Preserve approves science-based alternative to manage water for wildlife

National Park News
Mojave National Preserve

In response to a California Department of Fish and Game proposal to convert twelve abandoned ranching wells to wildlife waters, the National Park Service (NPS) initiated an environmental assessment in November 2005.

After considering potential impacts and public comments, the NPS has selected a science-based alternative from among several proposals for managing water for wildlife in Mojave National Preserve.

The decision was recorded through the signing of a Finding of No Significant Impact document.

The selection of this alternative means that some abandoned ranching wells will be converted to wildlife watering devices, known as guzzlers, in order to carry out research on the need for additional water sources for wildlife over broad areas. The research will provide sound factual information which will be used to make future management decisions about the need for additional wildlife waters.

In implementing the decision, the National Park Service, in consultation with the California Department of Fish and Game, is soliciting independent research proposals for projects that address the presence or absence of artificial waters and their effect on mule deer and other wildlife.

Research topics may include:

• -Effects of water developments on wildlife populations, including both game and non-game animals;
• -Effects of water developments on predators;
• -Water quality at both artificial and natural water sources;
• -Effects of water developments on plant communities;
• -The role of water developments in transmission of diseases.
• -Mule deer population studies to determine distribution, abundance, health, population genetics and water needs.

Over 130 springs and seeps are spread across Mojave National Preserve. The National Park Service recently initiated a long-term monitoring project to determine how precipitation patterns affect the availability of water for wildlife at these natural water sources by surveying them during the driest part of each year. Over 75% had water during the last survey.

In addition to natural water sources, there are also six existing large-game guzzlers (principally used by desert bighorn sheep) and 119 small-game guzzlers (principally used by quail, chukar and other small wildlife), as well as several dozen currently operating water developments for cattle ranching.

Senators Call for Reconsideration of Proposed Changes to Federal Old Road Claims Policy in Wilderness Areas

From YubaNet.com

Citing serious concerns about the negative impact of road development and off-road vehicle use on sensitive desert wilderness areas, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and a group of 5 other Democratic senators are calling on the Administration to reconsider proposed changes to the Department of the Interior's federal policy for old road claims.

Revisions to the federal policy for these claims, known as R.S. 2477, could open up thousands of acres of public lands to paved roads, where dirt roads and tracks in the desert existed before. This could have a dramatic impact on many of the country's national wilderness areas, particularly for the California Mojave Desert.

In a letter to Lynn Scarlett, Acting Secretary of the Interior, Senators Feinstein, Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) called for a serious reconsideration of the proposed policy changes.

Following is the text of the letter sent to Acting Secretary Scarlett:

Dear Secretary Scarlett:

We write to express our deep concern about the Department of the Interior's recently proposed R.S. 2477 policy. This policy is flawed for several reasons.

First, the new policy would risk significant harm to our National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, National Monuments, Wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, proposed wilderness and other special public lands by paving the way for unprecedented road development and damaging off-road vehicle use.

By making it easier for those pressing questionable claims as public highways (such as trails and off-highway vehicle (OHV) tracks) the policy could devastate public treasures like the Mojave National Preserve and other sensitive lands protected by the California Desert Protection Act, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Denali National Park and Preserve and Dinosaur National Monument, just to name a few.

Second, we strongly disagree with the conclusion that the new policy is required by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in, SUWA v. BLM, 425 F.3d 735 (10th Cir. 2005), or that, in any event, the court's decision should be applied on a national level. While that decision stated that the Department could undertake non-binding administrative determinations for internal purposes, the decision in no way requires a wide-reaching new policy for sensitive lands (such as National Parks). Nor should the Department necessarily apply the decision outside of the six States in which it is binding. The Department has broad discretion to protect our special places from potentially harmful R.S. 2477 claims, and it should not surrender that discretion lightly.

Furthermore, the new policy seems to contradict assurances you made to Congress in 2003 that the Department's R.S. 2477 policies (as expressed in a memorandum of understanding with the State of Utah) would not apply in National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, or Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas, and that the policy would only allow recognition of rights-of-way of the size and purpose they had in 1976, and would be limited to roads over which four-wheeled vehicles can travel.

Finally, we are concerned that the proposed road maintenance agreement would make it easier for States or counties to perform landscape-changing highway maintenance and construction on public lands, without adequate environmental analysis or protections. It is unclear what role the public will have in providing input and evaluating information used to make administrative determinations and road maintenance agreements that will significantly impact publicly-owned resources.

