Mojave National Preserve releases plan to remove most man-made wildlife water

Most small game guzzlers like this one would be removed or neglected into a non-functioning condition under the new NPS policy.

By JIM MATTHEWS
www.OutdoorNewsService.com

This has happened before.

The Mojave National Preserve released its Management Plan for Developed Water Sources on Tuesday this past week along with the environmental assessment of the plan’s impacts, effectively laying the groundwork for the abandonment or removal of well over 100 historic man-made water sources and developed springs used by wildlife.

Wildlife enthusiasts have been down this road before on the Preserve, when its second superintendent, Mary Martin, directed the removal and destruction of historic cattle water sources that had served wildlife for over 75 years. This was a direct violation of the Preserve’s own management plan that called for the evaluation of the impacts that water removal would have before they were removed. That evaluation never happened, but over 100 water sources that benefitted wildlife were removed that time around.

Now, this week’s document lists four alternatives for action within the plan, but all four would lead to the loss of all but two or three of the developed water sources within designated wilderness areas. It would also lead to the loss of dozens of water sources outside of wilderness.

The impacts on wildlife this would cause within the Preserve are dismissed and not addressed in any detail in the plan, calling the impacts “localized and small,” without any supporting documentation.

The public has a 30-day window (until April 19) to comment on the plan. More information and copies of the plan are available on the Preserve website at this direct address: http://parkplanning.nps.gov/moja_waterplan_ea.

Behind the scenes, the Department of Fish and Wildlife field staff is seething over the NPS’ plan. These are the scientists who are watching decades of their water development work and resulting successes wildlife protection and mitigation for natural water source losses across the desert.

The official DFW statement from Jordan Traverso, Sacramento-based information chief, hinted at the outrage, but was restrained.

“Natural and reliable surface water sources are not always available in the current desert environment,” she said Saturday. “The Department has worked with many partners over the years, including the NPS, to establish and document the importance of reliable water sources for wildlife. Across the California desert and since the early 1950s, wildlife water developments have provided this basic necessity to support and stabilize desert wildlife populations.

“While wilderness protection would guide land managers toward keeping a natural and undeveloped landscape, the wildlife that live in these landscapes deal with the reality of the anthropogenic changes imposed upon them. Though they offer protection, large and wild spaces alone do not necessarily ensure that a viable wildlife population can be maintained in perpetuity given some of those changes on the landscape.

“As wildlife managers, we look forward to collaborating with land managing agencies to ensure that wildlife and the habitat needs they require are secured when making changes to available resources within the landscape.”

Hunting conservation groups feel betrayed. Their decades-long conservation efforts to restore and update these man-made guzzlers, spring developments, and the conversion of cattle water to wildlife water on the Preserve are set to be abandoned or destroyed.

In a nutshell, the plan is an assault on all wildlife within the preserve and spells out the agency’s vision of “wilderness.” That vision comes at the expense of all desert wildlife and virtually all the other mandates called for in the Preserve’s management plan. Those who have battled through the 233 pages of “bias and hypocrisy” have pointed out major flaws common to all alternatives.

Cliff McDonald, the president of Water for Wildlife, a conservation group that has repaired over 160 guzzlers in the past several years, including many on the Preserve before the work was halted there, was outraged by the lack of common sense in the NPS proposal.

McDonald pointed out that the 68 big and small game guzzlers within wilderness occupy less than 3/4s of an acre total ground space of the 804,000 acres of wilderness within the Preserve, but the Preserve staff believes that 3/4 acre impacts “wilderness character” to the detriment of the designation.

“The impact is on one one-millionth of the Preserve’s wilderness. One millionth! How is that impact of the wildness an issue?” asked McDonald. “Don’t the benefits of this water for desert wildlife outweigh the impacts?”

Ironically, even the current Preserve superintendent Todd Suess has admitted to DFW staff that the Wilderness Act doesn’t mandate the removal or abandonment of these historic structures to comply with the wilderness designation. In fact, on nearby Bureau of Land Management Lands, also designated wilderness, maintenance and even construction of new guzzlers has been allowed because of the value to wildlife.

According to opponents of the water plan, the hypocrisy comes in when you realize the plan’s alternatives continue to allow at least two big game drinkers within the preserve’s wilderness because of their documented importance to bighorn sheep, but somehow decided the other wildlife drinkers have no importance.

Yet, the National Park Service has done no assessment to evaluate the impact the removal of the other 66 man-made drinkers will have on all wildlife that currently use those water sources. It has been determined -- apparently by “fiat and lots of hypocrisy” -- that quasi-pristine wilderness is more important than wildlife. Ironically, most of the guzzlers would not be removed or their footprint restored, they would simply remain and allowed to decay until non-functional. So, theoretically, the negative impacts will still exist -- they just won’t serve an important wildlife function any longer. This is simply insane.

The NPS staff is also mandated to protect and maintain historic sites throughout the Preserve, and most of these guzzlers were made in the 50s, as part of a concerted effort by the state DFW to create and enhance water sources for wildlife, even then recognizing the important to mitigate for urban sprawl and loss of historic natural water sources. There has been no effort by Preserve staff to recognize the historic value of these guzzlers or to maintain them for their intended purpose.

The park service has even been obstructing the gathering of data that would show the importance of water for the Preserve’s wildlife. Eight years into a comprehensive deer study on the Preserve, the park service removed its support of the project when it was entering a phase when the importance of man-made water sources would be evaluated and tested by turning on and off some of these sources and measuring impacts. The reason support was removed: It wasn’t going to affect the park service’s decision on how to manage the water sources.

The document also says there are 311 natural springs on the Preserve. Somehow that number has increased in this period of drought from a list of 101 that were found to hold year-around water in the 2008 NPS survey of springs. Many of the 175 suspected springs checked during those surveys proved to be dry or seasonal water sources.

So, how has the number of springs increased?

Is that a fabrication that includes historic (now dry) springs, seasonal seeps, and tenejas? Who knows? Is the number included to make the Preserve seem awash in natural water?

It’s not. It’s a desert and barren of wildlife where there is not available water. Sadly, that includes most of the Preserve’s lands. Where there’s water, the Preserve is a wildlife oasis.

So what is this water removal plan really all about?

That is the mammoth in the creosote that no one is talking about:

Fundamentally, it is about the bias the NPS staff has against the Preserve’s number one visitor: Hunters. Hunters still make up the bulk of the visitation on the Preserve. Hunters are the only volunteers trying to maintain this desert wildlife water since that job was abandoned by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and never even attempted by the federal land management agencies, like the NPS.

Hunters (and cattle ranchers) are the only reason there is the diversity and quantity of wildlife there is on the Preserve. Over 350 species of birds and mammals have been documented on the man-made water. (So, no, it’s not only about the seven species of wildlife that may be hunted in the desert.) Preserving and adding water in desert is a good thing for all wildlife, and it is a means of mitigating for what has been lost through human activity elsewhere in the Mojave.

But it still sticks in the craw of the National Park Service staff that hunting was allowed on the vast property, and they are willing to sacrifice the Preserve’s wildlife to try to reduce or eliminate the number of hunters. They are willing to abandon 75 years of solid conservation efforts to bring the deer and desert sheep herds back. They are willing to dramatically reduce the numbers and diversity of birds and small mammals for their agenda.

There is no other explanation for this insanity. They all know the Wilderness Act doesn’t mandate actions this extreme. There is simply no other explanation.

Hopefully, enough people will get their federal representatives involved. Maybe then Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of Interior, will hear about this outrageous proposal and have it quietly withdrawn because it clearly violates Interior policy about cooperation with state game agency efforts and a recent policy to enhance recreational opportunities -- like hunting -- where appropriate.

The NPS staff got away with ripping out the cattle/wildlife water and seriously impacted the Preserves wildlife populations over a decade ago. That can’t happen again.

Trump administration hints at changes to California desert's smallest national monument

President Barack Obama used his executive authority under the Antiquities Act to protect this lush expanse of Joshua trees in the Castle Mountains. Obama designated the Castle Mountains National Monument in 2016. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke isn't recommending any changes to Sand to Snow or Mojave Trails, two national monuments in the California desert that were established by then-President Barack Obama last year.

