Mojave land trust achieves acquisition milestone

Joshua Tree charity donates 10,000th acre to Park Service

Hi-Desert Star

JOSHUA TREE — The Mojave Desert Land Trust, a Joshua Tree public charity, announced the acquisition of its 10,000th acre of land to be donated to the National Park Service this week.

The land trust has given land to Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park through 183 transactions at a cost of $5 million dollars.

Mindy Kaufman, the land trust’s president, said she was extremely proud of the achievement: “We are only 3 years old as a land trust and these acquisitions speak to the grit and determination of the board, our funders, small staff, great volunteers and the community in its desire to preserve land in the Mojave Desert.”

Founded in 2005, the Mojave Desert Land Trust uses a fund in the Preserving Wild California Program to acquire privately held parcels inside the boundaries of desert national parks.

Most national parks contain private lands that are holdovers from the homesteading, ranching and mining days.

The Mojave Land Trust believes these lands can become the staging grounds for incompatible development, such as commercial real estate or homes, putting wildlife, natural and cultural treasures and the experiences of park visitors at risk.

According to the land trust, the National Park Service lists 1.8 million acres of private land it hopes will be acquired and donated to the government at an estimated price tag of $1.9 billion.

Inholdings that require restoration from dumping, illegal roads or other uses are restored by the Mojave Desert Land Trust before they are donated to the National Park Service.

To date, using professional contractors and the volunteer time of trained land stewards, over 70 acres have been restored — recycling more than 15 tons of debris, 36 vehicles and four travel trailers.

This year, Nolina Peak, which the land trust acquired in 2007, was incorporated into Joshua Tree National Park.

The 640-acre Nolina Peak parcel protects the Quail Mountain watershed originating in Joshua Tree National Park.

“In only three years, the MDLT has acquired over 3,500 acres in Joshua Tree, a rate of acquisition that far exceeds what the park was able to accomplish,” said Curt Sauer, superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park.

“While these lands are all critical to the management of resources within the park, the acquisition of Nolina Peak is a giant step forward in our ability to preserve the northwest end of Quail Mountain, with its resident populations of bighorn sheep, bobcat, mountain lion and desert tortoise.”

Sauer said he considers the land trust an important partner for conservation in the Mojave Desert.

Another recent acquisition of 320 acres is located in the Mojave National Preserve. A wildlife corridor, this land links the pinyon juniper highlands of the New York Mountains with the Watson Wash drainage.

The site also includes habitat for plants and animals and is the location of a historic homestead.

Preserve superintendent Dennis Schramm said the land trust’s help has been especially critical in the past several years, when federal money to buy land was mostly unavailable.

“Wilderness, desert tortoise critical habitat, springs and other biologically diverse properties are now permanently protected due to the efforts of MDLT,” said Schramm.

Justice Department Undercuts Park System for Mojave Cross

Administration Argues Park Service Lacks Authority on Private Land within System



Press Release from
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)




In its latest effort to stop court-ordered removal of an-eight foot cross from the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, the U.S. Justice Department is arguing that the National Park Service has no "authority to manage private land" within the park system, according to court filings released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). If upheld, Justice's position would strip the Park Service of the power to manage an estimated five million acres - about the size of New Jersey - of non-federal lands embedded within the 84 million-acre National Park System.

The legal fight over removal of the Mojave Cross has spanned the tenure of Bush administration. To many, it is the quintessential example of the Bush Justice Department going to extremes to defend display of Christian symbols on federal lands. The case has had many twists and turns, but the courts consistently ruled that the Cross violated First Amendment guarantees against government establishment of religion.

In 2003, the Bush administration supported a scheme to exchange the one federal acre with the Mojave Cross into private hands, within the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve, California. In September 2007, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court upheld a district court ruling that the land exchange was "a sham" and a transparent "attempt by the government to evade the permanent injunction enjoining the display of the Latin cross" on federal land.

In response, the Justice Department petitioned the Ninth Circuit for a rehearing on November 20, 2007, arguing, among other things, that the National Park Service lacks authority over lands within national parks that are not federally owned. The petition contends that the Organic Act of 1916 limits Park Service oversight to federal lands and does "not purport to give the Park Service" authority over private lands.

The 84 million-acre national park system contains at least 5 million acres of lands that are not federally owned, including private in-holdings, state and native corporation lands. If the Park Service were to lose management control of these lands it would significantly fragment the national park system.