We strongly urge you to reconsider this ill-advised policy.

Middle of Nowhere Is a Center of Conflict

A federal plan allows more recreation and mining in a rugged land of national monuments.



By Julie Cart, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times



VERMILION CLIFFS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — The 3 million acres of federal land in the Arizona Strip have their remote geography to thank for preserving their spectacular red sandstone escarpments, slot canyons, rock art and ruins of ancient pueblos.

One of the last places in the Lower 48 to be mapped, the strip, in the northwestern corner of the state, is today bypassed by major highways and mostly devoid of gas stations, hotels and other visitor services. As a result, more than 12,000 years of human history written on this rugged landscape has remained in place, undisturbed by tourism or development.

That is about to change.

Here at the backdoor of the Grand Canyon, two national monuments, Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs, are poised to absorb the effects of the explosive growth from Las Vegas to the west and St. George, Utah, to the north — two of the fastest expanding areas in the nation.

The federal agency that oversees much of the land in the Arizona Strip, the Bureau of Land Management, is preparing a long-range plan for the area that would allow uranium mining and oil and gas exploration across 96% of the lands outside the monuments.

The plan would also permit livestock grazing in the monuments and open 3,000 miles of roads to motorized recreation, including some in the monuments. A 7,100-acre "play area" for dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles would be established. And although that area would be outside the monuments, it would be next to land set aside to protect a threatened cactus and a Native American petroglyph site.

Critics, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the local County Board of Supervisors, say the agency's plan fails to protect the two monuments with their thousands of historic and cultural sites, and exposes fragile BLM lands to nearly unrestricted livestock grazing and recreational activities.

Others say the proposal won't safeguard rare plants and animals, such as the desert tortoise and 20 species of raptors and other birds, including a colony of California condors reintroduced at Vermilion Cliffs.

"What you have in the Arizona Strip is a kind of sleepy place that has been highlighted with two monuments, but the BLM hasn't really risen to these different challenges," said Martha Hahn, a former BLM administrator with 21 years at the agency. Hahn now works with the conservation group Grand Canyon Trust.

But current BLM officials say the plan, which is four years in the works and won't be finalized for months, is a commendable effort to reconcile the agency's tradition of various uses on public land with its newer mandate to conserve national monuments.

"It's all about finding the right balance between protecting the resource and allowing the public to use the land for grazing and other activities," said Scott Florence, the BLM's district manager for the Arizona Strip.

The Arizona Strip was cut off from its surrounding area by the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River until a ferry was established in 1871, which remained the only river crossing until the first bridge was built 60 years later.

After ancient Pueblo people settled on the mesas and in the canyons, only the intrepid passed through here: Spanish friars in the 18th century, wayward mountain men, scattered trappers and, in the 19th century, Mormon families guiding wagons along the Honeymoon Trail to St. George.

In 2000, President Clinton created the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, at just over 1 million acres, and the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, at nearly 300,000 acres. The BLM manages another 1 1/2 million acres in the area that don't carry the same level of protection.

The presidential proclamations called the monuments geological treasures. The one for Vermillion Cliffs reads: "Full of natural splendor and a sense of solitude, this area remains remote and unspoiled, qualities that are essential to the protection of the scientific and historic objects it contains."

Up to now, the Arizona Strip has been administered under a 1992 management plan. The proposed plan is the first to take into account the monument designations. Much of the land within the national monuments was intended to be set aside for scientific study, but BLM budgets often fail to make room for expensive scientific analysis. To survey the sites in Grand Canyon-Parashant, for example, would cost $30 million, according to Diana Hawks, who leads the BLM's planning effort.

According to an article in the latest edition of Issues in Science and Technology, published by the National Academies and the University of Texas at Dallas, only 6% of the BLM's 260 million acres in the West have been surveyed for cultural resources. About 263,000 cultural sites have been found, according to the article, but archeologists estimate there are likely to be 4.5 million sites on BLM holdings.

The pattern is repeated here. More than 97% of the land within the monuments has not been surveyed for archeological or paleontological sites, and according to a scientific study conducted last summer, 63% of the sites in Grand Canyon-Parashant are vulnerable to damage by off-road vehicle routes, as are nearly half the sites in the more remote Vermilion Cliffs monument.

