Joshua trees meet very different fates in California, Arizona

The sun goes down on Joshua trees at Castle Mountains National Monument in eastern California on Feb. 1, 2016. Private land across not far from here was recently transfered to Mojave National Preserve in part to protect these iconic desert plants. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

It’s been an up-and-down month for Joshua trees in the region.

At Mojave National Preserve in California, thousands of the iconic desert plants recently won permanent federal protection, thanks to a land transfer that added 3,100 acres to the park 90 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, in Mohave County, Arizona, a Las Vegas businessman is defending himself from allegations of a “Joshua tree massacre” on about 100 acres of private property he’s clearing for agricultural development.

Al Barbarich, who owns the land about 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and hopes to establish a nut and fruit orchard there, said his permit to clear the land did not require him to save any of the Joshua trees. But he said he arranged to have about 100 of them dug up and replanted at homes, a school and other locations in the area — all at no cost to those who received the plants.

“We tried to do something nice for the neighbors and the community,” he said.

Some area residents didn’t see it that way. In online posts and a Feb. 12 story in the Kingman Daily Miner newspaper, the developer was accused of wholesale Joshua tree murder.

Barbarich acknowledged that some plants were destroyed as the land was cleared, though he couldn’t say how many. He said a lot of the Joshua trees shown piled up in the photos posted by his critics were older plants with little hope of being successfully transplanted.

The negative publicity is “unfortunate,” Barbarich said, because he felt like he was trying, at his own expense, to do the responsible thing. “We wanted to preserve the trees to the extent that people wanted them,” he said.

FROM PRIVATE TO PROTECTED

The additional Joshua trees now under the protection of Mojave National Preserve in California were also once subject to the whims of private development.

The plants are growing on what used to be scattered pockets of private land within the boundaries of the 1.6 million acre desert preserve. Over the past decade, the nonprofit Mojave Desert Land Trust has been buying up such “private in-holdings” and selling or donating them to the National Park Service.

The latest land transfer, completed earlier this month, involved 110 scattered parcels ranging in size from 5 to 320 acres.

Frazier Haney, conservation director for the trust, said most of the land is located in Lanfair Valley near the eastern edge of the preserve, an area “really rich in Joshua trees and Mojave yucca.”


Haney said the trust purchased the property from “a variety of willing sellers” over the past nine years. The group paid a total of $1.5 million for the land and received $1.4 million from the park service in return.

That money will be used to buy other private property within the preserve and other desert parks in California, Haney said.

“Scenic views, sensitive habitat and historic resources that might otherwise be lost are now protected in perpetuity for all to appreciate and enjoy,” Greg Gress, regional realty chief for the park service, said in a written statement.

Haney said private in-holdings are not governed by the same rules and protections as the surrounding park land. Gradually eliminating the patchwork of in-holdings simplifies management of the entire preserve, he said.

‘STRICTLY WILLING SELLERS’

But Haney stressed that the trust isn’t trying to force private landowners off their property, some of which dates to the days of homesteading in the area roughly 100 years ago. “It’s strictly willing sellers,” he said.

Since it was founded in Joshua Tree, California, in 2007, the conservation group has donated more parcels of land to the park service than any other trust in the country, Haney said.

Mojave National Preserve has gained more than 30,000 acres — and countless Joshua trees — through the trust’s efforts.

Haney said more than 1,300 private parcels remain within the boundaries of the preserve, though, “so we’ve still got a ways to go.”

Nonprofit land trust turns over 3,000 acres to Mojave National Preserve

An entrance to Mojave National Preserve on Zzyzx Road near Baker, Calif. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Associated Press
Los Angeles Times

A nonprofit group has donated more than 3,000 acres of desert land to the Mojave National Preserve.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust announced Wednesday that it had handed over ecologically and historically significant land to the park. The 110 parcels already are surrounded by the national preserve. They include juniper and yucca stands and a century-old homestead site.

The trust has an ongoing program to buy up private land that survived within the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park.

“Development of this private land can degrade neighboring park resources, impact public access and cause management problems for park staff,” a trust statement said.

Over the past decade, the trust has conveyed about 23,000 acres of land to the National Park Service.

“Our great desert parks are immeasurably enhanced” by the work, Greg Gress, regional realty chief for the National Park Service, said in a statement. “Scenic views, sensitive habit and historic resources that might otherwise be lost are now protected in perpetuity for all to appreciate and enjoy.”

Family fights government in land dispute near Area 51

Dispute over historic Groom Mine in Nevada pits Air Force against local family near Area 51

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5244593192001/

By Andrew Craft
FoxNews.com

Joe Sheahan is in the fight of his life to save his family’s Nevada mine from being swallowed up by the federal government's mysterious Area 51.

Technically, Sheahan’s family no longer even holds title to Groom Mine, which it owned for 130 years. The federal government took the deed through eminent domain after first offering the Sheahans $333,300, a price family lawyer James Leavitt called “embarrassingly low.” The family is fighting back in federal court, but if the Sheahans and Uncle Sam can’t agree on a value, it could wind up before a jury.

Possibly more interesting is what the federal government wants with a parched stretch of rural Nevada desert and an old mine that hasn’t been active in decades. The area is known for two of the feds’ most closely guarded secrets: nuclear testing and UFOs.

So far, the family has not been paid for the land. Initially, the family was sued by the federal government in September of 2015 in a complaint case of eminent domain. A few days later the government then filed a motion to take the over the property. Now, Appraisal reports are being exchanged in the discovery phase of the litigation. If the parties cannot reach a sufficient value for the land, the Sheahans are prepared to fight it in a jury trial.

The mine hasn’t been in full operation since 1954, but until fall of 2015 family members went out from time to time to blast for minerals. The 400 acres of land sits almost 6,000 feet above sea level with panoramic views of the surrounding Groom Mountain Range and borders the Nevada Test and Training Range, which includes Area 51. According to Sheahan, his family’s land had always been highly sought after by the U.S. Air Force base looking to expand its flight-testing range, “They told me the land was like a suit hemmed in too tight that needed to breathe, that’s why they want our land“ Sheahan said.

Sheahan told Fox News that Air Force officials started showing up unannounced on the property in the 40’s and 50’s, intimidating his grandparents. He said his family complained to the Air Force, but nothing happened. Then nuclear tests came without warning. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal archives, on Jan. 27, 1951, the Air Force detonated the first above-ground test on land next to the Groom Mine. Sheahan says his family wasn’t told about the test. “This bomb goes off, who do you call, who do you Google, there’s no one … those blasts did significant damage to the property, not only in radiation,” he said. Sheahan claims family members and mine workers suffered long-term radiation effects and says some livestock died from beta burns.

In the winter of 2014, government officials from the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force approached the Sheahan family about purchasing the property. At that time, Sheahan and other family members had never had the property appraised but he says the family thought offers of $2.4 million, $5.2 million, and $1.5 million from the Air Force were too low and so they rejected them. “We’re not going to sit down with those numbers at the table.” said Sheahan.

The Air Force confiscated the property on Sept. 16, 2015 through a federal court ruling in US District Court in Nevada. The family had three outside experts appraise the property after the seizure. Due to its proximity to Area 51 and the mineral rights to the land, each appraiser recognized the “unique value” of the property and came to the conclusion that the real value of the land was worth upwards of $44 million to $116 million dollars, Leavitt told Fox News.

In a statement on Nov. 9, 2016 obtained by Fox News, a prior commander at Nellis Air Force Base, Col. Thomas E. Dempsey explained the reason for seizing the land; “Over the years, technology has increased demand for the test and training range assets and the Air Force has developed infrastructure that directly supports range activities that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”

Leavitt is fighting to get the family just compensation, which real estate expert and Fox News Legal Analyst Bob Massi explains as “an objective understanding of the value of that property.”

Fox News reached out for a comment from Justice Department, which is representing the Air Force but was told by deputy press secretary Wyn Hornbuckle the department will not comment on pending litigation.