But Zinke's review of 27 national monuments, which was released to the public on Tuesday, hints at the possibility of allowing hunting in Castle Mountains National Monument, a pocket of California desert tucked between Mojave National Preserve and the Nevada border, where jutting mountains that look like the ramparts of a castle loom over Joshua trees, bighorn sheep, abundant grasses and a gold-mining ghost town.

The desert's bighorn sheep are protected by the Endangered Species Act, so any hunting would be extremely limited. But the Castle Mountains area is also home to mule deer, bobcats, quail, cottontail rabbits and other species sought by hunters.

President Donald Trump ordered Zinke earlier this year to review all monuments larger than 100,000 acres that have been established by presidential decree since 1996. That appeared to exclude Castle Mountains, which was designated by Obama alongside Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails but encompasses just 21,000 acres. But Trump also told Zinke to review any monuments Zinke determined were established "without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders." Rep. Paul Cook, a Republican who represents the High Desert, wrote a letter to Zinke arguing that Castle Mountains was "created without any local outreach or input," and that Obama had created the monument for the sole purpose of preventing the reopening of a gold mine.

In a brief section of Zinke's report labeled "other monuments," the Interior secretary lists just one example of a monument he believes was established without adequate public outreach: Castle Mountains. Zinke said his review process "uncovered inadequate communication with the sportsmen community." According to his report, hunting is prohibited in Castle Mountains because Obama's monument proclamation didn't explicitly say it's allowed, even though hunting is permitted next door in the 1.6-million acre Mojave National Preserve. Both sites are managed by the National Park Service.

Zinke didn't explicitly call for changes to the management of Castle Mountains National Monument. But in the paragraph immediately after his mention of Castle Mountains, he recommended "ongoing review of monuments to ensure that while continuing to protect objects, the proclamations prioritize public access; infrastructure upgrades, repair, and maintenance; traditional use; tribal cultural use; and hunting and fishing rights."

An Interior Department spokesperson didn't respond to an emailed question about whether Zinke intends to recommended changes to Castle Mountains. A spokesperson for Cook, the GOP member of Congress, also didn't respond to a request for comment.

David Lamfrom, director of national wildlife programs for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, rejected the idea that there wasn't adequate public outreach before the Castle Mountains monument designation. Separate pieces of legislation proposed by Cook and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, would have added the area to Mojave National Preserve, but those bills were bogged down by the more contentious politics of the proposed Mojave Trails monument. Only after several failed legislative efforts did Obama use the Antiquities Act to make Castle Mountains a national monument, since it could only be added to the national preserve by Congress.

"There's been decades of work of vetting related to Castle Mountains," Lamfrom said.

Still, Lamfrom said he thinks it's "reasonable to have a conversation" about allowing hunting in Castle Mountains, especially considering it's allowed in Mojave National Preserve, which surrounds the monument on three sides. He said Congress could vote to allow hunting, or the National Park Service could initiate a rule-making process.

"That should be locally driven and include local management and local stakeholders. So I think that having that conversation is OK, in terms of that larger management, in terms of consistency of management over these larger landscapes," Lamfrom said. He added that enforcing a prohibition on hunting within the 21,000-acre monument may be difficult, considering it's surrounded by the much larger preserve, where hunting is allowed.

Zinke recommended shrinking six national monuments: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and California, Gold Butte in Nevada, and Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Trump got a head start on those recommendations on Monday, traveling to Salt Lake City to sign orders dramatically reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase-Escalante, both of which were hated by the state's all-Republican congressional delegation.

Zinke also advised changes to the way four other monuments are managed: Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean, and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico.

Collectively, the changes envisioned by Zinke could open more of America's public lands and waters to oil and gas drilling, mining, timber harvesting and commercial fishing.

Conservationists, outdoors enthusiasts and recreation companies have slammed Zinke's monuments review as a sham designed to allow private companies to exploit public resources. They've also argued Trump doesn't have the legal authority to make such sweeping changes to monuments designated by his predecessors under the Antiquities Act, although several presidents have reduced the size of such monuments.

More than a dozen environmental groups and Native American tribes have already filed lawsuits challenging Trump's proclamation shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. The outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which is based in Ventura, California, has also threatened to sue. The company protested Trump's actions Monday by briefly replacing its online homepage with the message, "The president stole your land."

Zinke responded to Patagonia's criticism on Tuesday, telling reporters that it's "shameful and appalling to blatantly lie in order to get money in their coffers." He said any land removed from a national monument would still be owned by the federal government.

"Not one square inch was stolen," Zinke said.

Lawmaker wants to shrink Castle Mountains monument to make more room for a gold mine

Castle Mountains National Monument surrounds the Castle Mountain gold mine which a Canadian company is looking to reopen. (Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Ian James
The Desert Sun

In May, when the Trump administration announced its list of national monuments that would fall under an unprecedented nationwide review, California’s Castle Mountains National Monument wasn’t among them.

But if Rep. Paul Cook has his way, President Donald Trump will reexamine this newly created monument in the Mojave Desert and carve out more space for a gold mine.

Castle Mountains was the smallest of three monuments that President Barack Obama established last year across the California desert. The 21,000-acre monument includes jagged peaks, Joshua trees and grasslands in the desert between Mojave National Preserve and the Nevada state line.

The monument also surrounds the Castle Mountain gold mine, which the Canadian company NewCastle Gold is looking to reopen more than a decade after it was shut down due to low gold prices.

The company has recently urged the Trump administration to reduce the size of the monument to free up more land around the mine – and Cook seconded that request in a June 8 letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

“Although this is the smallest of the four monuments in my district, it is also the most problematic,” Cook said in the letter. “This monument was created without any local outreach or input. It was designated for one purpose: to prevent the reopening of the Castle Mountain Mine.”

Obama’s decision to designate new monuments using his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act has drawn criticism from Cook and other Republicans. By the time he left office, Obama had created or expanded 34 monuments, more than any other president.

Trump launched the review of national monuments in April, accusing Obama of an "egregious abuse use of power."

In his executive order, Trump instructed Zinke to review any national monument of at least 100,000 acres created since 1996. The order included a loophole allowing for smaller monuments in cases where Zinke determines that a designation “was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders.”

But when the Trump administration came out with its list of 27 land and marine monuments that would be reexamined, Castle Mountains appeared to be off the hook. The only monument on the list below the 100,000-acre threshold was Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine.

Zinke is due to announce his recommendations by Aug. 24 for six national monuments in California, including Mojave Trails, Giant Sequoia, Carrizo Plain, San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain. He announced this week that the administration won’t shrink or eliminate Sand to Snow National Monument.

It’s not clear whether or how Zinke might take up Cook’s suggestion to include Castle Mountains in the review.

In his letter, Cook pointed out that when Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994 under legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Castle Mountains area was excluded to allow mining to continue.

He said there were later proposals in Congress to add parts of the area that weren’t needed for mining to the Mojave National Preserve, but never to establish Castle Mountains as its own monument. Cook said the first time the proposal was announced came just months before Obama designated the monument.

Cook said “there was no real public outreach or coordination” in that process. A single public meeting was held on the proposal in October 2015, he said, and it occurred outside San Bernardino County, more than 200 miles away from the Castle Mountains.

Cook told Zinke that even though the national monument is smaller than 100,000 acres, it’s “worthy of the utmost scrutiny by your department.”

Cook’s suggestions came to light this month after The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit conservation group, obtained his letter through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

With his letter, Cook included a map showing his proposed changes to the monument, which would open up more areas around the mine. He also included letters to Zinke from NewCastle Gold and San Bernardino County.

Robert Lovingood, chair of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said in his letter to Zinke that if he decides to review Castle Mountains, the county wants to see the government address “issues of access through the monument to the mine and access to water needed to service the mine” and accommodate future expansion.

Kerry Shapiro, a lawyer representing NewCastle Gold, requested in a June 1 letter to Zinke that the national monument be reduced by roughly 50 percent and that the government amend a proclamation to allow the company “the flexibility it needs to explore for and develop new mining claims, water resources” and other facilities.

