standard, he said.

Lovingood was out of town this week but Board Chairwoman Janice Rutherford read a statement from him at Tuesday’s meeting saying that his office plans to work with the county Public Works Department in monitoring the terms of the agreement.

“It is important to ensure that the identified roads that will be transferred to the National Park Service remain open and accessible to all residents and visitors,” Lovingood said in the statement.

Enviro Group Claims Ivanpah Solar Power comes at Nature’s Expense

CBSLA.com

MOJAVE DESERT — A national parks advocacy group claims that a massive solar power plant being constructed in the Mojave Desert, southwest of Las Vegas, is generating clean renewable energy at the expense of nature.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which will cost $2.2 billion and has taken three years to build, was developed by Oakland-based BrightSource Energy. Its largest investor is New Jersey-based NRG Energy.

Randall Hickok, the senior vice president of NRG Solar—a subsidiary of NRG Energy—said the facility contains three 450-foot towers surrounded by 170,000 heliostat mirrors.

“You are using the sun’s heat, reflected by mirrors, to shine on that boiler, and generate steam. From there on out, it’s just like a regular power plant. Steam turns turbine, turbine turns the generator, you’ve got electricity,” he said.

Hickok said the solar project was constructed in the desert because the area was deemed to be degraded environmentally.

“Environmentally, it is less prone to have wildlife than other locations. It’s located near some high voltage transmission lines. And it’s reasonably close to the freeway, so getting equipment in and out was easier,” he said.

When Ivanpah is fully online by the end of 2013, the plant will be able to generate power for 140,000 households servicing Los Angeles, Las Vegas and, in some cases, Northern California.

The energy is so clean, it’s the equivalent of taking 70,000 cars off the road.

“There are no discharges to the lands. It’s sunshine making steam, and the plant is water-cooled, but it’s a closed system. It’s like a giant radiator in your car,” said Hickok.

While Hickok touts Ivanpah as environmentally friendly, construction on the project was halted in 2011 because 127 desert tortoises needed to be relocated.

“We are supportive, in concept, of the Ivanpah project. We were not supportive of the location. Primarily because of the impacts on national parks, the Mojave National Preserve, which surrounds us right now. And also because of the impacts to the federally-threatened desert tortoise,” said David Lamfrom of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Hickok, however, said they had up to 85 biologists working full-time during the construction period to find the tortoises and get them out of harm’s way.

Lamfrom said there are better places to build a solar plant.

“There are literally millions of acres of disturbed land. There are brownfields, there are mine sites, there are profound opportunities,” he said.

“It takes the desert a tremendously long time to heal. That is one of the reasons we have to make really careful decisions about where we put these projects. Because if you develop a piece of land in the desert, it may not revegetate properly…it may not return to full health for hundreds of years or longer,” added Lamfrom.

To date, 25 solar power projects have been approved by the Obama administration nationwide.

As for the Ivanpah Valley, three other plants are planned. One has gotten approval; two others are waiting for confirmation.

$20 million tortoise habitat deal in the works

An aerial view of the construction of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which is scheduled to be completed in 2013. The project’s three solar fields — sited on 3,600 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management territory — will be able to generate about 392 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes. (Jamey Stillings/New York Times)

BY DAVID DANELSKI
Press-Enterprise

State fish and game officials and the BrightSource Energy Co. are considering a $20 million land deal that would allow the Oakland-based solar energy developer to make up for desert tortoise habitat losses from its solar plant now under construction in northeast San Bernardino County, state officials said.

BrightSource would pay into a state habitat land-bank fund and the company would get credit for preserving about 7,100 acres of desert tortoise habitat that the state has preserved since 2010 by funding grants to conservation land trusts, said Armand Gonzales, a special advisor for the California Department of Fish and Game.

Roughly half of the $20 million would cover the state’s land grant and administrative costs, Gonzales said. The other half would be used to create an endowment to pay for managing and monitoring land as wildlife habitat.

These habitat parcels are scattered about in the western Mojave Desert, with some parcels more than 100 miles from the company’s “power tower” solar energy plant now under construction in the Ivanpah Valley off Interstate 15 near the Nevada border.

The habitat land includes a checkerboard of parcels northeast of Kramer Junction between U.S. 395 and Harper Lake; an area north of Joshua Tree National Park just east of Yucca Valley; and the Hidden Valley area between Barstow and the Mojave National Preserve.