Freelance local investigative reporter Glen Meek has been researching the Sheahan case since the government seized the land and is making a documentary about the land dispute. He noted government’s unwillingness to provide answers and boiled it down to two major fundamental issues - individual rights and national security, saying “the government’s position is pretty much, the testing that’s going on there now is incompatible with civilians having private land in that area.”

The case is currently in discovery. Sheahan says he is a God-loving American and does not want to be portrayed as unpatriotic but wants his family to receive just compensation. Sheahan and Leavitt expect a late spring or early summer court date where a jury will decide on the matter of just compensation.

How the Feds Support Eco-Terrorism

Tate Fegley
Mises Wire

Both before and after September 11, 2001, the FBI has considered “eco-terrorism” one of its primary domestic terrorism concerns. The FBI defines “eco-terrorism” as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”

It comes in several forms, but one of its primary tactics is “ecotage” or “monkey-wrenching” where radical environmental groups sabotage the property of companies whose activities they deem to be bad for the environment (such as the capital goods used in the logging industry).

But, some groups have discovered a tactic in which they are able to not only avoid punishment by federal law enforcement, but also enlist the feds as willing partners in their effort to destroy private property or deprive people of it.

One of the groups that has practiced this method to perfection is the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), which has the intention of abolishing all grazing on lands claimed by the federal government. As detailed by William Grigg, the WWP sends people to search for endangered species (including while trespassing on private lands) in order to sue the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revoke grazing permits for ranchers using those lands, or to sue the ranchers themselves. The federal courts have been more than willing to indulge WWP in their efforts. In one case, the WWP sued an 85-year-old rancher named Verl Jones, claiming that irrigation of water on his own property harmed the bull trout. Despite not presenting any evidence to demonstrate this, the federal court required Jones to stop irrigating and to pay the WWP’s legal fees. After losing his ranch and being forced to sell off his assets in order to pay them, Jones soon passed away.

The legal actions of the WWP that have decreased grazing allotments have not only made life more difficult for ranchers, but have led to lands growing vegetation that has served as extra fuel for range fires. One such fire, the Soda Creek Fire, occurred last year and devastated nearly 300,000 acres. Ironically, the WWP, aided by the federal courts and the BLM, has helped to destroy much of the habitat of Sage Grouse and other federally protected species, as well as kill wild horses and cattle. Whereas other radical environmental groups intentionally avoid harming humans (at least physically) and animals, the joint efforts of the WWP and the federal government have led to the deaths of both. In this way, the feds have enabled radical environmentalists to be more dangerous than they would be on their own.

Of course, it isn’t uncommon for the US government to provide material aid and comfort to groups that itself has labeled as terrorist. Allies transform into national security threats, and vice-versa, depending on the times and what crises are needed by politicians to obtain more power. On the one hand, selling the threat of terrorism allows them to create legislation in order to prosecute people who have no intention of committing terrorist acts. Ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, for example, were prosecuted under an anti-terrorism statute for lighting fires on their own land (to give themselves a buffer against fires that the BLM fails to prevent or contain) that minimally spread to remote federal lands. On the other hand, the feds have a clear incentive to exaggerate all environmental threats and promote themselves as savior, provided they are given the money and power to regulate nearly all human activity.

It should not surprise us that the federal government plays both sides of the fence in order to increase its own power. Although the FBI considers eco-terrorism — the use or threat of violence to violate property rights in the name of the environment — a top domestic terrorism threat, the purpose of another federal agency, the EPA, is to violate property rights in the name of the environment. Just as in foreign policy, whether a particular action is considered a terrorist act depends on the identity of the perpetrator. Bombing civilians is not terrorism, but collateral damage. Burning down someone’s house because it is on a wetland is terrorism; imposing excessive fines until they leave or forcibly preventing them from building it in the first place (when done by the EPA) is considered good policy.

Therefore, everyone should recognize that the federal government has little interest in protecting property rights or the environment (which are not mutually exclusive; protecting the former naturally protects the latter). Rather, whether it is aiding and abetting radical environmentalist groups to drive ranchers off their lands, or creating anti-terrorism laws to ostensibly target radical environmentalist groups, the feds will do whatever is necessary to increase their power.

This California desert town is experiencing a marijuana boom

by Paloma Esquivel
Los Angeles Times

Carlos Bravo, the owner of a tow company here, was at work late last year when a real estate agent came to him offering half a million dollars for 5 acres of undeveloped, brush-pocked desert — five times what he'd paid for the land six months earlier.

"I thought he was joking," Bravo said.

The man came back the next day, making it clear he was not.

A few days after he had signed the paperwork, Bravo said, another man offered him $1 million.

As the first city in Southern California to legalize large-scale medical marijuana cultivation, Desert Hot Springs has been inundated by marijuana growers and developers. They are buying up dusty desert land — some with no utilities or roads — in hopes of cashing in as California's marijuana growers come into the open under new state regulations.

"It's pretty chaotic," said Coachella Valley real estate broker Marc Robinson. "I'm getting tons of calls from all over the world, all over the United States. My newest clients flew over from Germany."

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Despite a sizable need for new infrastructure to support the indoor growing projects, the rush has officials in this downtrodden town dreaming of new income.

"I can only imagine what we can do with the tax revenue," Mayor Scott Matas said. "We're in need of parks, our roads are dilapidated. All around — our sidewalks, curbs, gutters."

The city is pushing hard to help developers get their projects up and running as it increasingly faces competition from a number of desert cities also eager to bring growers to town.

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Desert Hot Springs' foray into marijuana stemmed from financial need, officials said.

The city has long tried to position itself as a Coachella Valley tourist destination alongside its resort-town neighbors south of Interstate 10, but it's never managed to attract the same level of development. Median household income here is $33,500 — far below the state median.

The town's destinations simply aren't enough "for it to become a vibrant and viable city instead of just a dusty little town north of the I-10," said Heather Coladonato, president of the Desert Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce, which is working closely with growers.

In 2014, after the city declared a fiscal emergency, the council voted to legalize dispensaries and cultivation. Zones where growing was permitted were established, including on a stretch of barren desert dotted with a couple of churches and auto repair shops.

Since the ordinance passed, officials have approved applications for at least 11 businesses with plans for more than 1.7 million square feet of cultivation operations.

Each year, the city will tax growers $25 per square foot of cultivation space for the first 3,000 square feet and $10 per square foot after that. At least eight other projects are in the approval process.

Police Chief Dale Mondary said he had strong reservations about the city's move toward cultivation.

"Just from a law enforcement standpoint, obviously we're philosophically opposed," he said. "I took the stance: 'I can either pout about it or get on board and at least have my voice heard.'"

The businesses have agreed to hire 24-hour armed security guards and install cameras that police can access remotely, Mondary said. They're also planting what he called "hostile landscaping" — cactus and other plants that could be difficult for intruders to pass.

No cultivators are up and running yet, though a small number could be growing by this summer, officials said.

Growers, many of whom have been quietly practicing their trade in garages and other underground spaces for years, are eager to "come out of the shadows," said Jason Elsasser, who is planning a 2-acre project in town.

The rush to set up shop in cities that permit cultivation was pushed forward by state legislation signed into law late last year. Growers will be able to apply for state licenses by 2018, but they will have to show they have local licensing before they can get a state permit, said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The crush of developers in Desert Hot Springs led to a tripling of land prices in the area, real estate brokers said.

But there are signs that the projects — which require intensive lighting and air conditioning — could face long infrastructure delays. In recent weeks, owners learned it could take years just to get sufficient electricity to some of the businesses.

Southern California Edison spokesman Robert Laffoon-Villegas said the utility expects that some growers' power needs could be so large that "it would be like adding a small city to the system."

"In order to do that safely it does require significant study … and it may require significant infrastructure," he said.

Meda Thompson, a real estate broker who advertises on fliers decorated with marijuana leaves, said the issue has caused some properties to fall out of escrow.