"These archeological sites are a nonrenewable resource. Once they are gone, they are gone forever, " said Peter Bungart, a Flagstaff-based archeologist who conducted last year's monument surveys. "The silent history that's on that landscape is important, unless you argue that history is not important."

The BLM's new plan concludes that none of the proposed activities in the monuments would damage resources. But critics contend that the agency can't claim that roads won't damage archeological resources, considering the BLM doesn't even know where all of the sites are.

On a recent tour of Vermilion Cliffs, Rick Moore of the Grand Canyon Trust pointed out many archeological sites near roads, especially vulnerable to vandals. He showed one site atop the Paria Plateau where a road sliced though remnants of an early pueblo, the ruin's low stone walls flanking the dirt road.

The Coconino County Board of Supervisors is particularly concerned about the web of new roads open in the monuments and the other BLM lands.

"We have ample evidence that misuse of the land in these landscapes is sometimes irreparable, and sometimes it ain't gonna be right in your lifetime," Supervisor Carl Taylor said.

Taylor said the prospect of renewed uranium mining has created a rush to stake claims on the western side of the Arizona Strip and that the activity would create even more roads.

According to the EPA, the BLM's plan would open nearly nine times more public land to off-road vehicle use.

The EPA also argued against off-road travel in desert tortoise habitat and recommended that the BLM "eliminate open motorized and mechanized cross-county travel due to substantial impacts from this activity on soils, water resources, cultural resources and wildlife."

Proponents of motorized recreation, on the other hand, fear they will lose some of the freedom they enjoyed before the monuments were created.

"What we're worried about is that traditional routes are going to be closed, somewhat arbitrarily," said Dale Grange of Hurricane, Utah, president of the Tri State ATV Club and the motorized recreation representative at BLM meetings. Grange said motorcycle and ATV rallies in the Arizona Strip draw hundreds of participants. But because of BLM restrictions, organizers have to turn people away.

The BLM's Florence said the management plan for the area, though not perfect, is the result of years of careful, ongoing study.

"We fully expect to make some changes, clarifying what the plan does in term of protecting monument objects," he said. "It needs to be more clear, building in specific details exactly how the monument objects will be protected."

Mountain Lion Eradication Without Prior Study Rapped

Park Service at Lake Mead Accedes to "Shoot First" Intervention of Arizona

By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Press Release

The National Park Service will allow Arizona game officials to kill as many as ten mountain lions at Lake Mead National Recreation Area this spring without any study of the need for, or the effects of, the action. In a letter released today, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is asking the Park Service to block the mountain lion hunt until basic biological evaluations have been completed.

Citing losses of bighorn sheep, the Arizona Game and Fish Department has arranged for a predator hunter to kill ten mountain lions on the federal lands within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. While the National Park Service initially "asked" to delay the killing until the state produced some data about lion and bighorn populations in the national recreation area, the federal agency has now dropped its objections to the state removing the cats from federal land.

"This shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later stance is an abdication of the Park Service's responsibility to protect all wildlife within our national parks," stated PEER Board member Frank Buono, the former assistant superintendent at Mojave National Preserve. "Responsible wildlife management requires that both the consequences and the alternatives are assessed before coming in with guns blazing."

Among the questions that have not been addressed at Lake Mead are:

• How many mountain lions there are on the Arizona side of Lake Mead and whether killing ten cats would wipe out the entire population in the area;
• Arizona sells permits to hunt bighorn sheep but has not studied whether it makes more sense to sell fewer permits rather than kill mountain lions; and
• The bighorn herd at Lake Mead numbers approximately 1,000 and serves as a stocking reserve, supplying some 300 sheep over the past decade for other areas. Game officials claim mountain lions have killed seven sheep but it is not known if that is an excessive level of predation or what level of predation is prudent for this 1,000 sheep population.

Another issue is the deference of the National Park Service to a state claim of jurisdiction of wildlife on federal lands. Lake Mead is a unit of the national park system, governed by rules and laws requiring it to conserve wildlife and forbidding it from managing animals to increase the populations of hunt-able species, even in those parks where Congress has authorized hunting.