The deal would allow BrightSource to meet its state obligation to preserve 7,164 acres of desert habitat that was required in October 2010 when the California Energy Commission approved its 5.6-square-mile project on public land.

The state has since rejected a proposal by the company to meet the requirement by acquiring mining interests in the Castle Mountains in the eastern Mojave, because the area was not robust tortoise habitat, said Eric Knight, manager of an environmental protection office for the energy commission.

BrightSource declined to comment on any of the specific aspects of the deal.

“We’ve placed $34 million into an escrow account and continue to work on finalizing an agreement,” said an email from company spokeswoman Kristen Hunter. “Until a formal agreement is reached, the negotiations remain confidential.”

BrightSource also is working separately with federal officials to help tortoises by fencing roads and enhancing habitat on federal land, said a Bureau of Land Management spokesman.

BrightSource initially had until April of this year to acquire tortoise habitat, but energy commission staff have twice extended the deadline, which is now set for January of next year, Knight said.

Desert tortoises are listed as threatened with extinction, and the habitat acquisitions were required to offset habitat loses from the project and to help species survive.

Before BrightSource broke ground in the Ivanpah Valley, surveys commissioned by the company found only 16 tortoises in the project area, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently issued a permit to move a maximum of 38 tortoises.

But the company had to temporarily stop construction last year after many more reptiles than expected were found in the path of heavy machinery. Federal officials had to reassess the situation and issue a new permit before work resumed.

So far 75 adult and about 50 juvenile tortoises have been captured at the site, and another 50 babies have hatched in captivity, said Larry LaPre, a wildlife biologist for the federal Bureau of Land Management.

David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said habitat lands in the proposed state deal need to be preserved, but he added that conservation is needed in the Ivanpah Valley, where more solar development, an airport and high speed train line are planned.

The Ivanpah reptiles are genetically unique and are needed to help the species survive, he said.

“We need to go into this with eyes wide open about the trades we are making, and (see) whether we are ultimately dooming the important, biologically diverse Ivanpah Valley,” Lamfrom said.

BrightSource's 392 million-megawatt project will consist of thousands of mirrors focused on three central towers where heat will be used to generate power. The first phase is expected to produce power by early next year.

President Barack Obama has hailed the project as a step toward reducing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels and cutting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. It is one of several alternative-energy projects in California approved by the administration under a “fast track” policy that expedited environmental review.

Water From A Stone?

Cadiz Valley. Southern California's newest source of water? (Photo by Chris Clarke)

Commentary by Chris Clarke
KCET

As Southern California's population grows and water is in ever shorter supply, one Orange County water district is looking to an odd source for more water: the middle of the Mojave Desert.

The Santa Margarita Water District, which provides water services to 150,000 residents and businesses in Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and adjacent unincorporated areas, is putting together a proposal to import up to 50,000 acre-feet of water into Coastal Southern California each year from the Cadiz Valley, a wind-swept desert valley between Twenty-Nine Palms and Needles. The district plans to release a draft Environmental Impact Review on the project for public comment in late July.

That EIR will almost certainly be scrutinized line-by-line by desert protection activists, some of whom are calling this "the project that would not die."

Santa Margarita's partners in the venture are Cadiz Inc, which owns about 34,000 acres in the Cadiz and Fenner valleys in San Bernardino County, and four other Southern California water companies: Three Valleys Municipal Water District, Golden State Water Company, Jurupa Community Services District and Suburban Water Systems.

Cadiz Inc.'s land lies atop a large aquifer -- an underground reservoir which Cadiz's consultants say may hold between 17 and 34 million acre-feet of water, most of it laid down during the Ice Age. In the project's first stage Cadiz would build 44 miles of pipeline from wells on its property along a railroad right of way to the Colorado River Aqueduct west of the town of Rice. From there the water would head to the Greater Los Angeles Area, and the appropriate amounts apportioned to participating water districts.

Cadiz's selling point for the project is that the water it pumps from the aquifer would otherwise be lost to evaporation. In the words of the company's website,

The Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project is designed to capture and conserve billions of gallons of renewable native groundwater flowing beneath our property in the Cadiz Valley that is currently lost to evaporation at nearby dry lakes. Through the active management of the aquifer system, the Project will create a new, sustainable water supply for Project participants without adversely impacting the aquifer system or the desert environment.