To help address the concerns, the city manager is now preparing to hire a project manager who would oversee infrastructure issues for growers.

In the meantime, the city is facing increasing competition.

In nearby Cathedral City, officials recently began accepting applications from growers and dispensaries. So far, they have received about 20, said Community Development Director Pat Milos.

In San Bernardino County, Adelanto began accepting applications from growers late last year.

That city, which has been on the brink of insolvency in recent years, has asked applicants to sign a statement acknowledging its financial hardship and agreeing to "support, and not oppose, any initiative that the city or the voters of the city initiate to raise business taxes and business license fees."

So far, it has approved at least 30 applicants who have proposed operating more than 1.2 million square feet of cultivation space. Some, like in Desert Hot Springs, would be in now-vacant desert plots.

The city of Coachella, meanwhile, has opened an area to growers previously zoned for auto wreckage yards.

Mayor Steven Hernandez said he expected the businesses to bring better-paying jobs to the city's low-income residents, particularly migrant farmworkers.

"I've got a lot of people working in the fields every day," he said. "If I can get those guys into the middle income … they can buy themselves a nice house in Coachella and maybe not have to work so much."

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Calabasas attorney Bob Selan is leading an effort by several dispensaries to build a 380,000-square-foot cultivation business park in Desert Hot Springs.

The challenges of building from the ground up in the desert have been great, he said.

"The way you have to design these things for climate control and conserving water and conserving energy, it's very hard to do it, and it's very expensive," he said. "We have consultants, engineers, architects, lawyers, accountants, you name it … on top of that we have all the cannabis experts."

Though the scramble to establish large-scale facilities has been influenced by the possibility that Californians may legalize recreational use of marijuana this year, Selan said his facility would do fine even without such a law.

"The demand for medical products was so high, this was just to fill the need for that," he said.

Elsasser, who is planning the 2-acre project, had a successful real estate company in Yucca Valley until the housing crash. The downturn left him with several vacant homes, in which he used to grow marijuana.

"Cannabis cultivation kind of saved me," he said.

On a recent weekday, he walked through an empty steel-shell building on Little Morongo Road that he plans to soon begin converting into a cultivation facility.

"This is going to be all built out into a high-tech, 40-light grow right here," Elsasser said, using the number of overhead lights the facility will contain to indicate its size.

Pointing to a chain-link fence surrounded by brush, he added, "Back there is going to be all greenhouses."

Then Elsasser gestured toward a handful of buildings down the road that were owned by other growers and developers.

"Those are all going to be cultivation," he said.

Little Morongo Road will eventually be the backbone of a bustling warehouse zone, packed to the brim with growers, Elsasser said.

"This property is right on Park Avenue," he said, waving toward the desert brush and dusty road and imagining the swanky New York thoroughfare. "It may not look like it. But it is."

Trying to Get Water to California but Torpedoed by Regulators

The Obama administration and Dianne Feinstein keep blocking a private project to aid the still-parched state.

Well water bubbles into a pilot pool in Cadiz, Calif, in 2002. (AP)

By ALLYSIA FINLEY
Wall Street Journal

Although El Niño has increased the snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas, the Golden State’s historic drought isn’t over. Yet the Obama administration has decided to block a privately financed project that could supply water to 400,000 Californians, even though the project has been approved by an alphabet soup of state and local agencies. The result will be to trap vast amounts of a precious resource beneath the Mojave Desert. Is water the new fossil fuel?

This tale of political and regulatory obstructionism begins in 1998, when Cadiz Inc., a Los Angeles-based company, developed plans for a groundwater bank and well-field on 70 square miles of private land overlying the base of the Mojave’s massive Fenner Valley and Orange Blossom Wash watersheds. Over centuries the aquifers there have amassed as much as 34 million acre feet of water, enough to sustain all of California’s households for several years.

However, tens of thousands of acre feet percolate into salty dry lakes and evaporate each year. Cadiz proposed capturing and exporting the groundwater to Southern California residents. The Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project could also help store occasional excess flows from the Colorado River that would otherwise drain to the Pacific Ocean.

Water experts such as those at the Public Policy Institute of California have recommended using groundwater banks to recharge aquifers during wet years and expand the state’s storage capacity. Relative to dams, storing water underground reduces evaporation and environmental harm.

None of this mattered to various green lobbies and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who complained that the water project would deplete mountain springs and harm wildlife. But environmental reviews by hydrogeologists confirm that the nearest spring—located 11 miles away and 1,000 feet above the aquifer—would not be affected. Nor would fauna, which don’t rely on groundwater. After an exhaustive review, the U.S. Interior Department approved the project in 2002, but Sen. Feinstein maintained her opposition.

Cadiz sought to assuage her in 2008 by reducing the planned annual water exports to 50,000 acre-feet from 150,000. It also negotiated to use the Arizona & California Railroad’s (ARZC) right of way to build a 43-mile underground pipeline to the Colorado River Aqueduct (which feeds water to Southern California). But a few days after Cadiz announced its agreement with ARZC, Ms. Feinstein launched another attack, demanding that the Interior Department “conduct a detailed analysis” of “permissible uses” of railroad rights of way.

The department’s long-standing policy allowed railroads without federal permitting to run power, telephone and fiber optic lines on their rights of way, streamlining environmental review for public works, including wind and solar farms. But in 2011, Interior revised its policy to limit railroad rights of way that were granted in 1875—such as ARZC’s—to “activities that derive from or further a railroad purpose.”

Curiously, the new rules apply only to projects like the Cadiz pipeline. Telephone wires and fiber optic lines, maintenance yards and “related improvements,” could be permitted “on a case-by-case basis” if they helped the railroad operate.

Cadiz would go on to spend $12 million on capital improvements to benefit the railroad, such as a maintenance access road, turbines to power safety equipment and information systems, as well as state-of-the-art automated fire suppression. No matter. Last October the Bureau of Land Management ruled that the Cadiz pipeline “does not derive from or further a railroad purpose.” The innovative fire-suppression system “is an uncommon industry practice,” the agency caviled, and the “origin of the access road is to support the non-railroad purpose of water conveyance.” Building the pipeline without authorization, it warned, “could result in the BLM instituting trespass proceedings.”

The BLM added that its ruling cannot be appealed because “it is not a final agency decision.” A final decision would require a formal regulatory review. But Ms. Feinstein has attached riders to every Interior Department spending bill since 2008 that bar the agency from reviewing Cadiz.

Amid this regulatory hustle, a California state appellate court last month heard six challenges to the project, all of which had been rejected by a trial court two years ago. In 2012, the Santa Margarita Water District’s final environmental impact report noted that the project’s only significant effects would be temporary dust from construction and the hazard of population and employment growth from a larger water supply, which has driven opposition from green groups. While trumpeting the BLM’s decision in October, the Center for Biological Diversity complained that the Cadiz project would “increase urban sprawl in coastal Southern California.”

So the water storage project, long overdue, remains stuck in regulatory purgatory. Without a Hail Mary attempt by Congress to unplug the Obama water blockage, thirsty Californians can only pray for a Republican president who views economic development as a blessing rather than curse.

Fed Employees Caught Bragging About Federal Land Grabs

Employee brags they "stole the money from Washington" to push World War II vets off land

YouTube clip in which government employee brags about stealing land.

Adan Salazar
Infowars.com

“We went out to the mine and the owners were two little guys that had been in the Second World War,” a California park service employee recalls at a retirement celebration for Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin in 2005.

The employee brags about how the veterans’ mine was appraised by the federal government at $40 million, and acquired for a paltry $2.5 million.

“We did get it appraised and we did acquire it for $2.5 million which I stole the money from Washington to acquire it,” the employee in the video admits, adding that it’s sometimes hard to bamboozle property owners due to the agency’s reputation.

“’Lands’ isn’t always supported because we’re the ‘bad guys.’ We come in, and we take this land. And we always take it for less than it’s worth.”