"The National Park Service cannot allow a state to manage the recreation area and its wildlife in a way that is at odds with the standards that govern the national park system," Buono added. "First, the Park Service supinely allows Arizona to set the take limits for bighorn sheep without consequence to the hunted species, and now the Park Service wants to be an onlooker while the state comes forward to kill lions as the remedy to the problem it may have created by promoting over-hunting."

Last year, the Park Service proposed a highly controversial rewrite of its Management Policies that would, among other things, subject park wildlife to state hunting regulations. This rewrite, however, is in limbo as a wholesale leadership shift is occurring within the Park Service's parent agency, the Department of Interior.

Plan to kill mountain lions at Lake Mead draws protests

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Environmentalists are protesting plans to kill 10 or more mountain lions on the Arizona side of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, to prevent them from preying on desert bighorn sheep.

The plan calls for catching and killing individual mountain lions until a recent spate of sheep kills is reduced, said Jim deVos, research branch chief for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

"Not every lion is killing sheep," said deVos, who said a start date had not been set for the program. "We're trying to focus on known kills and trying to remove that lion that is killing sheep."

Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., called the culling plan a mistake.

"Lions are scarce," Patterson said. "We don't need to be killing mountain lions to protect the bighorn. We don't need single-species management, we need ecosystem management."

DeVos said the number of sheep in the region has dropped in recent years, partly because drought has reduced the population of mule deer - a more common mountain lion prey.

At least seven bighorn have been killed by mountain lions this year in the Hoover Dam area on the Arizona side of the Colorado River and Lake Mead, where deVos said about 1,000 bighorn sheep remain.

The area sheep population serves as a source for the reintroduction of bighorn sheep throughout the Southwest, including Colorado, Utah and Texas, deVos said.

Frank Buono, a 33-year veteran of the National Park Service and a national board member of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said culling mountain lions should be a last resort after public discussion and an environmental assessment.

Buono, a former assistant superintendent at the park service's Mojave National Preserve in California, criticized the park service for letting Arizona develop the plan.

Roxanne Dey, park service spokeswoman at Lake Mead, said her agency cedes most authority over hunting and wildlife management in the area to Arizona and Nevada. Both states allow limited hunting of bighorn sheep.

The desert bighorn sheep is Nevada's state animal. More than 5,400 live in mountain ranges across the southern, central and western parts of the state.

"When Congress created the park, that was part of the legislation, that the park could not interfere with hunting," Dey said.

Buono and Patterson suggested that bighorn hunting was propelling the plan to kill mountain lions. DeVos disagreed.

"In the entire state of Arizona, we sell less than a hundred sheep permits," deVos said. "This is not a lucrative business. It's not about money. We lose money on the sheep management program."

DeVos noted a sheep and mountain lion management plan was created last year. He rejected arguments that the state and federal agencies should have a potentially lengthy series of public hearings on the culling plan.

"If we wait, what do we risk? Time is of the essence," he said. "We feel the loss of 50 (percent) to 60 percent of this sheep population is a critical issue."

Norton leaving office with controversial rule

Interior secretary fuels debate over roads on public land in West

Associated Press

DENVER - A new federal policy addressing one of the toughest issues in the West — who owns thousands of miles of roads crisscrossing public land — is producing warnings of more conflicts, lawsuits, and trails in national parks and wilderness morphing into motorways.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who's leaving office in a week, has directed her agencies to apply a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling nationwide when deciding whether local governments or individuals have valid claims to roadways across federal land.

The policy announced Wednesday is intended to help agencies manage existing nonfederal roads on federal land, said Dan Domenico, special assistant to the Interior Department's solicitor.

Norton has said the decision by the Denver-based appeals court made clear that only courts can determine ownership, using laws in individual states as a guide. But federal agencies can develop an administrative process to analyze claims.

"It's still going to be contentious on roads where there's disagreement on historic and current use (of roads)," Domenico said.

Critics see that as an understatement.

"It's a prescription for more litigation. It will not result in a final solution," said Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who has offered legislation since 2003 to come up with a uniform process for settling disputes.

Udall also questioned whether the guidelines are an end-run around Congress. He said he is concerned about new roads being carved in federally protected lands.

National parks not exempted

One of the biggest problems with the policy is that it doesn't exempt national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, environmentalists say. Heidi McIntosh, a lawyer with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said there is fear that off-road-vehicle groups will push to turn paths and trails in protected areas into roadways.