"Ironically, the Justice Department is representing the Park Service by taking a legal stance that undermines its client's mission," stated PEER Board member Frank Buono, the former deputy superintendent of Mojave National Preserve who brought the suit to remove the Mojave Cross. "In its zeal to protect the Cross, and the constitutional questions that taint it, the Bush administration would cast aside decades of laws and precedents giving the Interior Secretary and National Park Service a degree of control over non-federal lands that lie within the boundaries of the national park system." Buono is represented in the case by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The Mojave Cross is one of several instances in which the Bush administration has pushed Christian displays and creationist interpretations in national park facilities. This effort, which PEER has called "Faith-Based Parks," appears limited to supporting fundamentalist Christians. For example, a request from another party to install a Buddhist stupa at the site of the Mojave Cross was rejected.

National parks contain private land

By SUSAN GALLAGHER
Associated Press Writer
Las Cruces Sun-News

HELENA, Mont.—The managers of Utah's Zion National Park missed an opportunity when 10 spectacular acres of privately owned land within the park's boundaries came onto the market.

The managers wanted Zion to buy up the property and protect it from further development because of its world-class view of the park's awesome, 3,800-foot red rock cliffs. But the park didn't have the money.

A California couple eventually purchased the land, expanded an old tavern on the site and use it for spiritual retreats.

"Now there's a large structure with lights that people would see as they drive the road," said Zion Superintendent Jock Whitworth.

Within the 84-million-acre national park system are some 5.4 million acres of private parcels, an area nearly as big as New Hampshire. They include wetlands popular for birdwatching at Acadia National Park in Maine, the site of a Civil War hospital at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania and Indian cultural sites at Big Bend National Park in Texas.

Many of these parcels have been held for generations by people who owned the land before Congress created the parks.

The Park Service has identified about a third of the private land for acquisition.

"Inholders live in fear they're going
to have land acquisition agents at
their door, trying to force them out."

But in fiscal year 2007, the agency was allocated $24.6 million for buying the property. That is little more than 1 percent of the $2 billion or so the Park Service says would be needed to purchase all the land it wants.

"We ought to be finishing what we started, and we're not doing it," said Paul Pritchard, founder of the National Park Trust, a private organization.

The National Park Service has on its wish list 11,613 tracts encompassing 1.8 million acres. The $24.6 million allocated is down from a 10-year high of nearly $139 million in 1999.

National Park Service spokesman Jeff Olson said the Bush administration has focused more on managing the land it already controls than on acquiring more.

"The dollars have steadily fallen off because we are in deficit, because we are funding a two-front war, because there are a host of other spending priorities that compete," said Alan Front, vice president for the Trust for Public Land.

But he warned that unless the Park Service acquires the private land within the parks' boundaries, "there is a real and pressing threat that inappropriate development will mar the landscape that people are flocking to for respite and retreat."

Chuck Cushman of the American Land Rights Association, formed in 1978 to represent owners of property within parks, said it is just as well the Park Service is short of money.

Inholders, as the property owners inside the parks are known, "live in fear that a change in administration, a new Congress—all of a sudden they're going to have land acquisition agents at their door, trying to force them out," Cushman said.

He said many of the landowners are the third and fourth generations to live there, adding that his own cabin in Yosemite National Park is "the one constant my kids have always had" even though the family moved often.

Park Service Director Mary Bomar has said the agency buys land only from willing sellers.

At Zion, Hank and Mariangela Landau bought the 10 acres coveted by the Park Service in 2005. The land is a 2 1/2-hour drive from Las Vegas, near a site where some of the 1972 Robert Redford movie "Jeremiah Johnson" was filmed.

Landau said he and his wife tried to be environmentally sensitive in remodeling the dilapidated tavern constructed some 40 years ago—a one-story building with light-gray siding—and establishing their retreat, The Center for the True North. Its features include solar power and low-impact lighting.

"We feel good about it because of the way in which we remodeled it," Landau said. "We're not Frank Lloyd Wright, but we did the best we could to try to blend it."

Landau would not disclose what he paid for the property. Whitworth, the park superintendent, said the land was on the market for about $340,000.

Missing an opportunity to buy will not make it any easier the next time. Parks are such desirable areas that the price will probably be higher if a property hits the market again.

In the past few years, the Park Service, on its own or with help from conservationists, bought and demolished the Home Sweet Home Motel at Gettysburg, and purchased an old AT&T communications center at Point Reyes National Seashore in California.