Later during the celebration dinner, another park service employee reveals that the acquisition of more than a hundred thousand private acres in the Mojave National Preserve were procured under Martin’s leadership, who he labels the “acquisition queen.”

“Acres acquired under the acquisition queen’s regime, 111,550.54 acres,” an employee announces in an extended clip of the dinner.

The employee then shows two other numbers, 5.66 and 106,375.36, which correlate with the park where Martin would be relocating, the Lassen Volcanic National Park.

He indicates that the larger number is the acreage of Lassen National Park, while the smaller number is acreage privately owned.

“If you own those 5.66 acres, would you be sweating right now?” the man jests referring to Martin’s acquisition power.

The employees’ jaw-dropping admissions amid joyful applause, smiles and celebration over the confiscation of two World War II veterans’ and others’ private land goes to prove the federal government is not at all concerned with “land preservation” and focuses mainly on predatory land grabs.

Full length version of video.

Government takes family's land near Area 51

Historic Groom Mine overlooking Area 51

By Glen Meek and Kyle Zuelke
Las Vegas Now

LAS VEGAS -- Private land overlooking the secret base at Area 51 has officially been taken from the owners and transferred to the United States Air Force.

Last month, the U.S. Air Force condemned the Groom Mine property when the family who owns it rejected a government buyout they felt was unjust.

The I-Team broke the story of the family's fight with the government.

The Sheahan family, which until now owned the mine, knew they faced an uphill fight. They also expected the government would probably take the land through eminent domain even though the Sheahan's owned it since Abe Lincoln was in the White House.

Now -- literally with the stroke of a pen -- a federal judge has turned the land over to the U.S. Air Force. The only part of the fight left for the Sheahan family now is compensation and what will happen to the equipment, buildings, even human remains, still at the site.

In the remote central Nevada desert, the Groom mine has been an island of private property surrounded by a vast government buffer zone. The buffer zone is patrolled by security troops to prevent people from getting a look at the secret test base at Groom Lake -- better known as Area 51.

The family who owns the mine overlooking Area 51 has been at odds with the air force, which condemned the property last month, after the family declined a $5.2 million buyout.

"I have a geologist friend who I took out there, who's just a buff, and he said it is literally almost priceless," said Barbara Sheahan, Groom Mine heir. "There is so much there, not only the ore which is in the ground that can be mined, but in all the intrinsic value of what's on the land."

What's on the land includes buildings, mining equipment and the remains of kin who worked the mine since the family acquired it in the 1870s.

There's also the question of indignities suffered by the family from nearby government testing including buildings strafed by military planes and radiation drifting downwind from above ground nuclear shots in 50s and 60s.

"This has been like I said a 60-plus year nothing short of criminal activity on the part of the federal government, the AEC, Black Ops, CIA and you can go on and on," said Joe Sheahan, Groom Mine heir.

On Sept. 16, federal Judge Miranda Du signed the order in the condemnation case giving possession of the Groom Mine property to the United States government. The Sheahan's have asked for a jury trial, but the issues will be limited to how much the air force must pay for the land and the disposition of the equipment and personal property left on the site.

"There's nothing fair, there's nothing anything remotely close to that involved in this process," said Joe Sheahan.

"But there never has been either, so it's nothing new. But we would like to change it at least to get our stuff out and be paid the value," Barbara Sheahan said.

The air force made its final, $5 million offer to the Sheahan family after concluding that the security and safety of defense testing in that area made private land ownership impossible.

It the condemnation case, the air force values the land at only $1.5 million.

The Sheahan's say it's worth much more than that considering the value of the minerals in the mine, the abuses the family has suffered over decades and the land' s historical significance.

Desert plan shifts focus to public land

Federal and state officials put plans for privately owned land on the back burner.

Larry LaPre, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, describes the location of a solar energy development planned near the Mojave National Preserve.

BY DAVID DANELSKI
Press-Enterprise

A ballyhooed energy development and land conservation plan for California’s deserts will now focus just on public lands managed by the federal government, at least for the time being, state and federal officials announced Tuesday, March 10.

The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan has been hailed by the Obama administration as an all-encompassing plan for the desert regions of seven counties, including Riverside and San Bernardino.

In the works since 2009, its goal was to get federal, state and local officials to agree on the best places to locate huge solar, wind and geothermal projects while also preserving the desert’s most important wildlife habitat, and archeological and recreational areas.

When the 8,000-page draft was released last fall, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell appeared in Palm Springs to promote it.

The draft called for directing alternative energy development to 2 million acres of mostly privately owned land that is expected to have little value as endangered-species habitat.

But after receiving 12,000 public comments on the plan, federal Bureau of Land Management and California Energy officials, in a conference call with reporters, appeared to reel back expectations, if not the plan itself.

With no certain time frame, the plan now is being broken into phases, the first of which will pertain only to public lands managed by the BLM, said Jim Kenna, the agency’s California director.

Planning for privately owned land will be delayed to give local officials in the seven counties more time to complete their own planning initiatives, he said.

The draft plan now calls for some 392,000 acres of public land for focused alternative-energy development, 4.9 million acres for conservation and 3.6 million for recreation, Kenna said.

Officials with Riverside and San Bernardino counties have expressed concerns that large-scale solar increases demand for county fire and sheriff’s services without providing the county additional property tax revenue.

San Bernardino County officials also are concerned that large-scale solar projects could be made obsolete by other technological advances.

“We don’t want obsolete solar projects on land that would have been good for other kinds of development,” said county spokesman David Wert.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was disconcerting that the focus now is on public land, because most of the already disturbed land most appropriate for development is privately owned.

“This was supposed to be a grand, coordinated plan,” she said.

Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan

What is it? A proposed land-use plan for California's deserts that strives to place big solar, wind and geothermal projects in place that do the least harm to wildlife habitat and cultural resources.

Where is it? Desert portions of Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties.

Who is doing it? The plan is a collabaration led by the Calfornia Energy Commission and U.S. Department of Interior.

What's is the Preferred Alternative?

A version of that calls for:

-- Renewable energy development focus on more than 2 million acres of public and private land, where environmental conflicts are expected to be minimal.

-- Conservation designations for 4.9 million acres of public land managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

-- Recreation designations on more than 3.6 million acres of BLM-managed lands.

-- More than 183,000 acres of land identified for future analysis.

Source: The California Energy Commission

Judges seem skeptical of U.S. in high-stakes Utah road dispute

 PUBLIC LANDS

Kane County, Utah, R.S.2477 road claims.

Phil Taylor
E&E / Greenwire

DENVER -- A federal appeals court yesterday appeared skeptical of the federal government's claims that a lower court had wrongly awarded a Utah county and the state rights of way over desert roads in a case with possible ramifications for Utah's larger bid to assert control over federal lands.

But the three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals offered few hints as to whether it would uphold a district court's decision in March 2013 to award southern Utah's Kane County rights of way over 12 of 15 roads it had claimed, four of which run through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Greenwire, March 25, 2013).

It's a high-stakes case for Utah, whose counties have staked claims over some 12,000 roads spanning about 36,000 miles over federal lands under a Civil War-era mining law, as well as conservation groups, which note that many of those routes crisscross sensitive wilderness study areas, national parks or other public lands they've proposed remain roadless.

The 10th Circuit's ruling on the Kane case could offer legal precedent for how Utah, counties, the federal government and conservation groups negotiate resolution on thousands of other roads.

Yesterday's proceeding featured oral arguments by Department of Justice attorney David Shilton and Kane County attorney Shawn Welch.

At issue are Kane's claims to 15 roads crossing some 89 miles of federal lands under an obscure 1866 law known as R.S. 2477 that allowed miners and homesteaders to build trails or roads over any public lands not yet reserved or claimed for private use. Utah and its counties can gain title to R.S. 2477 roads if they can prove they were in continuous use for at least 10 years prior to the law's repeal in 1976.