The company said in the letter that Castle Mountains is much larger than it needs to be to protect wildlife, habitats and natural springs, and that the national monument “could be cut in half and still protect those resources most deserving of long-term conservation.”

If the monument remains unchanged, the company said that would “constrain or end” the mining project.

The company's concerns contrast with the stance it took publicly when the monument was created in February 2016. At the time, NewCastle Gold said in a press release that the company was pleased its claim and private lands weren’t affected, that some adjacent federal lands weren’t included and that Obama’s proclamation said its existing rights would be maintained.

David Adamson, who was then NewCastle’s CEO, said in the statement that the federal land not included in the monument “extends well beyond our resource limits and claim boundaries and includes ample land for potential project development.”

Adamson also said NewCastle appreciated “that it has been consulted throughout this process and that the new land designation reflects a compromise position that meets our needs as well as respecting the interests of other stakeholders and the public in the area.”

Adamson left the company last year. The current president and CEO is Gerald Panneton, who has said that the company is looking to get the mine operating again soon and that he sees great potential for the operation to get bigger.

NewCastle said in a statement this month that it drilled a second well as part of a study to identify additional water sources. The company said the well was drilled to a depth of nearly 1,600 feet and reached the water table 570 feet underground. NewCastle said it also has three other wells at the site.

In addition to suggesting that Trump shrink Castle Mountains, Cook has also called for redrawing the boundaries of Mojave Trails National Monument to remove a vast southern portion that connects the monument to Joshua Tree National Park.

Conservation groups criticized Cook’s efforts to eliminate parts of the monuments.

Danielle Segura, executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust, said the proposed changes to Castle Mountains and Mojave Trails are “a direct affront to the will of our community.” She said in a statement that Cook’s recommendations “are not in the best interest of the diverse desert communities who have fought for, and benefit from, these public lands.”

David Lamfrom, director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s California desert program, said he was taken aback by Cook’s requests.

“To ask for Castle Mountains to be put under review is really surprising because an agreement was hammered out,” Lamfrom said. “The public has weighed in and said they want these places to be protected.”

Segura and Lamfrom wrote to Zinke last month arguing there’s no need to put Castle Mountains under review. They said the national monument doesn’t inhibit current or future mining, and doesn’t put jobs or government revenues in jeopardy.

Segura and Lamfrom signed the letter together with representatives of two other groups – the California Wilderness Coalition and the Center for Biological Diversity. They said the monument’s creation wasn’t a last-minute deal but rather a “diligent effort spanning several years” and involving the company.

“Throughout this process, especially leading up to the monument designation, NewCastle Gold was engaged, consulted and apprised,” they said in the letter.

Obama established the national monuments in the California desert after separate monument bills introduced by Feinstein and Cook failed in Congress.

Lamfrom said he knows Cook is someone who cares about public lands, but “that letter really seems to be taking actions that side with furthering the interests of industrial projects and threats to the California desert.”

Cook was unavailable for an interview and responded to questions from The Desert Sun by email. He said NewCastle Gold has made clear its opposition to the monument’s current boundaries.

“The primary concern of the mine operators is that the Castle Mountains National Monument eliminates the buffer zone that was purposely created between the project area and the Mojave National Preserve in Sen. Feinstein’s 1994 Desert Protection Act,” Cook said. “Any inability to access the buffer zone for ancillary facilities and future operational expansion would render the project unviable.”

Cook said when the mine is fully operating, it’s expected to generate more than 200 jobs and over $7 million in revenue for the county and state – which the county sorely needs to pay for the work of restoring lands that have been mined across the desert.

His complaints about the monument go beyond his concerns about the mine needing more space.

When the monument was created, land that previously fell under the Bureau of Land Management’s jurisdiction was handed over to the National Park Service to manage.

The new national monument immediately banned hunting, Cook said in his letter, despite the fact that hunting – for animals such as bobcats and mule deer – is allowed nearby in the Mojave National Preserve and had been permitted in the Castle Mountain area before the monument was created.

He asked Zinke to assign the monument’s lands back to the Bureau of Land Management and to allow hunting again.

Cook opposed Obama’s designation of the monument from the beginning. He said the monument never appeared in any legislation and “directly violates the legislative intent” of the 1994 law, which established the zone around the mine.

“We can discuss whether portions of the buffer zone should be incorporated into the Mojave National Preserve, but that discussion must be facilitated through legislation and public outreach, not behind closed doors, such as it did during the Obama administration,” Cook said.

Cook said he’s convinced that Castle Mountains, even though it’s smaller than the 100,000-acre threshold, fits with Trump’s order to reevaluate monuments that were created “without adequate public outreach and coordination” with stakeholders.

“It clearly qualifies for review,” Cook said.

Zinke and Trump could say any day now whether they agree with him.

BLM stops efforts to restore desert water sources

Jim Matthews

By Jim Matthews
Hesperia Star
www.OutdoorNewsService.com

Water for Wildlife, a desert conservation organization that restores water sources in the Mojave Desert for wildlife, has been stopped from doing its work for the second time two years. This past week, the Needles office of the Bureau of Land Management refused to allow the group to conduct its March and April projects on guzzlers in the Clark and Kingston mountains region northeast of Baker.

The group was also stopped from restoring guzzlers on the Mojave National Preserve late in 2015, pending a determination from the National Park Service that work could continue. There has been no determination, yet, from the NPS and no word on the progress of the analysis.

The most recent stoppage of this work came Wednesday this past week in a letter from Daniel Vaught, assistant field manager in Needles for the BLM. Vaught wrote that "our archaeologist has recently expressed concerns regarding the cultural and historical resources and impacts involved in the small-game guzzler restoration."

Cliff McDonald, Water for Wildlife coordinator, said he asked for the letter after a meeting recently when he was told the group's work would need to cease until these concerns could be addressed.

In this meeting, McDonald said he asked why these concerns weren't made last year or the year before. The group has been restoring wildlife water sources for 11 years in the region. McDonald said Vaught had no answers, except to say that the current archaeologist, Chris Dalu, has been on the job for five years in Needles and was suddenly now concerned.

McDonald cancelled the March 16-19 project, and the April 6-9 project was tentatively cancelled, pending a another meeting with BLM this coming week.

McDonald said the BLM has not identified any "cultural and historical resources" on any of the sites where they have worked in the past, and that their efforts have all been done on locations that were developed in the 1950 and 60s in joint efforts between the BLM and Department of Fish and Wildlife. These "administrative sites" were disturbed historically, and the restoration efforts do not enlarge the footprint of the site. McDonald doesn't know why they are doing this now.

Safari Club International, already in the midst of a battle with the National Park Service over its refusal to allow guzzler and windmill restorations to continue on the Mojave National Preserve, immediately jumped in to assist in "this important work for wildlife."

In a letter to all members in the Orange County Chapter, Jim Dahl asked its member to write or call Vaught to remind him that for 11 years "Water for Wildlife has restored water drinkers... (and) have made significant investments and have a long history of restoring guzzlers."

Craig Stowers, the deer program coordinator with the state DFW, wrote to McDonald in an unofficial capacity to say, "it's not OK with DFW that this is going on. We have a significant investment there, too, and (have) a long history of working in this field.... It is a disturbing direction for them to go, and I'm at a loss to explain why this is suddenly an issue for them now."

Clark Blanchard, an assistant deputy director with the DFW in Sacramento, said the issue just popped up on the radar, but said — in an official capacity — that "the department is aware of the issue and is diligently working to find solutions in order to allow this work to continue."

Neither the BLM's Vaught nor Dalu were available for comment Friday.

Those are the facts as we know them now.

What we have is two federal land management agencies, adjacent to each other, fighting to stop volunteer wildlife water restoration efforts.

It is ironic for the Needles office of BLM to jump in bed with the National Park Service on this issue. After years of battling with the state DFW, the BLM has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the DFW to even allow guzzler restoration in BLM wilderness areas, including the building of new water sources. Restoring existing sites is not even an issue any longer. Or it wasn't. But now we have some low-level bureaucrat suggesting restoring existing desert water sites is going to harm archeological resources? And he's saying this without a shred of data to support his claim.