At Glacier National Park in Montana, where deer, elk, moose and wolves roam, Warren Heylman of Spokane, Wash., built a cabin this year on land his grandparents homesteaded before President Taft signed the 1910 bill making Glacier the nation's 10th park. The 130-acre tract had been at the top of Glacier's acquisition list for years.

In July, a helicopter delivered materials for construction of a one-room cabin on the land. Heylman said that the family is exercising its rights and that the land is "not for sale, period."

"We think development of that land is inappropriate," said Brace Hayden, a Park Service official at Glacier. "You can draw your own conclusions about what's best for the American public versus what's best for this family."

NPS Uses FLTFA to Acquire Inholding Property

Posted by Jackie Skaggs
Public Affairs
Grand Teton National Park



Grand Teton National Park Superintendent Mary Gibson Scott announced today that the National Park Service (NPS) recently completed the acquisition of a key inholding property located on the Moose-Wilson Road, approximately five miles south of park headquarters. This acquisition was made possible through funding provided under the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA) of 2000. The 1.4-acre tract was identified as a top priority for acquisition, in part because it lies within an area that provides important habitat for a diversity of wildlife species.

Formerly known as the Hartgrave property, this land parcel originally consisted of approximately 4.4 acres. The property became available for purchase in 1995; however, the NPS was unable to acquire it at that time due to a lack of available federal funds. Gerald T. Halpin bought the property in order to protect it from potential development until the NPS could obtain funds for acquisition. In October of 2005, the NPS obtained Land and Water Conservation Funds to purchase approximately three acres of the Hartgrave property, leaving 1.4 acres in private ownership. FLTFA funds allowed the NPS to purchase the remaining privately-held acreage.

FLTFA offers land management agencies in the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture a “vehicle” by which private lands within areas administered by these agencies can be purchased from willing sellers. FLTFA funds are generated through the sale of public lands that are administered by the Bureau of Land Management and identified for disposal in land use plans. FLTFA provides a more efficient, streamlined process for land sales, and consequently benefits the nation’s public lands; it also helps to promote consolidation of ownership of public and private lands in a manner that allows for better overall resource management and protection. This federal authority for land transactions is scheduled to expire in July of 2010 unless extended by Congress.

Government Patching Up Public Lands

By JOHN HEILPRIN, AP Writer
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is buying 9,000 acres in seven Western states, the first such purchases under a 2000 law intended to help land managers patch up fragmented national parks, forests, refuges and other public lands.

Among the 19 places being purchased for $18 million from private landowners are lands around the Coachella Valley in California, the North Platte River in Wyoming, the Santa Fe River in New Mexico and the Snake River in Idaho. Other states where the government is buying lands under this program are Arizona, Colorado and Oregon.

The lands will be added to those overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, all part of the Interior Department, and by the Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department.

Officials say the purchases also will help protect bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and other species, along with recreation and cultural resources like hiking trails and prehistoric rock paintings.

"What we're increasingly trying to do is to create unfragmented landscapes, and this will help do that," Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said in an interview Friday.

Congress established the fund in 2000 to buy private "inholdings" from people willing to sell lands to the government that are surrounded by or next to public ranges, forests, parks or refuges managed by those four agencies.

It also authorized those agencies to sell fragmented or isolated parcels that are difficult to manage or other lands close to urban areas that might be better used and valuable for residential or commercial developments.

In 2000, BLM identified 3.3 million acres that could be sold off under the program. It manages almost 260 million acres in 12 Western states — about one-eighth of the land in the United States.

BLM figures show that it has raised nearly $95 million from such sales so far, about half of it in Nevada. Of that money, 80 percent by law must be used to buy other public lands; the other 20 percent can be used for BLM administrative costs.

But the Bush administration, eyeing the possibility of $350 million in BLM land sales, has proposed amending the law to let the government use most of the money for deficit reduction, according to The Wilderness Society, an advocacy group.

Scarlett urged Congress to reauthorize the 2000 Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, which is set to expire in 2010.

"It allows us to actually acquire lands for the purposes that the public land agencies exist," she said. "It just uncomplicates matters for them."

Interior encourages BLM land sales

Selling public lands will let Western cities sprawl into new territory

Zachary Smith WESTERN ROUNDUP
High Country News

In a couple of years, BLM lands around fast-growing cities like St. George, Utah, could hamper growth.