Utah argues the law is a critical bulwark against federal decisions to block access to public lands, but conservation groups see it as one of the greatest threats to preserving wilderness-quality lands in Utah's red rock country.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups last year said Kane successfully proved its case for 12 of the roads. While some are noncontroversial, the North Swag route, which Kane won, cuts through the Paria-Hackberry wilderness study area, which BLM recognized for its roadless characteristics and which environmentalists have eyed for future wilderness designation.

Both Kane County and the United States appealed the decision to the 10th Circuit, but for different reasons.

Kane and Utah argued that Waddoups was wrong to require them to prove the validity of R.S. 2477 claims by "clear and convincing evidence," rather than a lower burden of proof, and had incorrectly ruled that a public water reserve issued by President Coolidge in 1926 precluded R.S. 2477 claims.

DOJ's Shilton argued that the district court had no jurisdiction to decide R.S. 2477 claims for the Sand Dunes, Hancock and Cave Lakes roads because they had never been closed to use and therefore created no "dispute" for the court. It also claimed Waddoups had awarded rights of way widths for North Swag, Swallow Park/Park Wash and Skutumpah roads based on current, rather than 1976, uses.

The judges pressed Shilton to explain the government's first argument over jurisdiction. While the roads remained open, legal title was still in dispute.

Shilton argued the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the tracts, has to take "some affirmative action" to trigger the court's involvement. "The United States has never closed access to those roads," he said. "You need a real dispute."

But Judge Gregory Phillips, an appointee of President Obama, said that line of reasoning could allow "decades and decades and decades" to pass without a resolution of Kane's claims. He said the government stands to benefit from delays because it makes it harder for Utah to prove R.S. 2477 claims.

In addition, Judge Robert Bacharach, another Obama appointee, pressed Shilton to defend the government's claim that Waddoups had wrongly awarded right of way widths for uses that didn't exist in 1976, such as for heavier agriculture vehicles. Bacharach spoke to a need to maintain the "current day's standard of safety."

The third judge, Paul Kelly, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

Panel skips enviro arguments

Notably, the panel didn't discuss arguments raised by environmental litigants in the case including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and National Parks Conservation Association.

Those groups argued in friend-of-the-court briefs that Waddoups had failed to consider that a 12-year statute of limitations had expired for the North Swag route, making the county's claim for that route invalid.

They also argued that historical use of alleged R.S. 2477 roads by adjoining landowners, ranchers and others who enjoyed privileged access should not have counted in the Kane County case, nor in any of Utah's other road claims winding their way through the courts.

"It's disappointing," said SUWA attorney Steve Bloch. "There were significant issues that could have steered this hearing in a different direction."

Bloch noted that the 10th Circuit in April had concluded in a separate R.S. 2477 case involving the Salt Creek road through Canyonlands National Park that "proprietary use" of a road doesn't count for determining a valid right of way.

"This is one of the key take-aways from the Salt Creek decision," Bloch said. "This alone could be a basis to send this entire case back to Judge Waddoups."

Conservationists had hoped that finding would come into play in the Kane case yesterday, but it didn't.

Shilton did not raise this point before the court and declined to be interviewed after the arguments.

Welch said the merits of the Salt Creek case should not apply in the Kane case. Unlike Salt Creek, the Kane roads connect other roads and their use was less in dispute, he said.

In the Salt Creek case, the court also had ruled that frequency or intensity of use, not just whether it was used for 10 consecutive years, is important in determining whether a road qualifies as a "public thoroughfare" under R.S. 2477. For example, use by a single cattleman for driving cattle is insufficient, as is intermittent or occasional use by hunters, fishermen, shepherds, farmers and miners, the court said.

This issue also did not come up yesterday.

Clark County officials lament spending $15.7 million on desert tortoises

A desert tortoise tries to escape from a container at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in Las Vegas in this 2012 file photo. Under a state regulation set to take effect next week, pet tortoise owners will be allowed to keep one of the animals at a time.

By BEN BOTKIN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The desert tortoise isn’t slow in going through money.

Clark County has spent at least $15.7 million since 2001 on efforts to protect the tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species by the federal government. Those efforts run the gamut from fencing to habitat restoration to sampling efforts to gauge the population.

County officials don’t have anything personal against the tortoise. But they also point to estimates that show some 50,000 desert tortoises are kept as pets in Clark County alone and openly question if the creature is as threatened as the federal government maintains.

“We’ve got people that are starving and such massive needs that we can’t keep pouring money into this,” commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said.

The broader issue of spending on the desert tortoise arose last week at the commission meeting during a routine approval of a $125,250 contract amendment with NewFields Companies for work in sampling the tortoise population at Boulder City Conservation Easement, an 86,423-acre area south of Boulder City.

Commissioners made it clear that they want to take a closer look in the near future at its multi-species habitat conservation plan, which was put in place in 2000. Under that plan, some $95 million has been spent on 78 species of protected plants and animals, including the tortoise. That figure includes the money spent on the tortoise.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service surveys of 11,200 square miles of tortoise habitat across the four-state range provide an estimate of 95,000 adult tortoises.

By using that figure as a basis for estimating the desert tortoise population of all the range’s habitat, the result is fewer than 295,000 adult tortoises across 25,900 square miles.

In Nevada, as many as 91,000 adult tortoises are estimated to be living in some 8,100 square miles of habitat, according to federal figures.

The desert tortoise was listed as threatened in 1989, forcing the county to come up with a way to allow future develpment while complying with federal requirements to protect the species.

In 2000, the county adopted a multi-species habitat conservation plan, which it administers for all local municipalities. That plan carries out measures to compensate for the loss of habitat, such as restoration and monitoring of species, including the tortoise.

Under the plan, developers pay a $550 per acre fee, which goes to the county’s Desert Conservation Program, said Marci Henson, assistant director of comprehensive planning for the county.

Henson said the plan has helped streamline the environmental permitting process for private property owners, saving an estimated $300 million since the program began.

Tortoises live in blackbrush and Mojave desert shrub. They have brown shells that can grow longer than 14 inches long. They spend much of their time in burrows, venturing out to eat wildflowers and other plants.

They also live a long time — more than 50 years in some cases.

So the federal government will be spending years watching the current generation of tortoises across southeastern California, Southern Nevada and parts of Utah and Arizona.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began its monitoring efforts in 2001. It will take 25 years, until 2026, to gain enough data from a generation of tortoises to see the full scope of changes brought about by efforts to aid the animal’s population.

As a result, officials will have to wait years to see the results.

“They have to survive 20 years before they even start producing babies,” said Roy Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “They’re not like rabbits.”

That effort includes looking at the overall long-term patterns and changes in the tortoise population, not just the current raw numbers.

Federal officials also say that pet tortoises aren’t part of the equation for classifying wild tortoises as threatened, as the pets can introduce diseases and genetic impurities if set loose.

The work on the deal approved last week involves sending teams out to look for tortoises and accompanying signs of the creatures and where they live. That entails looking for scat, bone fragments and burrows, said Ken MacDonald, a partner and senior environmental manager at Newfields.

Commissioner Susan Brager said at the meeting that there are more important things to spend much-needed funding on, such as helping young people succeed.

“We spend millions on certain animals and our youth do not get all the help they need,” Brager said.

In the end, it would be nice to spend the money on other things, Sisolak said.

As for the tortoises, they’ll still be counted in Clark County.

“They've survived on their own for centuries,” Sisolak said.

Time to throw the Antiquities Act into the recycling bin of history

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Utah

OPINION

By RON ARNOLD
The Examiner

Two words — national monument — conjure Images of the Lincoln Memorial or the Statue of Liberty, but probably not the Virgin Islands Coral Reef or the Alibates Flint Quarries near Amarillo, Texas.

Only one of those is not on the list of America’s 103 national monuments: the Lincoln Memorial, which was authorized by Congress in 1910.