The second stage of the project will involve building a second pipeline to pump "surplus" Colorado River water to the Cadiz Valley, where it would be emptied into "recharge basins" and allowed to percolate into the aquifer, to be pumped out again in dry years. Cadiz states that this phase could provide evaporation-proofed storage of up to a million acre-feet of water, a tempting proposal for Southern California water managers.

If this all gives you a sense of déjà vu, there's a reason for that: this project is a near-copy of one pushed a decade ago by Cadiz in tandem with the Metropolitan Water District. That proposal basically contained the same elements: pumping of aquifer water and storage of the occasional Colorado surplus, and an assertion that the developers could sustainably remove 50,000 acre-feet of water from the aquifer.

Environmentalists shredded that old proposal. Independent hydrologists countered Cadiz's claims about the amount of water the aquifer could spare each year, with one saying:

the estimate of annual recharge used in the Draft EIR/EIS is an order of magnitude too high--it is probably only 5,000-6,000 ac-ft/yr... once development has proceeded for a period of several decades simply stopping the pumping of native groundwater, as implied in the Supplemental EIR/EIR, will not halt the adverse environmental impacts--in other words, the groundwater system once perturbed has sufficient persistence that adverse impacts will persist well beyond 100 years, even though the project is stopped after 50 year or earlier.
Other geologists alleged Cadiz had inflated the sustainable yield of water by a factor of 15.

Drawing down the aquifer would degrade habitat in a number of surrounding protected areas, others pointed out, including the aquifer's headwaters in the Mojave National Preserve, with significant impacts to bighorn sheep, desert tortoise, and animals dependent on the area's small springs. What's more, the older version of the project would have run its pipeline to the aqueduct not along the railroad, but directly through the Iron Mountains, a relatively pristine bit of desert habitat.

Water pollution was also a concern. Not only would pumping saltier water from the Colorado into the aquifer permanently alter the valley's groundwater quality, but the aquifer was found to contain significant amounts of hexavalent Chromium, the same toxic chemical responsible for the public health issues in Hinckley that launched Erin Brockovich's rise to prominence.

For a time in 2001, it looked to desert environmentalists as though the fix was in. Cadiz's controversial founder Keith Brackpool was cozy with California politicos ranging from Gray Davis and Schwarzenegger to Antonio Villaraigosa, a close friend of Brackpool's. Nonetheless, MWD backed out on the deal in 2002, perhaps due to that year's being the dryest year on record for the Colorado River. Why invest millions in a partnership to store surplus water if there is no surplus?

Aside from the alignment of the "conveyance pipeline," the only real difference between the old plan and Cadiz 2.0 would seem to be the claim that any water pumped from the aquifer would have been lost to surface evaporation. This, along with Cadiz's other environmental claims, will likely be scrutinized closely once the draft EIR is available later this summer.

The stakes are rather high. Aquifers can collapse if overdrawn, causing the land to subside and permanently reducing the aquifer's future capacity. A few years of excessive pumping could permanently damage thousands of square miles of the wild Mojave.

Unfettered vistas restored in remote valley

This is one of the massive pits left behind after years of gold mining at the Hart mining area. Those pits will remain amid other reclamation efforts. Several new uses for the land have been suggested.

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

As road graders moved earth for a huge solar power array in northeastern San Bernardino County, the reverse occurred in a remote, nameless desert valley about 30 miles way.

There, utility crews removed the 18 miles of power lines, leaving the lush stretch of the Mojave Desert more like it was in 1900, before gold was discovered in the hills.

Finishing the job in early January, the crew used a crane to hoist 5,000-pound bundles of wire onto a flatbed truck bound for a Las Vegas scrap yard. They also hauled away piles of creosote-soaked utility poles. The work is part of a reclamation effort by Castle Mountain Venture, which is cleaning up after a decade of open-pit mining.

Returning land to a wilder state bucks the trend in Southern California's deserts, where energy developers are in a rush to tap the vast spaces and ample sunshine and wind to help meet the nation's clean energy needs. If all the pending applications were approved, wind and solar projects would cover as much as 880 square miles of public land.

Yet the valley's fate is far from clear.

Conservationists and at least one legislator want it added to the Mojave National Preserve, which surrounds it. An energy developer wants to buy the former mining land to conserve as wildlife habitat -- compensating for habitat destruction elsewhere. And a wind energy company wants to build wind turbines there and erect new power poles along the same route where workers just finished taking the old ones down.

David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, has been monitoring the power line removal with great interest.