More than 20 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and his advisors looked across the West’s public lands and saw dollar signs. Money was something they desperately needed in 1982, as the national deficit hit $128 billion.

So James Watt, then U.S. secretary of the Interior, and John R. Block, the secretary of Agriculture, earmarked 35 million acres, or 5 percent of the nation’s public lands (excluding Alaska), for the auction block.

The plan to privatize public lands was met with outrage and skepticism, not only from Western liberals such as Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, but also from conservatives like Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, who objected because the states were cut out of the deal.

Watt eventually withdrew Interior lands from the sale; shortly thereafter, the Forest Service’s sale lost steam, too.

However unpopular the proposed sales were, they weren’t illegal. And the idea didn’t go away. The framework for selling public lands has inched forward since the Clinton administration, and now the Interior Department wants to give it a higher priority.

The 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) required the Bureau of Land Management to identify lands that were "uneconomical to manage," or that stood in the way of a community’s development.

But the BLM lacked a strong incentive to identify such sellable lands: Under FLPMA, any money received from their sale would go directly into the U.S. Treasury, rather than into the agency’s own coffers.

Then, in 2000, Congress and the Clinton administration passed the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA), which changed how profits from BLM land sales were distributed.

Twenty percent of any land-sale revenue would go toward the BLM’s administration costs, while the other 80 percent had to be used to buy private inholdings within BLM lands that contained "exceptional resources."

The act was based on a land disposal and acquisition mechanism in the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998, which was crafted to accommodate Las Vegas’ rapid expansion onto neighboring public lands.

But FLTFA’s profit scheme applied only to sellable lands identified before July 25, 2000. At that time, the BLM estimated it had 3.3 million acres of sellable land, but thanks to better inventories, its estimate has since shrunk to as low as 330,000 acres.

From 2001 to 2003, the BLM sold almost 11,000 acres under FLTFA.

Today, cities like Phoenix, Ariz., and St. George, Utah, are butting up against public lands, and the BLM is facing a $320 million budget reduction from last year.

At the same time, the agency is chipping away at a backlog of dated land-use plans, which gives it the opportunity to identify more disposable lands. Now, politically appointed staffers at the Interior Department want to give the BLM even greater incentive to do so.

In August, Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett, who oversees the BLM, wrote to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., asking for legislative amendments to FLTFA that would encourage the BLM to sell off more land. She has asked Congress to make the identification and selling of disposable land an ongoing process, rather than one limited to land identified before the July 2000 cutoff date.

Twenty percent of any revenue would still go to the BLM’s administrative costs, but under Scarlett’s proposal, only 60 percent of the money would go toward land acquisition. The other 20 percent would go toward "conservation enhancement projects," to fund local projects such as riparian improvement or removing invasive weeds.

Abolishing the July 2000 deadline gives the BLM "the incentive to decide to designate (new) lands as disposable," says Johanna Wald, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Wald thinks this change could open the door for much more land to be added to the "for sale" list.

HOT PROPERTIES: Private 'Inholdings' in Federal Preserves

by Jim Carlton
The Wall Street Journal

Schofield, Colo. -- Flanked by snow-capped peaks and straddling valleys of spruce, fir and aspen, the wilderness area know as the High Elk Corridor offers scenery of unsurpassed splendor. Accessible by a four-wheel-drive-only road, the land is almost all government-owned, seemingly untouched except by the forces of nature -- until a traveler comes upon a row of new log cabins, smack in the middle of federal wilderness.

"This is the beginning of back-country sprawl," says Will Rogers, staring at the cabins from a dust-covered van. Mr. Rogers is president of the Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco-based group that is trying to stop this kind of development inside federal wilderness and other public lands. The problem is that the cabins are perfectly legal.

Partly to help settle the frontier, an 1872 federal mining law created "inholdings" -- tracts of private property situated in the middle of national forests or other public land -- thousands of which are sprinkled throughout the vast public lands of the American West.

Many of the properties, which range in size from 10 acres to 2,000 acres or more, have been passed down from generation to generation, as public lands have grown up around them. Most of the inholdings are so remote they were long deemed unfeasible for major development. But in the past few years, as real-estate prices began ratcheting up as hordes of city dwellers started pursuing mountain retreats, some of the inholdings have become valuable properties.

In many cases, there are few restrictions on the sites, which have guaranteed access through public land by road. Colorado law, which governs the privately owned inholdings in the state, allows up to one building per mining claim, with the average claim handed out in the 1800s amounting to about 10 acres. Conservationists say that even one house per 10 acres could equate to hundreds of homes in a pristine area.