Congress has rarely authorized a national monument, although it has the power to do so at any time. Overwhelmingly, a president of the United States has created our national monuments, and did it by merely writing and signing a proclamation – a form of executive order – empowered by the controversial and politicized Antiquities Act of 1906.

Originally spurred by looting of Southwest Indian ruins for artifacts - dubbed “antiquities” by anthropologists - in such places as Colorado's Mesa Verde, Congress empowered the president to protect by proclamation, "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest," on federal lands, and to “reserve” (read “take”) private property for the purpose.

At the time, nobody worried about giving the president power like a Roman emperor, to swiftly proclaim protection for government property (and coveted private property) without waiting for an unconcerned Congress to act.

Today, a lot of Americans fear and loathe that power and that law, because it has become a political weapon to devastate the fossil-fuel industry.

As an example, President Clinton unilaterally proclaimed the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, thereby depriving the energy-using public of an estimated 62 billion tons of clean-burning, low-sulfur coal, five billion barrels of oil, and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Clinton's decree also wiped out dozens of tax-base school land tracts of the state of Utah.

Compounding the problem, four agencies manage 101 of the monuments: the National Park Service (79), the Bureau of Land Management (19), the U.S. Forest Service (7) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (7).

Some monuments are co-managed by two agencies, so overlap complicates dealing with them. Two other agencies co-manage one monument each.

The Antiquities Act is a poster child for mission creep, that contagious federal “we-want-more” disease. We have 22 national monuments associated with Native American sites, 28 with historic sites and 57 with nature sites.

Among these sites was added with a 2009 proclamation was the 9,500 square mile, 6.8-mile deep Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, protecting the deepest place in the world’s oceans, with regional headquarters in Hawaii and no tour buses to the trench. Go figure.

National monuments have a nasty habit of developing mission creep once established, especially against public access.

The motorized recreation community is particularly burned by the hikers-only purists who relentlessly push for controls, then road and trail closures, then selective bans, and finally lockouts.

I asked Duane Taylor, director of federal affairs with the Motorcycle Industry Council, about his organization’s experience.

He told me, “Unfortunately, motorized recreation is far too often shut out of national monument areas. The blanket designation of lands as a national monument, along with the almost-certain restrictions that come along with designation, could effectively mean that much of the total economic contribution of recreation to the area will be forfeited,” he said.

That became an issue in Congress this week with a “briefing on benefits of the Antiquities Act to local economies, communities, and national treasures.”

The briefing featured panelists from the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Pew Charitable Trusts, Wilderness Society, Outdoor Industry Association and others.

Panelists cited a study showing that outdoor recreation generated $646 billion in national sales and services in 2011 and supported 6.1 million jobs. I asked Taylor for his response.

“They’re telling only part of the story,” he said. “The same study shows that approximately $257 billion or nearly 40 percent of the total $646 billion in economic contribution comes from motorized recreation.”

The power of the Antiquities Act needs to be throttled. It’s not impossible. Congress has reduced presidential powers under the act twice, first in 1950, requiring congressional consent for any future proclamation or enlargement of national monuments in Wyoming; second, requiring congressional consent in Alaska for proclamations of greater than 5,000 acres.

We may hope that the third time is the charm.

RON ARNOLD, a Washington Examiner columnist, is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

New Desert Protection Act Coming

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Commentary

by Sen. Dianne Feinstein
SCV News.com

As America’s environmental innovator, California demonstrates that conserving natural resources and developing clean energy sources can coexist.

That is the reason California set the goal of generating 33 percent of its electricity by 2020 from renewable resources such as wind and solar energy. It is also the reason Los Angeles committed to phasing out coal-fired electrical power over the next 12 years.

That kind of forward thinking should extend into other areas, including how we use California’s deserts for energy development.

There is strong support in California to protect pristine desert areas. There is also strong support for the responsible development of renewable energy projects.

I believe those two goals can exist side-by-side by focusing energy development on suitable sites such as military bases and disturbed private land while protecting unspoiled desert landscapes.

The Mojave Desert is home to majestic mountains and spectacular valleys, towering sand dunes and stunning oases, all of which provide habitat for diverse plants and wildlife.

These beautiful vistas are home to remarkable archaeology, beauty and wildlife. One can find some of the last remaining dinosaur tracks, Native American petroglyphs, abundant spring wildflowers and threatened species including the bighorn sheep and the desert tortoise, which can live to be 100 years old.

But the western edge of the Mojave — 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles — is also home to Edwards Air Force Base and other developed lands.

In 2009, I learned the Bureau of Land Management was accepting applications to build solar and wind projects on federal land throughout the Mojave Desert, including pristine lands donated for conservation purposes in the East Mojave. I acted quickly to prevent this type of development, introducing legislation to establish the Mojave Trails National Monument in the eastern Mojave.

But I also obtained federal funding to study the feasibility of generating renewable energy on military installations in California’s deserts in a manner consistent with both environmental protection and the military mission.

The study, conducted by the Department of Defense and released in January 2012, concluded: “Over 7,000 megawatts of solar energy development is technically feasible and financially viable at several Department of Defense installations in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts of California.”

The report found that “Edwards Air Force Base had the highest solar potential of the military installations studied.” Of the 7,164 megawatts of potential solar capacity at military installations in the California deserts, the base accounts for 3,488 megawatts (49 percent) of the total. Of 125,507 economically viable acres for solar photovoltaic ground development, the base contains 92,009 acres (73 percent of the total).

I will soon introduce a new California Desert Protection Act to address the many competing land use demands in the desert, including conservation, recreation and military training. A central piece of the legislation will protect 266,000 acres of land donated or acquired with federal conservation funds by creating the Mojave Trails National Monument.

I have worked with members of the energy industry in the past to develop this legislation in a way that addresses their concerns and look forward to receiving their support for this bill.

It is possible to preserve our natural environment while producing environmentally-friendly energy. The next generation of Californians will thank us for it.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is the author of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act.

Cadiz project would drain our lifeblood from the desert

Guest commentary

By Jay Cravath
San Bernardino County Sun

Newspapers recently reported that Congressman Paul Cook, representing the northern Mojave Desert, called for a federal review of the Cadiz Water Project. The proposal to take groundwater from an aquifer that includes the Mojave National Preserve prompted his action. Numerous environmental groups, including the National Parks Conservation Association, the Great Basin Water District, farmers and ranchers, all have been vocal in their stringent opposition. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ approval of the project last October ignited a fire storm.

Yet with all the opposition and vitriol — articles, editorials and lawsuits — the interests of an important constituency are missing. Certainly the project will draw more water than the aquifer can replace; it will pose a threat to the ranchers, rural communities and East Mojave landowners; and yes, it will do long-term harm to the springs of the precious Mojave National Preserve. However, concern for this sweeping landscape’s first citizens is conspicuously missing.

We, the Chemehuevi, along with our neighboring tribes, have traveled Mojave’s trails for a thousand years. For us, the New York Mountains are akin to the Hebrews’ Mount of Olives; the forests of the Ship Mountains, our Cedars of Lebanon. Nuwü, The People, consider those springs as important for reasons other than physical survival. Anthropologist Catherine Fowler describes our springs and streams as “highly symbolic sacred places, part of a living landscape, a storied land peopled with animals, plants and other beings that brought it life and gave it meaning.” We have stories, sung and told, exalting the names of this lifeblood. These tales celebrate our travels, hunts and gatherings. They were woven into the fabric of our own “Old Testament” and give us our belonging to the place.

The trails that cross and intersect this vast and compelling space are also honored through the Salt Songs. These songs are still sung today, and they traverse the landscape, describing symbolic and actual journeys. They are recited in cycles, often of four — a sacred number for us. They guide us on the trails through the geography of their text. Perhaps the lyrics will instruct: “By the three circled peaks with the bloom of mesquite between. Shade and a quiet pond, the tender shoots.”

The Creator, Ocean Woman, “sprinkled particles of her skin upon the sea to create a patch of earth, which she stretched to present size,” reminds Dr. Fowler. What could be a more powerful metaphor for our connection to the land than this from our origin story?