The National Park's argument for stopping guzzler restoration was equally as specious and completely lacking in data (or even common sense):

In a nutshell, Todd Suess, the new superintendent of the Preserve, listed two reasons why guzzler water restoration was stopped. First, he wrote that guzzlers might be historical sites and we can't restore them until we determine if they are historical sites and then we can decide if they need to be restored or not. (It was that convoluted.) The caveat was that they didn't have anyone who could tell if they were historical sites or not, so we can't do anything. Second, he wrote that all guzzler water restoration had to stop until the Preserve-wide water management plan could be completed and implemented. That is like saying, you can't replace a sign or repair a campground restroom until the Preserve's entire facilities development plan is done. And of course, the water management plan is at least three or four years away from completion.

The "reasons" are both smokescreens to stop work that had been ongoing for nine years in the Preserve and 11 years on BLM land. Where was the concern before the work stoppage? Why are these specious administrative arguments, using obscure rules and regulations, being used now to stop important wildlife field work?

That's the question that needs to be asked.

Here's the answer: It's about hunting. I'm not the first person to point out that it all started when Todd Suess was named the new superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve. I'm sure Suess is a good guy, but it's pretty clear that he doesn't particularly like hunting and hunters. Maybe he's even neutral on hunting. But his friends and staff who don't like hunters know this guzzler and water restoration work is primarily being done by hunter conservationists. And they have his ear. If it's not him, then it's his staff and associates who are persuading this man to issue bad rules based on bad information that is anti-hunting, pure and simple. The decision are certainly not pro-wildlife, sound administration, or correct use of the regulations. It can only be a bias against hunting.

Rule easing public lands transfer concerns hunters, others

FILE - In this July 23, 2003 file photo, a pronghorn antelope doe keeps watch as two fawns peer out from tall grass in the heart of southeastern Oregon's Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge near Adel, Ore. A change in U.S. House rules making it easier to transfer millions of acres of federal public lands to states is worrying hunters and outdoor enthusiasts who fear losing access. Lawmakers earlier this month passed a rule eliminating a significant budget hurdle and written so broadly it includes national parks. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

KEITH RIDLER
Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A change in U.S. House rules making it easier to transfer millions of acres of federal public lands to states is worrying hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts across the West who fear losing access.

Lawmakers earlier this month passed a rule eliminating a significant budget hurdle and written so broadly that it includes national parks.

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Interior secretary, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, voted for the rule change as did many other Republicans. The Senate would have to weigh in on public land transfers as well.

"Anybody who uses them for any kind of outdoor activity â snowmobiling, mountain biking, hunters, all that â they're very alarmed by all this," said Boise State University professor and public lands policy expert John Freemuth. "The loss of access that this could lead to."

The rule passed by the House defines federal land that could be given to states as "any land owned by the United States, including the surface estate, the subsurface estate, or any improvements thereon."

About a million square miles of public land is managed by the federal government, mostly in 12 Western states, according to the Congressional Research Service. Some state lawmakers in recent years have made failed efforts to wrest control of those lands, mainly to reduce obstacles to accessing resources such as timber, natural gas and oil, Freemuth noted.

U.S. lawmakers have the authority to transfer those lands to states. Outdoor recreationists fear states would then sell the land to private entities that would end public access.

Zinke, whose confirmation hearing to become Interior secretary is Tuesday, has a track record of opposing public land transfers. Last summer, he resigned as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, which favors such transfers.

"The congressman has never voted to sell or transfer federal lands and he maintains his position against the sale or transfer of federal lands," Heather Swift, a Zinke spokeswoman, said in an email.

Whit Fosburgh, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which works to guarantee places to hunt and fish, said he's inclined to excuse Zinke on his House vote favoring transfers because of his record being "very solid on these public lands issues."

Still, Fosburgh was irked that the House approved a rule that he said essentially allows federal public land to be given away as if it had no value.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, also voted for the rule easing transfers. But Simpson was also the driver of a 2015 bill that created three wilderness areas in Idaho after he got ranchers, recreationists and environmental groups to back the plan after a 15-year effort.

The possibility that President Barack Obama would designate a much larger area as a national monument is widely believed to have led to the bill passed by the House and Senate.

"There is no disputing Congressman Simpson is a supporter of public lands," Nikki Wallace, a spokeswoman for Simpson, said in an email.

Freemuth noted that even with a rule change, land transfers would face significant challenges.

"Whatever Zinke says early will affect those attempts," Freemuth said.

He and Fosburgh fear that federal land turned over to states would be too expensive to manage, particularly when it comes to fighting wildfires.

Freemuth believes states would sell land to private entities. Fosburgh was equally dismissive, saying transfers would eventually lead to private owners and no public access.

"You get rid of public lands, you end hunting and fishing in this country as we know it today," Fosburgh said.

The Larger, but Quieter Than Bundy, Push to Take Over Federal Land

Duane Ehmer riding his horse, Hellboy, last week at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., where an armed group of antigovernment activists had seized control. (Rob Kerr/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images)

By JACK HEALY and KIRK JOHNSON
New York Times

DENVER — Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, has been roaming the West with an alluring pitch to cattle ranchers, farmers and conservatives upset with how Washington controls the wide-open public spaces out here: This land is your land, he says, and not the federal government’s.

Mr. Ivory, a bespectacled business lawyer from suburban Salt Lake City, does not fit the profile of a sun-scoured sagebrush rebel. But he is part of a growing Republican-led movement pushing the federal government to hand over to the states millions of acres of Western public lands — as well as their rich stores of coal, timber and grazing grass.

“It’s like having your hands on the lever of a modern-day Louisiana Purchase,” said Mr. Ivory, who founded the American Lands Council and until recently was its president. The Utah-based group is funded mostly by donations from county governments, but has received support from Americans for Prosperity, the group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.

The idea, which would radically reshape the West, is one that resonates with the armed group of ranchers and anti-government activists who seized control of a wildlife refuge in Oregon more than a week ago. Ammon Bundy, the crew’s leader and the scion of a Nevada ranching family steeped in disputes with the federal government, said he and his sympathizers had gone to Oregon to give the refuge back to local ranchers.

Many conservatives — Mr. Ivory among them — criticized Mr. Bundy’s gun-toting tactics, but their grievances and goals are nearly identical. And the outcry has grown amid a dust storm of rural anger at President Obama’s efforts to tighten regulations on fracking, greenhouse gases, smaller streams and other environmental issues that put struggling Western counties at odds with conservation advocates.

In the past few years, lawmakers across the West have offered up dozens of bills and resolutions seeking to take over the federal lands inside their borders or to study how to do so. Some of the legislation has been aimed at Congress, to urge it to radically revise the laws that have shaped 550,000 square miles of national forests and terrain run by the federal Bureau of Land Management, stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific.

The effort — derided by critics as a pipe dream that would put priceless landscapes on the auction block — has achieved little so far.

Utah is the only state to pass a law demanding that Washington hand over federal land to the state. That transfer never happened, so now, Republicans on a state land commission are pressing for a $14 million lawsuit to claim 31.2 million federal acres of canyons, scrub desert and rolling mesas. The state’s attorney general, a Republican, has said he is studying the case and will make a decision about whether to move forward.

Colorado’s experience illustrates how the land-transfer discussion far exceeds any concrete results. Last year, a Republican state senator from the agricultural eastern plains sponsored a bill to create a Colorado Federal Land Management Commission, to study turning over federal lands to the state. The measure never made it out of the Republican-controlled state Senate.

In Congress, Republicans have supported moves to set up a land-transfer fund and create a “framework” to hand federal acres to the states.

Last week, Representative Greg Walden, the Republican who represents the Oregon district where the Bundy takeover is playing out, stood up in Congress to deplore the tactics of the armed protesters, but sympathized with their frustration.

“More than half of my district is under federal management, or lack thereof,” Mr. Walden said, expressing anger at the Bureau of Land Management. “They have come out with these proposals to close roads into the forests. They have ignored public input.”