In California, a development of multimillion-dollar homes has sprung up on an inholding inside the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. Called Mirada Estates, the development entails about 109 home sites on about 140 acres of private land.

To prevent a similar development in the High Elk Corridor, the Trust for Public Land so far has helped acquire about 1,000 acres of about 6,000 acres of private inholdings and hopes to buy up about 1,500 acres more.

Not everyone thinks development is a bad thing, though. Here in the High Elk, for instance, a handful of longtime property owners are holding out against the conservation push. The eight or so houses they and others have built are mostly modest, one- and two-story log cabins that the owners constructed as summer-time mountain retreats. No one has sold out to a big developer, so far, although some other property owners have plans to add cabins on their tracts as well.

One reason for their reluctance is an emotional pull to the land. For example, Fred Murray, a 69-year-old geologist from Tulsa, Okla., says he won't part with his approximately three acres of lots in one valley because the land has been in his family for nearly a century. His is one of the cabins that have sprung up there over the past 10 years, and he has also pushed for Gunnison County officials to pave the road from Crested Butte to make access easier. "They [the conservationists] are trying to push people like us out," says Mr. Murray, who has been coming to his family's wooded property in the High Elk since a toddler.

But Trust for Public Land officials say they fear too much cabin building, and road upgrading, would pave the way for bigger development, such as multimillion-dollar "ranchettes" that would ruin the wild nature of the corridor. So they are following the strategy, as they have around Yellowstone and other places around the West, of buying land to later sell back to the federal government.

In so doing, the trust has teamed with an unlikely partner, a ski resort, among others. In 1997, the Crested Butte Mountain Resort -- which recently changed ownership -- had joined with two local conservation outfits, the Crested Butte Land Trust and the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, to buy nearly half of the 106 buildable lots in Schofield, an 1800s mining camp that is now a ghost town. Previously, the resort had been criticized by environmentalists for its development around Crested Butte, itself a former mining town.

Part of the resort's concern is economic, because places like the High Elk are a major tourist attraction. Besides the scenery, the area is historically significant, having hosted not only legions of pick-and-shovel miners but also former President Ulysses S. Grant.

"If we started losing some of those special areas like the High Elk, it could really dry up our tourism economy," says Jim Starr, a Gunnison County commissioner who sits on the board of the Crested Butte Land Trust.

Indeed, Bill and Beverly Selby from Rogers, Ark., break their red Jeep after four-wheeling down a notoriously tough pass known as the "Devil's Punchbowl," and express shock at the prospect of the surrounding High Elk being bulldozed over. "If we could vote against development here, we would," says Mrs. Selby, who runs an embroidery shop with her husband.

By themselves, the local preservation groups around Crested Butte say they didn't have the financial wherewithal to protect the High Elk, which contains millions of dollars of inholdings. That changed, though, after a chance vacation visit to Crested Butte in 1999 by a Denver resident named Doug Robotham.

At the time, Mr. Robotham had recently been appointed head of Trust for Public Land's Colorado office, and recalls David Baxter, a friend with the Crested Butte Land Trust telling him about the threat to the High Elk. Having backpacked in the area as a boy, Mr. Robotham says he was astonished to find cabins when he hiked back out to investigate. "So I said, 'Let's look at conserving this whole valley,'" Mr. Robotham recalls, kicking a rock as he walks down a dirt road that winds through one of the valleys.

The High Elk was far more complex, though, than most of the 250 or so inholding transactions the trust negotiates each year. With about 260 property owners, the trust faced having to negotiate potentially dozens of deals. So the trust, in 2000, used digital mapping to focus on the lots they considered the most likely to be developed, because of their terrain and other factors.

In all, the groups think they will need about $6.5 million to make all their acquisitions. So far, they have raised about $3 million from public and private sources, and are using the money to persuade owners to part with their properties. Some have needed little convincing, because, they, too, want the land preserved.

"It was the family's desire to keep the land pristine," Judy J. McGill, a real-estate broker in nearby Crested Butte, Colo., says of a Texas-based family's decision to let her sell 40 acres of High Elk land to the trust for $125,000.