In a recent keynote address to the National Clean Energy Summit, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell touted the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) as a long-term approach to planning for public spaces, yet giving stronger voice to the land and new sensitivity to its original stewards. “Landscape-level conservation objectives” are said to embrace a comprehensive approach that considers the overall health, sustainability and even aesthetics of the landscape. But this is not the case. Instead, the DRECP offers a method to commercialize discrete bits of real estate to private contractors and owners. Dividing our sacred lands into pieces is nothing new to us. Alongside conservation groups, we call for a more far-reaching vision of this earth and water.

Since ancient times, we have seen the land as connected, not to be divided into disparate chunks. Whether the Interior Department’s commitment to a paradigm shift is real or a semantic glitch remains to be seen in the implementation.

On Cadiz, however, we stand firm in rejecting the greed and narcissism of those who would put their corporate bottom line above the rest of us. As this process moves forward, any decision must also weigh the sacred nature of these lands to the Chemehuevi and our fellow nations.

Jay Cravath is cultural director of the Chemehuevi Tribe.

County gives up Mojave Preserve roads

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

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

BY IMRAN GHORI
Press-Enterprise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support flows in for sick desert tortoises

In this Aug 22, 2013, photo, research Associate Pamela Flores conducts a health assessment on a desert tortoise at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in Las Vegas. Federal funds are running out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they've been caring for since the animals were added to the endangered species list in 1990. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)(Credit: AP)

BY HANNAH DREIER
Salon

LAS VEGAS (AP) — News that hundreds of threatened desert tortoises face euthanasia with the pending closure of a refuge near Las Vegas has generated a storm of reaction that has government officials scrambling to find alternatives and fielding offers from people wishing to adopt the reptiles or make donations.

The Associated Press reported this week that the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, which has sheltered thousands of displaced tortoises for 23 years, is scheduled to close in 2014 as funding runs out.

As the location just south of Las Vegas begins to ramp down, it is euthanizing tortoises deemed too unhealthy to return to the wild. Healthy tortoises won’t be killed.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery coordinator Roy Averill-Murray estimated last week that about 50 percent to 60 percent of the 1,400 tortoises that live at the refuge were sick. Such tortoises cannot be released into the wild because they could infect their healthy wild brethren.

The estimate prompted a public outcry and debate among the various agencies connected to the refuge about the number of at-risk tortoises. It also forced the agency to issue a statement assuring the public that no healthy tortoises will be killed but saying that euthanasia is the only option for many of the animals because they are sick. Fish and Wildlife also assigned four people to field calls and put a message about the situation on its spokeswoman’s answering machine.

Deputy Fish and Wildlife Service director Carolyn Wells said Wednesday that the 50 percent estimate of sick tortoises at the facility may be correct, but added that not all of the ailing animals will be killed. Some of them could potentially go to research facilities, she said, though she could not say how many, and she does not yet have commitments from biologists.

Fish and Wildlife operates the center in conjunction with the San Diego Zoo.

Allyson Walsh, associate director for the zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, said just 30 percent of the residents are receiving medical treatment, though some others have been quarantined and need new evaluations.

“The ones that don’t get better and that are sick and suffering will probably be euthanized because that’s the sensible thing to do,” she said.

She disputed the notion that budget cuts are forcing the reptiles to be put down. Although the center has housed sickly tortoises for years, Walsh said they eventually would have been euthanized anyway.

Walsh said sick tortoises cannot be adopted out and she has not been contacted by any researchers interested in taking in the sick animals.

“That’s a possibility but we wouldn’t transfer an animal to anyone who was doing destructive research,” she said.

The right thing to do for a sick animal is euthanize it, she said.

Seth Webster disagrees.

Webster, a 36 year old programmer from New York, created a Change.org petition that together with a similar one on the site has drawn more than 3,000 signatures. He said he is working with a Florida tortoise refuge that recently bought land in Nevada to see if Fish and Wildlife will transfer the tortoises, or at least let an outside evaluator decide which animals are so sick they should be killed.

“Animals have a very strong will to survive,” he said. “These tortoises live to 100 years. If we euthanize him, are we robbing him of 30 years? It doesn’t seem fair to euthanize them just because the tortoises are sick and someone ran out of money.”

Desert tortoises have made their rocky homes in Utah, California, Arizona and Nevada for 200 million years. But the prehistoric animal has some unfortunate evolutionary quirks, including a susceptibility to flu-like respiratory infections and difficulties settling in to new homes. They are also sensitive to change as the tortoises sometimes dehydrate themselves by voiding a year’s worth of stored water when handled.

These weaknesses have combined with widespread habitat destruction in the quickly developing Southwest to dramatically reduce the tortoises’ numbers.

The Bureau of Land Management has partially funded the conservation center through fees imposed on developers who disturb tortoise habitat, but when the housing bubble burst several years ago, that funding dropped far below what was needed to run the center.

“Here’s an upside to this. It’s gone international,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Jeannie Stafford said. “We have gotten hundreds of people saying they would like to adopt. Thousands of people signing petitions. It’s been people wanting to help us with the situation.”

But most of the would-be tortoise Good Samaritans cannot actually adopt the animals. Federal laws intended to protect the reptiles ban their transportation across state lines.

People who live in Nevada can adopt the slowpokes through the Desert Tortoise Group. But they should know that owners who kill or release their long-lived pets could face prison time.

The Humane Society of the United States is setting up a fund this week for out-of-staters who want to help but cannot take a tortoise home.

Despite the overwhelming response, the Bureau of Land Management is not reconsidering its plan to pull funding that goes toward the center’s $1 million annual budget.

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

The agency plans to redirect the $810 fee that developers pay for each acre of tortoise habitat they disturb to environmental preservation efforts.

The center has historically taken in about 1,000 tortoises a year, but will stop accepting new residents in coming months.

Conservation Center Tortoises Will Be Released

Desert tortoises are threatened by their own conservation center. (Desert Tortoise Conservation Center)

CBS KXNT

Las Vegas – Southern Nevada’s 17-year-old Desert Tortoise Conservation Center will close by the end of 2014 as the funding that supports it dries up.

There are 1,400 desert tortoises living at the center, where management and wildlife officials were scrambling on Monday to correct the misconception that the animals will be euthanized on a large scale.

Jeannie Stafford of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the national press misreported the center’s intentions. The center is working to get some of the tortoises adopted through the humane society. Some could go to private land that can accommodate them, the remainder, if they are healthy, will be released into the wild.

The center has so many tortoises because people find them and take them home as pets, only to have a change of heart later.

Stafford urges parents, kids, and anyone else who might get the urge to adopt — if you see a tortoise in the wild, it’s best to leave it there.

Mojave Cross to return to desert home

National Park rangers to send back cross

Golden Gate National Recreation Area ranger Nijaune Winston stands by the Mojave Cross. The National Park district intends to return the cross to its original locale in the Mojave National Preserve. (Photo courtesy of Golden Gate National Recreation Area)

by Mark Noack
Half Moon Bay Review

National Park Service officials this week took custody of the Mojave Cross with plans to return it to its desert home, one week after the handmade monument was found mysteriously on the side of Skyline Boulevard.

Once found, the cross, a 6-foot steel-pipe structure, was delivered to the Half Moon Bay Sheriff’s substation. Then it was transported to an undisclosed location in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. GGNRA officials say the cross is being treated as evidence until it is returned to the Mojave National Preserve. Those arrangements are still being made.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Yucca Valley resident Henry Sandoz, the caretaker of the cross, installed a replacement at the same location as part of a Veterans Day ceremony. The event also marked a successful land trade as a workaround to the delicate church-state issues at play.