In July 2014, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas proposed preventing the federal government from owning more than half of any state’s land. (Five states are more than half federal land, according to a Congressional Research Service report.) And Representative Cresent Hardy, Republican of Nevada, whose district includes a ranch run by Mr. Bundy’s father, introduced a measure that would block the government from buying any new land unless it could pass a balanced budget.

But land experts say the movement offers few details about what would happen the day after the federal government handed over all its land. How would states afford hundreds of rangers, officers and administrators to keep the land safe and comply with complicated federal laws on environmental policy and protecting endangered species? Would the land stay public, or be sold off to the highest bidder?

“They conveniently avoid all the difficult questions,” said Martin Nie, the director for the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana.

In its mission statement, the American Lands Council says its strategy for securing local control of public land in the West involves four tenets: education, negotiation, legislation and litigation.

In practice, local land disputes — fueled by deepening antagonism toward federal land agencies — now unfold like social-media passion plays. Last summer, groups intervened at the request of mine owners to provide security at mines in Oregon and Montana amid complaints about federal land managers. And in December, Phil Lyman, a commissioner in San Juan County, Utah, received a 10-day jail sentence after he led a protest ride on all-terrain vehicles through a federal area that had been closed to motorized use.

“All I did was drive down a canyon road,” Mr. Lyman said. “It seems to be getting worse, and the federal agencies, they are expanding. Their restraints are being overstepped. It’s not the way this country was set up. It’s not the founders’ design.”

Not surprisingly, environmental activists have opposed dismantling federal lands, but so have hunters and anglers who worry their elk-hunting grounds and trout streams would be sold to private hands and developed. Unlike the federal government, many states require that their land be used as profitably as possible.

About an hour’s drive from the wildlife refuge where Mr. Bundy’s group is facing off with the government, Erin Maupin and her husband, Jeff, pay the government each summer to feed their cattle on 19,000 acres of federally owned land. She said that like many ranchers, they wanted to work with the government, but that layers of grazing restrictions and environmental rules were getting out of hand.

“We want somebody to make sure we’re doing it right,” Ms. Maupin said. “But it’s got to the point where there’s no common sense in it.”

The resentments toward federal land managers feel sharpest in economically strapped rural counties from Arizona to Montana, where up to 90 percent of the lands are federally managed. People love the beauty that surrounds them, but seethe at policies that they say have whittled away logging and mining jobs, left national forests vulnerable to wildfires and blocked access to public land.

“The land policies now are, basically, lock it up and throw away the key,” said Leland Pollock, a commissioner in Garfield County, Utah, a county roughly the size of Connecticut with pine forests and stunning red-rock spires. “It’s land with no use. The local economy’s really suffered as a result. Grazing has been reduced. We used to have a thriving timber industry — that’s all but gone.”

Dianne Feinstein’s Million-Acre Land Grab Falters

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

by Chriss W. Street
Breitbart News Network

Three months after Breitbart News and others outed Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) backdoor effort to freeze development on over one million acres of California dessert by having President Obama declare the area subject to the Antiquities Act of 1906, her efforts are going down in flames as Congressional Republicans are moving to ban the Antiquities designation.

Feinstein’s seven-year quest to convince Congress to sequester over 1,560 square miles of the Mojave Desert into three new national monuments under her proposed "Desert Conservation and Recreation Act” has gone nowhere. Feinstein has argued that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains’ is home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.

The Senator had faced opposition from an unusual coalition of sustainable energy developers, wilderness advocates, off-road vehicle users, military bases, energy companies and American Indian tribes. By trying to circumvent Congress through artificially tying up the property with a phony search for non-existent artifacts, she has incensed Republicans and upset many Democrats, who worry about future Presidential actions.

U.S. Rep. Paul Cook (R-CA), whose district covers the area Feinstein wants restricted, complained at a Congressional hearing in September that the Antiquities Act “sets in motion a Washington-based management plan that can sharply curtail recreational and economic activities. I’m deeply concerned that outreach efforts to the public have been hasty and inadequate.”

Cook, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel who won a Bronze Star and has two Purple Hearts from combat duty in the Vietnam War, has said that when he heard about Feinstein’s backdoor efforts, his number one goal was to stop Presidential action.

Cook is a staunch military supporter and sits on the powerful Armed Services, Veterans,’ and Foreign Services Committees. The military is a substantial user of the terrain that Feinstein wants walled off. Because the area contains the remnants of General George Patton’s World War II training camps, national security interests have been lobbying Cook to lead the opposition against Feinstein’s Congressional end run.

The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association both oppose the Antiquities designation and have given Cook perfect 100 percent ratings for each year since he was first elected in 2007. They have lobbied the congressman to oppose any executive order by President Barack Obama regarding the area.

On October 1, 2015, Congressman Cook introduced HR 3668, the California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act (CMORCA). He described the bill as “a balanced approach to protecting, managing, and using our desert and forest areas in San Bernardino and Inyo Counties.” But the bill also bans designating the area under the Antiquities Act.

Cook’s bill creates would create a National Monument, but also opens 100,000 acres to mining, and designates Johnson Valley and five more off-highway vehicle areas as “National OHV recreation areas.”

The new designation would ban commercial development in those areas if the Secretary of the Interior determines the development is incompatible with the purpose of the bill. But the bill sets up the opportunity for development to be approved in a future Republican administration.

Although Senator Feinstein has continually claimed that desert residents are “overwhelmingly in favor” of the three monument designations she is pushing for, the City of Twentynine Palms, the City of Banning, and the San Gorgonio Pass Regional Water Alliance quickly signed on as supporters of Rep. Cook’s CMORCA.

Environmentalists have been shocked by the rising support for the CMORCA bill, which they call part of a a “radical anti-public-lands agenda” by House Natural Resources Committee Republicans, representing a “neo-sagebrush rebellion that appears to be emerging in certain Western states.”

The Rep. Cook’s California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act is expected to have its first House Natural Resources Committee hearing as early as December 9.

National monument becoming watershed moment

Local officials face off against environmentalists

Map courtesy of Grand Canyon Wildlands Council

Hubble Ray Smith
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - Anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon easily recognizes that it's one of the world's great natural wonders and must be protected.

But what about the vast stretches of forest and desert surrounding Grand Canyon National Park that contain some of the world's richest uranium deposits and provide grazing for cattle?

Mohave County elected officials and congressional representatives of Arizona are pushing back against the Sierra Club and other environmentalists who want to take down 1.7 million acres of federal land for the Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument.

They're opposed to forming the proposed national monument by presidential executive order, rather than by congressional action.

Creating a new and enormous national monument amounts to a "significant federal land grab," Mohave County Sheriff Jim McCabe said. It would add federal regulations to any use of the public land, including ranching, hunting, fishing and recreational activity.

"We're looking at this going from a wilderness area that allows all those things to a sanctuary that stops all those things," McCabe told the Daily Miner. "You're allowed to walk on it and that's it."

McCabe wants to know who's going to be responsible for fire protection, and what happens to Mohave County's water rights currently in place.

"It is just this sort of federal overreach that has led to proposals for states to assume control of huge areas of public land in the American West," McCabe said. "Creation of vast new national monuments not by congressional debate and action, but by presidential executive order, even while lawful, would contribute further to distrust of the federal action."

A national monument is a permanent designation for public land that can be established either by Congress or directly by the president. The Antiquities Act, signed into law in 1906, gives the president the authority to protect valuable public lands for conservation purposes by designating them as national monuments.

The proposed Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument includes the North Kaibab and Tusayan districts of the Kaibab National Forest, as well as public lands in the Arizona Strip, all managed by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM.

"The monument designation will include only public lands, so there is no land grab," said Sandy Bahr, director of Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter. "Private and state trust lands will not be part of the proposed monument."

Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both R-Ariz., have written letters to President Barack Obama opposing the monument designation. They say it would restrict land managers and private property owners from forest thinning, which could increase fire danger. It would also ban hunting, making wildlife management difficult.