Federal land managers say they welcome such deal making as a way to help keep the backcountry wild. U. S. Forest Service officials, for example, say they are long wanted to protect the High Elk, in part, because the corridor sits between two wilderness areas: The Raggeds and Maroon Bells-Snowmass. Foresters worry that too much development could disrupt wildlife migration patterns, such as for the plentiful elk, as well as soil clear-running streams.

But the government hasn't had the time or resources to try negotiating for the multitude of land transfers needed here. "They [the Land Trust for Public Land] really did us a huge favor," says Martha Ketelle, supervisor of the local White River National Forest, "in terms of taking on this project."

REGIONAL REPORT ON NPCA'S WORK IN THE PARKS [excerpt]

by Elizabeth G. Daerr
National Parks

* PACIFIC

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has approved legislation that authorizes the sale of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land near Mojave National Preserve in California to build an airport to serve Las Vegas, Nevada.

The final version does not require formal environmental review before the land transaction takes place; however, changes were made to increase public input before construction of any airport facility.

Improvements include: establishing the Department of the Interior as a joint lead agency in any environmental study; language that enables the land to revert to BLM if it is found that an airport should not be built there; establishing a fund that can be used for the acquisition of private inholdings within Mojave; and requiring that an environmental review must address any potential impacts on the purposes for which Mojave National Preserve was created.

At press time, the Senate had not yet scheduled a vote on the bill.

COPYRIGHT 2000 National Parks and Conservation Association

Public Takes Title to Almost 225,000 Acres of Inholdings Spread Across California Desert

Business Editors
Business Wire

SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)

The public, through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), yesterday (January 18, 2000) took ownership of almost 225,000 acres of key parcels of private lands spread throughout the California Desert in San Bernardino County as part of an unprecedented public-private partnership to protect the Desert's natural values.

The Partnership, in addition to BLM, involves The Wildlands Conservancy (TWC), a non-profit group based in Oak Glen, Calif., which contributed $15 million to private funds toward the purchase; Catellus Development Corporation (NYSE:CDX), owner of the alternate sections of lands originally granted to Southern Pacific Railroad, which sold the lands at a discounted price; and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was instrumental in obtaining the $10 million in Federal funds from Congress needed to complete the purchase.

The acquisition not only brings 224,706 acres of private lands into public ownership and makes these lands immediately available for public use and enjoyment, it also fills in critical gaps and provides the public improved access to several hundred thousand acres of existing public lands interspersed with the newly acquired inholdings. These lands are spread across more than 140 miles of desert lands stretching from Barstow east to the Colorado River.

The transaction is part of a larger acquisition effort involving TWC, Catellus, BLM, the National Park Service (NPS), and hundreds of small inholders who desire to sell their scattered tracts in the large area. The Department of Interior, which oversees BLM, is required by the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Feinstein, to give priority to consolidating Federal Ownership within the National Park units and BLM wilderness areas designated by the Act.

The larger acquisition partnership was initially aimed at bringing into public ownership a total of 437,000 acres of Catellus holdings and up to 50,000 acres of small private inholdings within the NPS's Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park and within 15 BLM Wilderness Areas and other BLM areas in the Desert with high recreation and wildlife values.

TWC has recently reached an agreement with Catellus to expand the potential acquisition by 433,000 acres, to a total of 480,000 acres of Catellus lands. The additional acquisition area would include portions of the scenic Cady Mountains and key wildlife corridors and habitat between Joshua Tree Park and Mojave National Preserve.

In addition to the $25 million expended yesterday, Congress has appropriated $5 million to the NPS acquisitions in Fiscal Year 2000 and has targeted an additional $15 million for BLM and NPS in Fiscal Year 2001 if certain conditions are met to complete the overall effort. TWC is endeavoring to raise the additional private funds necessary to complete the remaining land acquisitions from Catellus. Including yesterday's closing, these acquisitions would total $53 million.
In addition to the direct acquisitions, the side benefits of the partnership include:

-- Ongoing land exchanges between BLM and Catellus, such as an
exchange which closed last week valued at $3.7 million. This
exchange resulted in public acquisition of about 12,000 acres
near Barstow, primarily in the Black Mountain Wilderness and the
Rainbow Basin Area of Critical Environmental Concern; and

-- A commitment obtained by TWC that Catellus will grant the Federal
government easements over certain properties Catellus will retain
in the Desert once the overall acquisition is completed,
providing the public access across hundreds of miles of
recreation routes currently traversing Catellus private lands.

Further information on the BLM can be obtained at their website www.ca.blm.gov.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Business Wire
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group