Originally erected in 1934 to honor World War I veterans, the Mojave Cross became the target of lawsuits, appeals and court rulings after its surrounding property became part of the National Park system. The cross became a legal pawn in a larger controversy. Civil-rights groups viewed its as a blatant religious display on public land while veterans’ associations defended it as a memorial.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 2010 ruling on the matter, but just days afterward the cross was stolen. It remained missing for two years until last week, when a television news crew discovered it lying on the side Highway 35. The cross was wrapped up and had a message asking whoever found it to return it. Sandoz and National Park officials later authenticated it was the same cross stolen in 2010.

Last week, the National Park Service announced it was transferring a small piece of the Mojave National Preserve to the California Veterans of Foreign Wars as a way to resolve the central conflict of the lawsuits.

Cross stands again

The new Mojave Cross after it was installed on Sunday, November 11, Veterans Day. (DAVID OLSON/STAFF PHOTO)

BY DAVID OLSON
Press-Enterprise

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- After more than a decade of First Amendment court battles, a cross stands again in the Mojave National Preserve, for the first time with the legal blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than 100 people Sunday, November 11, watched as the seven-foot-tall iron cross was hoisted onto and then bolted into Sunrise Rock, which is 12 miles off Interstate 15 about halfway between Barstow and Las Vegas. Then, the commander of the California Veterans of Foreign Wars, Earl Fulk, formally rededicated it.

The Veterans Day ceremony occurred 78 years after World War I veterans erected the cross in honor of their fallen comrades, and 11 years after a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union sought to remove it.

The ACLU, representing a former National Park service employee, argued that permitting a cross on public land was an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity.

After two federal courts agreed with the ACLU, the Supreme Court in 2010 ruled that a land exchange, under which the land around the cross was converted into private property, passed constitutional muster. The VFW now owns the acre under and around the cross. The land exchange was formally completed Nov. 2.

The ceremony occurred as Riverside discussed a similar land exchange after threats of a lawsuit over the Mt. Rubidoux cross. A military atheist group is objecting to a proposed veterans memorial in Lake Elsinore that includes a cross.

The iron cross that had stood on the Mojave site for years was stolen two months after the Supreme Court decision. It was found Nov. 5, south of San Francisco. A plywood box encased it during years of court appeals.

The cross installed Sunday was a replacement created by one of the cross's caretakers, Henry Sandoz, 73, of Yucca Valley. Sandoz said concrete will be poured inside the iron pipes on another day, to make it harder to steal.

For 30 years Sandoz and his wife Wanda looked after several crosses on the site, those previous either vandalized or stolen.

Wanda Sandoz, 68, said she was overjoyed when she saw the cross finally go up, at last with its legality undisputed.

“I can't even describe it,” she said of her feelings. “It was just wonderful to see it go up and know it's going to be able to stay. That's the best thing.”

The Sandozes traded five acres of their land in exchange for the acre ceded to the VFW.

Sunrise Rock sits amid a sea of Joshua trees just off Cima Road.

Rees Lloyd, a Banning resident representing the American Legion at the ceremony, said the lawsuit against the cross was an attack on religious freedom and involved a memorial that few saw.

“Why would anyone be offended?” said Lloyd, a former Legion district commander who was wearing a white button with a red line through “ACLU.” “You can't see it from the freeway. You have to drive to it to be offended.”

Chuck Wilcox, 47, Henry Sandoz's son-in-law and a Yucca Valley resident, said the years of litigation “was a bigger deal than it should have been.”

“It just seemed ridiculous to me,” said Wilcox, who helped carry the blanket-wrapped cross up Sunrise Rock and then helped raise it. “The whole time I've lived out here, it was just here, part of the landscape.”

The land swap was first negotiated by U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands. Congress approved it.

But a federal appellate court ruled against it, saying that transferring one acre of land to the VFW in the middle of the vast expanse of federal park land “will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement” of a religious symbol.

A divided Supreme Court in 2010 overturned that decision.

“The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement (of religion) does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

During the ceremony, Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for the Texas-based Liberty Institute, which focuses on religious-freedom cases and was involved in the Mojave cross case, talked of the indignities that crosses on the site have been through.

“This memorial has been bagged, it's been torn down and it's been stolen,” he said. “And now it's back, it's up and you're standing on VFW property,” Sasser said to loud cheers and clapping. “It's fantastic.”

A cable surrounds the newly private land, with signs stating that it is VFW-owned property open to the public.

The Sandozes became caretakers in 1983, when Riley Bembry, one of the WWI veterans who erected the cross in 1934, was near death and asked the couple to take care of the cross. Veterans Day was established to honor WWI veterans and now honors all who served in the military.

On a table topped with red, white and blue cupcakes to celebrate the installation of the cross sat a wood-framed black-and-white photo of Bembry. The photo usually is in the Sandozes' living room, near an oak dining room table that Reilly gave to the couple.

“My great friend Riley, he would really be smiling down on us now,” said Henry Sandoz.

“He probably is,” he said with a laugh.

Stolen Mojave cross mysteriously reappears in California

An unsigned note was found taped to the Mojave Memorial Cross, which was found Monday. A new cross is due to be raised atop Sunrise Rock at Mojave National Preserve at 11 a.m. Sunday, followed at 1 p.m. by a re-dedication ceremony. (The Associated Press)

By Henry Brean
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A stolen cross that sparked controversy and a Supreme Court case may soon be headed back to its Mojave Desert home after it was left by the side of a road south of San Francisco.

The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office recovered the white metal cross late Monday morning near the town of Half Moon Bay, Calif., more than 500 miles from where it stood for decades before being stolen in 2010.

Based on a tip from a San Francisco television station, deputies found the cross strapped upright to a fence post with an unsigned note taped to it that read: "This cross is an important historical artifact. It is in fact the Mojave cross, taken on the evening of May 9, 2010 from Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert. I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to notify the appropriate authorities of its presence here."

Authorities don't yet know who returned the cross or who stole it in the first place.

Its mysterious reappearance comes just days before a replica was due to be placed atop Sunrise Rock as part of a Veterans Day service.

Long before igniting a constitutional controversy over religious symbols on federal land, the welded steel symbol was mounted to the rock 75 miles southwest of Las Vegas by a group of World War I vets as a memorial to fallen soldiers.

For decades, it served as a site for Easter Sunday services and the occasional veterans event. A handful of volunteers maintained - and occasionally replaced - the cross, which was damaged from time to time by vandals and the desert wind.

The Mojave Memorial Cross, as it came to be known, still stood in 1994 when the 1.6 million acres surrounding it was designated as a national preserve. Three years later, a retired park service employee lodged a complaint about it because he considered it a government endorsement of Christianity.

A pair of lawsuits ensued, and the cross was cast into darkness, spending several years covered by boards like a roadside sign with no writing on it.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in with a 5-4 decision that cleared the symbol to remain on display while a lower court reconsidered the case.

The cross was stolen two weeks later.

At least twice since then, replicas were placed at the site, only to be taken down by National Park Service employees acting under a court order.

The long legal fight was finally resolved last week, when the park service transferred ownership of Sunrise Rock and the acre surrounding it to the California office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a private organization free to erect and maintain a cross there.

In exchange, the park service got five acres of formerly private land inside the Mojave National Preserve.

"We have a solution that honors those who died for their country and honors national parks," said preserve superintendent Stephanie R. Dubois in a statement.

A new cross is due to be raised at the site at 11 a.m. Sunday, followed at 1 p.m. by a rededication ceremony featuring longtime caretakers Henry and Wanda Sandoz and others.

It is unclear whether the original cross will make it back to the site alongside Cima Road, about 12 miles south of Interstate 15, in time for Sunday's event. Authorities in San Mateo County said the recovered cross would be turned over to park service officials in San Francisco.

No matter which cross is raised this weekend, James Rowoldt, CEO of the VFW in California, is just glad the underlying dispute has finally been settled.

"I'm just happy for the Sandozes. I'm happy it's over for them," Rowoldt said earlier Monday, before learning about the cross found near Half Moon Bay. "It's just a happy day for everyone."