Bahr countered that previous monument declarations by the president included language that makes it clear that the state retains its authority to manage wildlife. They do not limit hunting and fishing, she said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, along with McCain and Flake, introduced a bill in May to prevent the president from changing federal water-rights designation of lands declared to be national monuments.

Monumental support

Proponents of the watershed say it remains at risk from threats such as toxic uranium mining and the logging of old-growth forest.

Bahr of the Sierra Club said the watershed covers some "spectacular" public lands, including portions of the Kaibab National Forest, House Rock Valley and the Kaibab-Paunsagunt Wildlife Corridor, a key wildlife habitat the Kaibab squirrel, the northern goshawk, the Kaibab-Paunsagunt mule deer herd, mountain lion, and the endangered California condor.

The lands are distinguished by rugged cliffs, pine forests, deep canyons and grasslands, and they provide clean drinking water for millions of people downstream who depend on the Colorado River.

Geologists warn that uranium mining could deplete and contaminate aquifers that discharge into the Grand Canyon, and that cleaning them up would be next to impossible.

"Uranium is radioactive and toxic," Bahr said. "Uranium mining has a big impact, contaminating land and waters, including on the Navajo Nation and in Grand Canyon National Park itself."

The Orphan Mine, on the South Rim in Grand Canyon National Park, has contaminated Horn Creek and still leaches radioactive waste into the creek, she said. The National Park Service has spent more than $15 million of American taxpayers' dollars to pay for the cleanup, she noted. There are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on Navajo lands that still need to be cleaned up.

Protecting the land from mining is a "non-issue" as the BLM has placed a 20-year moratorium on new claims, and there's very little logging taking place in the area, said Tom Britt, retired from Arizona Game and Fish in Flagstaff.

"It's about control over restoration and protection of the forest," Britt said. "What we need to do is look to see if it's a problem. No. The area is already adequately administered by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM. So all we're doing is ratcheting up administrative overhead in that area, which is not needed. What is the intent? To restrict activities?"

People can say hunting is not going to be restricted, but once the land is designated a national monument, there will be a management plan and "the devil will be in the details," Britt said.

A contingent of 36 Democratic state senators and representatives sent a letter to President Obama in March urging him to designate the Grand Canyon watershed as a national monument.

"Arizona has a rich history of presidents taking action to protect its natural wonders, including early on the protection of Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest by President Theodore Roosevelt," the letter stated. "We ask that you now look to Grand Canyon's watershed on the lands north and south of Grand Canyon National Park for a new national monument."

National monument designation does not affect private or state lands or private property rights. It provides for continued existing activities, including public access, rights-of-way, sightseeing, mountain biking, hiking, wildlife viewing, birding, hunting, fishing, and many other activities, including traditional tribal access.

As legislators pointed out in their letter, all of these cultural, economic and natural assets are at risk from "harmful" uranium mining.

Among other groups supporting the Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument are the Arizona Wilderness Coalition; Grand Canyon Wildlands Council; Grand Canyon River Guides; Environment Arizona; and Northern Arizona Audubon Society.

"Public lands belong to all of us, and as a consequence of that shared ownership and shared responsibility, we can't allow a handful of special interest groups with an agenda cloaked in economic recovery and jobs to dominate the conversation as to what happens to these special places," said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Economic impact

The Grand Canyon attracts about 4.5 million visitors a year, and generates nearly $800 million for the state and local economies.

The U.S. Department of Interior's 2012 decision to ban more than 1 million acres of public lands from future uranium mining is detrimental to the growth of the local economy, Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson said. The decision was overturned in April in U.S. District Court.

Uranium mining would bring $29.4 billion to the local economy over more than 40 years, employing 1,078 workers with a $40 million annual payroll, according to a 2009 report from Tetra Tech of Golden, Colo. Local governments would receive $9.5 million in claims payments and fees.

"It's shutting down the use of our natural resources," Johnson said. "Uranium mining could kick off the economy for years to come, plus we need it for the security of the nation. They always bring up how it's ruining the Grand Canyon. Nothing is close to the Grand Canyon."

The uranium veins are not that large, more like "crop circles" in a small, localized area of the desert, Johnson noted. The footprint of disturbed land is small, and after reclamation efforts, you can't tell where it's been, he said.

Anti-mining forces have pushed the Department of Interior to change the rules on mining claims so that exploration would not be allowed unless a company could prove before the fact that economically-viable mineral resources exist.

"It depends on the price of uranium and the price to bring it out," Johnson said.

Existing mining claims would not be affected by the monument designation. However, lands currently under the BLM's 20-year moratorium would be permanently protected from mining.

"Our economy is not going to recover with traditional manufacturing jobs," Johnson said. "What we need to do is go back to our roots that led to Arizona being developed, and that is mining."

Ruling sticks: Salt Creek not a county highway

RS 2477 fight » Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms narrow view of what constitutes “public use.”

The Salt Creek/Horse Canyon road in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park flooded Oct. 5, 2011. (Canyonlands National Park)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

A federal appeals court on Monday affirmed a tough standard for what constitutes a county road, spurring the state to urge Utahns to come forward if they have memories of hunting or hiking on disputed routes decades ago.

To prevail in a road claim, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously held in April, counties should demonstrate actual use by the general public, not just use that was "necessary or convenient" for a handful of people or by ranchers moving cows.

Monday’s ruling denied Utah’s request to have the full court reconsider that decision.

The April ruling rejected San Juan County’s highway claim up Salt Creek Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. At issue was a 12.3-mile unimproved route that threaded in and out of a creek bed draining the park’s Needles District.

But the 10th Circuit’s logic could extend to the thousands of other road claims pending against the federal government in Salt Lake City’s U.S. District Court.

Wielding a frontier-era law known as RS 2477, the state is seeking title to 66-foot rights-of-way on 36,000 miles of what rural counties claim are vital transportation corridors.

Opponents, however, say many of these contested routes appear to be marginal two-tracks.

Besides signaling a victory for federal control of such "roads," this ruling fills a gap in case law regarding RS 2477, according to Heidi McIntosh, a lawyer for the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice

"They closed the door on claims which cite no more than random prospector use or ranchers using the route pursuant to a permit. That’s important. Thousands of the claims before the court are claims just like Salt Creek," said McIntosh, who filed amicus briefs in the case opposing San Juan County’s right-of-way claim.

The Denver-based 10th Circuit on Sept. 29 will hear arguments on another major RS 2477 case, one involving about a dozen routes in Kane County.

The 2013 ruling by U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups in that case was mostly a defeat for the federal government, which is appealing.

The state and county are appealing aspects of Waddoups ‘s decision that hinder the larger roads cause, which is among the costliest legal undertakings ever pursued by Utah officials.

A stable of lawyers, most on the taxpayers’ dime, have been touring the state in recent months, taking "preservation" depositions of elderly and infirm witnesses whose testimony is needed to establish road use decades ago.

These people are not expected to still be alive years from now when these cases actually land before a judge.

To gain title to a right-of-way, counties must demonstrate 10 years of "continuous use" prior to the 1976 passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which repealed RS 2477.

For Salt Creek, that use had to have occurred prior to 1964 when Congress established the national park.

The Salt Creek and Kane cases are among Utah’s four "active" roads lawsuits, which are intended to resolve questions of law common to most of Utah’s 14,000 road claims.

However, this most recent ruling leaves the definition of "continuous use" to the discretion of trial judges, according to Tony Rampton, public lands section director for the Utah Attorney General.

"Our objective was to have the Court solidify the test for public user, and it is unfortunate that the Court did not avail itself of this opportunity," Rampton said in a prepared statement.

"This ruling increases the importance for members of the public who used the roads prior to 1976 for hunting, camping, sight-seeing and other general public uses to come forward with their testimony to assist in the presentation of the evidence in cases involving R.S. 2477 roads."

State officials have long held that these contested rights-of-way are crucial to economic prospects and quality of life for rural counties. Environmentalists dismiss such framing as a "red herring," arguing the state’s hidden goal is to disqualify large swathes of undeveloped land in southern Utah from wilderness protection.