Earlier this month, after the poles were down, he drove the 140 miles from his home in Barstow to the no-name valley.

Pivoting full circle, he saw only grassland, Joshua trees, hills, mountain ranges and sky -- no buildings, fences, wires or pavement. Inspiring, he said.

"This is one of the few places left where you can see as far as 25 miles without seeing the hand of man," he said.

The 18 miles of electrical lines had paralleled a dirt road for 20 years, carrying power to the open-pit mine in the Castle Mountains near the Nevada border. Gold was discovered there in 1907.

The modern-day mine produced 1.34 million ounces of gold and about 400,000 ounces of silver in about 12 years, according to the mine manager. The digging stopped in 2001.

In addition to removing the utility poles and wires, Castle Mountain Venture also has shaped the spent ore into contours that mimic the landscape and re-established native plants. The huge open pits will remain.

Coveted Land

Lamfrom wants to see the whole area -- the 7,600 acres owned or claimed by Castle Mountain Venture and more than 21,000 acres of public land surrounding it -- added to the Mojave National Preserve.

Adding the land to the preserve is one of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's legislative goals. A bill introduced last year by the California Democrat to create two desert monuments included provisions to add the Castle Mountains area to the preserve. She said she plans to reintroduce the proposals this year.

When Congress created the preserve in 1994, the area was excluded because of active mining operations.

A boost to preservation efforts could come from Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Co., which is building a 5.6-square-mile solar energy project in the Ivanpah Valley off Interstate 15 near Primm, Nev. Construction is under way for the first array of mirrors that will focus sunlight on a tower, where steam will generate electricity.

The energy company wants to buy 7,600 acres from Castle Mountain Venture to make up for desert tortoise habitat lost to the Ivanpah development. The first phase of the BrightSource project already has displaced 23 tortoises, a species threatened with extinction.

Such a deal would prohibit future mining, making the land an even stronger candidate for inclusion in the national preserve.

BrightSource's land-acquisition proposal is under review by the state energy commission, the BLM, California Department of Fish and Game, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Unanswered Questions

Complicating efforts to restore the valley to a wilder state are the pending wind development application and questions about whether tortoises actually would live in the area, as BrightSource envisions.

Oak Creek Energy Co., which has wind farms in the Tehachapi area, filed an application with the U.S. Bureau Land Management to develop wind turbines on thousands of acres of public land near the mine.

Ed Duggan, the company's executive vice president, said wind energy can be developed there in conjunction with conservation efforts. The company would mostly use existing roads and other disturbed areas, he said.

If the various agencies approve BrightSource's plan to buy the former mining land, it might not benefit tortoises much, according to some observers.

"It's pretty poor habitat," said Mike Conner, California director of the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group that has followed efforts to bring large energy developments to the desert.

A wildlife survey of the mining area done last March found tortoise burrows but no live animals, and Juan Hernandez, a biologist retained by the mining partnership.

Replacement habitat should be of equal or better quality than the habitat destroyed, and the proposed replacement land just isn't as good for tortoises, Conner said.

U.S. Geological Survey scientist Kristin Berry, who has studied the animals since the 1970s, said tortoises are found only occasionally at elevations above 4,000 feet. The land BrightSource wants to buy ranges from 4,100 to 5,200 feet.

Hernandez said about 3,200 acres of the land under consideration has plants that tortoises eat, including desert dandelion, lotus and notched phacelia.

Mick Lynch, the mine manager, said tortoises were fenced out of the mining area about 20 years ago, but those fences have since been removed so the animals can return.

In addition, tortoises are expected to migrate to higher elevations as the globe warms, according to the land-buy proposal BrightSource submitted to the California Energy Commission and other agencies.

Bighorns At Play

Lamfrom and Hernandez said protecting the land around the mine would have conservation benefits beyond providing habitat for tortoises.

The area includes a rare ecosystem of native bunch grasses and a forest of full-sized Joshua trees.

Adding the area to the preserve could allow for reintroduction of antelope-like pronghorn, which are second only to the cheetah in running speed. The grazers are believed to have been hunted out by gold miners in the early 20th century.

The area also is a route for bighorn sheep making their way between the Piute and New York mountain ranges. Lynch said he often has seen bighorns running up and down the steep slopes of mine pits. "They are like kids at a playground," he said.

Lamfrom is hopeful that the deal will win approval and the land can become part of the Mojave National Preserve. "This could be the finest example of high desert grasslands in California," he said.