Debate flares over providing wildlife artificial water sources

Cliff McDonald (standing) helps a Water for Wildlife volunteer patch cracks in a cement "drinker" at the Mojave National Preserve. (Katherine Davis)

Katherine Davis
89.3 KPPC
Southern California Public Radio

Listen to Podcast [4 min 16 sec]

Mojave National Preserve — A stretch of protected desert northeast of Los Angeles — is currently reviewing its water management plan. One question officials are considering is whether to continue providing artificial water sources for desert wildlife.

As part of the Works Progress Administration, hundreds of concrete "drinkers" were installed across the desert in the 1940s. They're giant concrete saucers that funnel rainwater into cisterns that animals drink from. But after half a century in the desert sun, most of the drinkers are cracked and needing repairs.

A group called Water for Wildlife has voluntarily repaired these drinkers for years. Now debate is underway on whether these drinkers should be removed.

In nine years, Water for Wildlife's Cliff McDonald and hundreds of volunteers have repaired about 100 of these drinkers. They come out for one weekend a month during winter and spring. They camp overnight, and little by little, they’re making progress.

“[One] particular drinker had not been working, so we repaired it, and within 60 days there was a tortoise coming out of it where he had just gotten a drink,” McDonald said. “That same tortoise was estimated to be about 60 years old, so he could have watched the guys build it 60 or 70 years ago.”

But even if quail, tortoises, and other desert animals like having easy spots to find water, not everyone agrees that these drinkers should be maintained.

“If you’re trying to manage just one part of an [ecosystem], then you can upset the functioning of the rest of the system,” said Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator with the Desert Protective Council. “The problem [with artificial water] is that it can become what we call an ‘attractive nuisance,’ and animals that would not be drawn to that area before will perhaps go there.”

Like many other environmental groups, Weiner’s organization worries that the drinkers interfere with a desert ecosystem that evolved to survive with limited water.

That’s exactly the argument the Mojave National Preserve is weighing now as it develops a new water management plan.

“From the scientific standpoint there’s really not a lot of evidence that artificial water is all that beneficial," said Neal Darby, a wildlife biologist with the preserve. "We know animals use it, but we can’t say that if they didn’t have it they would all die. And that’s where the problem is, it’s a very difficult hypothesis to test,” he said.

It’s difficult to test because one possible outcome of taking away the drinkers is that desert wildlife could start to die off.

Humans have been in California’s deserts for centuries, and in many cases, settlers created artificial water sources for their cattle or crops, which wildlife eventually began to rely on too. Humans have also used up some natural water sources throughout the desert. That’s why McDonald and his volunteers say maintaining artificial water is important.

But some environmentalists call McDonald’s motivations into question.

“In too many cases we find the people who are really enthusiastic about establishing guzzlers throughout the desert are people who want to make sure the population of animals is such that the can keep hunting them,” said Weiner. “We’re not opposed to appropriate hunting, but having artificial water sources to artificially pump up the population of [animals] is not a good idea.”

Like many of his volunteers, McDonald does hunt. But, he says of the hundreds of species in the desert that use the drinkers, only a handful are of any interest to hunters. And, he says, keeping all of those wildlife populations thriving should be of interest to everyone.

“If I’m the general public and I do not hunt and I want to come out here to camp, I’d want to see flickers and warblers and blue jays, and they drink this water,” McDonald said.

McDonald also said that hunting licenses help pay for a lot of other environmental projects. Darby agrees.

“There’s not a lot of funding available,” said Darby. “These sportsman’s groups really step up to the plate and help [the Mojave National Preserve] get things done.”

What Darby, McDonald, and other environmental groups can all agree on, is that California’s desert ecosystems should be protected. The question is, whether giving wildlife unnatural sources of water really helps.

It’s a major debate, but it’s not enough slow down McDonald and his volunteers.

“My dad and I hunted together, we fished together and we saw a lot of wildlife. A lot of that wildlife was drinking out of a stream or drinking out of one of these artificial drinkers and I would like the future generations to be able to see that,” McDonald said.

But in drought years like this one, if wildlife can’t get water, McDonald isn’t sure that will be possible.

Searchers find body believed to be missing hunter

Greg Monroe of Victorville (KABC)

by Richard Brooks
Riverside Press-Enterprise

The search has ended for a missing hunter in the Mojave Desert where a body believed to be his has been found in a natural water well, according to a family member and sheriff’s officials.

“It was covered in brush. And he fell right into it,” Norco resident Teresa Dalton said Wednesday, Nov. 13, of her father-in-law, 62-year-old Greg Monroe of Victorville.

Sheriff’s officials confirmed the discovery.

“Monroe was located on Nov. 7 deceased,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said in an email.

But efforts to confirm the tentative identification are continuing, emphasized coroner’s spokeswoman Sandy Fatland.

Monroe disappeared after driving into the New York Mountains near the Nevada border on Oct. 28 so he could start deer hunting early the next day, Dalton said. He was reported missing when he failed to return home as planned on Halloween.

His Toyota truck was found at his desert campsite and it appeared that at least most of his food was still there, suggesting that he became lost early in his trip, Dalton said.

The body was found in a 40-foot-deep well that was half filled with water from a natural spring, meaning Monroe would have been about 20 feet underground after the fall, Dalton said.

“There was no way he could get out,” she said.

Sheriff’s helicopter crews helped search teams and Monroe’s family and friends scour the region. Between the two groups, Sixty to 70 people were involved in the search, Dalton estimated.

“It was a good effort,” she said.

Crews will capture, test and attach radio transmitters to bighorn sheep

State and federal wildlife experts launch $48,000 helicopter survey and GPS tracking effort this weekend to gauge the scope of pneumonia epidemic that has killed more than 100 bighorn sheep in the Mojave Desert.

Bighorn sheep in the Mojave Desert will be outfitted with GPS radio collars so wildlife experts will know if they fall victim to a deadly pnemonia outbreak among otherwise healthy herds in the area. This photo was shot near Olancha Peak, in the Inyo National Forest.

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN
Riverside Press-Enterprise

State and federal wildlife experts will launch a $48,000 helicopter survey and GPS tracking effort this weekend to gauge the scope of a pneumonia epidemic that has killed more than 100 bighorn sheep in the Mojave Desert.

The outbreak has decimated two herds, one around Old Dad Mountain in the Mojave National Preserve and a second in the Marble Mountains, 35 miles south. Officials have said the highly contagious infection may have come from sick domestic sheep illegally dumped off a truck en route to alfalfa fields in the Imperial Valley.

The National Park Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife will begin their four-day investigation on Sunday, Nov. 3, said Debra Hughson, science adviser for the preserve.

“We are throwing everything we have at this to better understand it and hopefully control it,” she said.

The crew of a federally contracted helicopter will search for the scattered animals over as much as 80,430 acres, in areas where dead and sick bighorns have been found and in nearby mountain ranges.

The helicopter can fly seven hours per day, at $1,600 per hour, paid for by the National Park Service, Hughson said.

Individual animals will be captured with a net fired out of the low-flying helicopter. The bighorn is then removed from the net, blindfolded to reduce stress and hobbled with a leather restraint to prevent kicking, she said. The workers take blood samples and a nasal swab, attach the collar and release the animal.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife is providing 54 GPS collars that transmit information daily by satellite. If an animal stops moving, the collar sends out a mortality signal so that experts can quickly locate the carcass and take samples, Hughson said. The GPS collars work for four years.

After the GPS collars are gone, high-frequency radio collars will be used for any remaining animals that are located, she said. The radio collars have a longer battery life and are less expensive, but readings require a fixed-wing aircraft or people in the field with antennas, instead of a satellite.

“The idea here is to have collared animals in the surrounding mountain ranges so we can have an early warning of the spread of the pathogen,” Hughson said. “We can get a better understanding of the progression of the disease, its spread and impact on herds.”

Biologists, veterinarians and other staff will help with the field operation. If an obviously sick animal is captured, a veterinarian may decide to kill it and perform a field autopsy, Hughson said.

Experts don’t know exactly how many animals have died, mostly because they spread out as water sources become more plentiful this time of year, she said.

The first dead animals were found in mid-May at Old Dad Mountain, 15 miles southeast of Baker. The disease has killed about half the 200 to 300 sheep in the herd there and at nearby Kelso Peak.

In August, several sick bighorn sheep were found in the Marble Mountains, which are just south of Interstate 40 and east of Kelbaker Road.

Tests showed they all had the same strain of pneumonia. The disease is carried by domestic sheep and goats; bighorn have no immunity and almost always died of it. There is no vaccine or cure for pneumonia in bighorn sheep. The disease does not spread to humans.

State officials have decided to proceed with this year's bighorn hunting within the Mojave National Preserve, one of the few places in California where it is permitted, said Regina Abella, desert bighorn sheep coordinator at the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The state issues a limited number of tags by lottery, based on the number of rams in a herd; last season, three tags were issued for the Old Dad area. The season starts Dec. 1

Public allowed back on lands as federal government shutdown ends

By ROBIN RICHARDS
Needles Desert Star
News West

NEEDLES — Residents of Golden Shores awoke to the sound of gunfire on Friday. Cause for the gravest concern in many parts of the world, in the community on the shore of Topock Marsh it was a sign of reassurance: the partial federal government shutdown ended and access was being allowed to the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge in time for the Oct. 18 waterfowl opener.

Barrycades across the entrances to Catfish Paradise and North Dike have been taken down, though there were still cones across the road to Five Mile Landing. The road to North Dike was in very poor condition and should likely only be attempted with 4-wheel-drive, especially by those towing a boat. Vehicles without substantial ground clearance shouldn’t attempt it at all. Deep, soft sand washed onto the road in the violent thunderstorms of late August and early September had not been removed.

The traditional Pintail Slough hunt is not being offered this year, due to an irrigation pump failure before the shutdown. Visit refuge headquarters at 317 Mesquite Ave. in Needles for specific details.

Mojave National Preserve also reopened to visitors Friday, according to the National Park Service. Visitors can access public areas and roads immediately while facilities and other public services are brought back online.

“We are excited and happy to be back at work and welcome visitors to Mojave National Preserve,” said Deputy Superintendent Larry Whalon in a prepared statement. “With cooler temperatures, autumn is a particularly special season to enjoy all that Mojave has to offer.”

Rangers have removed barrycades and all roads and campgrounds are again open for hunters and other visitors. For updates on road conditions check nps.gov/moja and click on Current Conditions. The historic Kelso Depot Visitor Center returns to the same post-sequester schedule it’s been on since May: Fridays through Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Needles Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management is back in service; information about many area public lands under federal control, including the preserve, can be accessed there. Free and reduced-fee passes for federal lands can be obtained. Visit the office from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at 1303 U.S. Highway 95. Call 760-326-7000.

Further afield, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area including Lake Mohave is once again open. Campgrounds, trails, launch ramps and the visitor center were to open immediately, concessionaires were reported to have recalled employees and reopened marinas, Lake Mead Cruises and Black Canyon/Willow Beach Adventures were to resume cruises and raft tours over the weekend. Visit http://www.nps.gov/lake/; call the visitor center seven days a week at 702-293-8990 or the park information desk Monday through Friday at 702-293-8906.

Death Valley National Park announced reopening of most facilities on Oct. 17. “The economic impact of closing this park for 16 days has been extremely tough on our gateway communities, local businesses, neighbors, and park partners,” said Superintendent Kathy Billings, also in a prepared statement. “We look forward to working with our neighbors and partners on ways to lesson that impact.”

Visitor facilities that have reopened include Furnace Creek Visitor Center, Texas Springs Campground, Mesquite Springs Campground, Stovepipe Wells Village, Scotty’s Castle, the park’s major scenic overlooks, backcountry and wilderness.

Due to the shutdown the opening of Furnace Creek Campground and Sunset Campground was to be delayed. Sunset was to have opened Monday; it’s hoped that Furnace Creek Campground will open by Friday, Oct. 25. Check www.nps.gov/deva.

All other public lands under federal control were expected to be open and rapidly returning to normal operations. Facilities at the Grand Canyon had been reopened by the state of Arizona before the shutdown ended.

Government shutdown complicates deer hunting season at Mojave National Preserve

Piute Gorge. The closure of federal lands will put a damper on the opening of deer hunting season atthe Mojave National Preserve. / Mojave National Preserve

Written by Denise Goolsby
The Desert Sun

The government shutdown-induced closure of all federal lands — including national parks — is going to put a damper on Saturday’s opening of deer hunting season, when scores of hunters will be turned away at the gates of the Mojave National Preserve.

Compounding the situation is that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — which regulates hunting, fishing and other game-related activities in the state — allows hunting in state wildlife areas but must enforce the federal government’s closure of national parks and Bureau of Land Management territory — where hunting is normally permitted.

“If people are hunting, they are subject to a citation,” Andrew Hughan, California Department of Fish and Wildlife public information officer said Friday.

But there’s been confusion throughout the week as to what, if any, federal lands would be open to hunters on Saturday.

The shutdown has made it difficult for state and federal agencies to communicate, and local officials are working to clarify conflicting information.

“Mojave National Preserve is closed to all recreational use, including hunting,” said Linda Slater, the preserve’s public information officer. “Our rangers are going to use an educational and informational approach to work with hunters to help them understand the situation.”

The southern boundary of the sprawling, 1.6 million-acre preserve is north of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County, just north of the Interstate 40 freeway, is about a 90-minute drive from Palm Springs. The preserve was established in 1994 with the passage of the California Desert Protection Act by Congress and is part of the national park system.

“Mojave National Preserve is arguably the most popular location for hunters in Southern California,” said David Lamfrom, senior California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

But those who purchased hunting licenses and “tags” — required for the taking of certain big game animals, including deer — might not realize they can’t enter the grounds.

The preserve has multiple access points, a situation that creates a “high potential for conflict with law enforcement,” if disgruntled hunters decide to ignore the closure, he said.

“It’s public land,” Lamfrom said. “It’s going to be another example of a portfolio of people not being served. They miss the opportunity to do the things they love to do or want to do.”

“We share everyone’s disappointment that the National Park Service is shutdown,” said Slater, who happens to be on furlough but is handling media inquiries. “We look forward to getting back open as soon as we can.”

The preserve is the third largest park in the lower 48 states. Only Death Valley National Park (3.4 million acres) and Yellowstone National Park (2.2 million acres) are larger.

Dennis Schramm, who retired as Mojave National Preserve superintendent in 2010, worked at the preserve during the previous government shutdown for several weeks in 1995 and 1996.

A couple of hundred hunters, many who’ve been coming since the preserve opened, look forward to the first weekend of deer hunting, he said.

“Opening day of rifle season for deer hunting is a big deal,” Schramm said. “They go to the same spots every year. The group campsites get filled up.”

He said thinly stretched preserve employees — only essential personnel are still working while most of their colleagues are furloughed — could face some angry hunters who might choose to bypass the barriers.

“It’s a major concern,” Schramm said. “If they don’t resolve this ... it’s going to catch people off guard. Hunters are going to show up there and not be very happy. It’s going to be a very difficult impact for park staff.”

“Nothing about this situation is easy,” Schramm said. “It is difficult for the park staff to implement the closures, and equally difficult for the public to understand why they can’t just visit the parks anyway.”

Schramm, who was traveling with family through Durango, Colo. during this interview, had plans to visit some of the state’s national parks during the weeklong trip — including a visit to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

“All the things we planned on doing this week, we can’t do,” he said.

Lamfrom said the fallout is going to be felt by gateway communities that provide goods and services for hunters and campers coming in and out of the preserve.

“The shutdown of the federal government has created countless unexpected and unnecessary impacts to the National Parks in the California desert, and on the communities that rely heavily on them for their economic well-being,” he said.

How long the shutdown lasts is anyone’s guess, he said.

“We’re all in denial,” Lamfrom said. “We thought it would be over the day after the government shut down. There are economic impacts that are radiating. Look how deeply connected all these economic systems are.”

When open for business, the three California desert national parks sites – Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park – combined, welcome more than 6,500 visitors a day in October. The three parks collectively infuse more than $230,000 a day into local communities.