Domenico said there's "no principled way under the law" to exempt those lands.
"But that doesn't mean we're opening up parks to a lot of roads that aren't there now," he said.

That's the catch, said Mary Wells, executive director of the California Wilderness Coalition. She wondered if the new policy will change the status of the hundreds of miles of roads and paths that San Bernardino County claims as county roads in the Mojave National Preserve.

"Many of the roads they call roads are old Jeep tracks and literally goat trails," Wells said.

At the core of the conflict is an 1866 mining law, known as Revised Statute 2477, that allowed local governments to claim rights of way across federal land. When the law was repealed in 1976, Congress allowed states and counties to keep using traditional highways.

Left unresolved were disagreements over whether thousands of miles of dirt paths and trails qualify as roads. In 1997, Congress, wrangling over changes to the law, imposed a moratorium on approval of claims.

Policy has backers, critics

That left places like Moffat County in northwestern Colorado with no recourse when federal agencies closed roads traveled since the 1880s by ranchers and others, said Jeff Comstock, the county's natural resources director.

"We've been accused of wanting to turn cow paths into super interstates across pristine national park land," Comstock said. "That's not true. We live, work and play on those lands."

Moffat and other counties in the region with pending claims were heartened when Norton and former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt signed an agreement in 2003 that settled thousands of road claims in that state. Environmentalists criticized it as a back-room deal that would allow dirt trails to be paved in pristine areas.

The new guidelines supersede that agreement. They apply to Interior Department agencies, which include the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, and manage 507 million acres, or one out of every five acres nationwide.

Critics are again assailing Norton for a policy they feel was drafted behind closed doors.

"This is being done without the public input that we were promised we would have," said Dorothea Farris, a commissioner with Colorado's Pitkin County.

What happens on public land is important to the county, which includes Aspen, because it's in the middle of three federal wilderness areas and the White River National Forest, Farris said.

The same tenet applies to Moffat County, much of it federal land, Comstock said. Until now, he said, the federal government has refused to recognize roads that are crucial to ranchers moving cattle from summer to winter pasture or to hunters accessing public land.

"It finally opens the door so we can talk about these," Comstock said.

AJ Chamberlain, who lives in the mountains west of Boulder, said she feels the door has been slammed shut on resolving the problems of private property owners facing rights of way claims across their yards or driveways. She said the guidelines do nothing to help her and property owners across the West.

"From Wyoming to Alaska to California, it's happening," Chamberlain said. "If I had known this, I never would have bought mountain property."

Depot restored

Park service renovates historic station in Mojave National Preserve

By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
The Press-Enterprise

Items from early ranching activities in the Mojave Desert are on display at Kelso Depot southeast of Baker. Greg Vojtko / The Press-Enterprise

The National Park Service on Saturday will show off the $5.5 million renovation of the historic Kelso Depot as a museum and information center for the Mojave National Preserve.

Once a Union Pacific Railroad showpiece to rival Santa Fe's rail station and Harvey House in Needles, the two-story depot southeast of Baker houses 10 exhibit rooms filled with information about desert wildlife, plant life, American Indian artifacts and rooms restored to look as they did before the depot closed in 1985.

There is even a sound-enhanced exhibit describing the nearby Kelso Dunes, where the grains of sand are polished so smooth by nature that they make a booming sound as they cascade downward during avalanches.

As many as 400 people a day have been visiting the depot since its soft opening in November, says James Woolsey, chief of resource interpretation and outreach for the 1.6-million-acre desert preserve. He expects the flow of visitors to increase after Saturday's formal dedication and grand opening.

The depot, which had been open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week since the soft opening, has expanded to seven days a week, he said.

Saturday's event will include tours of the nearby dunes, reminiscences by former Kelso residents and performances by cowboy poets, an American Indian band and the Needles Select Choir. Among the invited guests are U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who helped secure federal funding for the renovation.

The depot was built by the Union Pacific in 1924, when extra steam locomotives were kept in Kelso to help pull trains up a 2,000-foot grade to Cima 20 miles away. The 23 upstairs rooms in the depot were railroad crew quarters. The downstairs served as everything from a ticket office and community center to laundry and restaurant.

At its peak during World War II, more than 2,000 people lived in the desert outpost of Kelso as passenger trains passed between Las Vegas and Los Angeles and freight trains carried iron ore to the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana. Today, the trains carry no passengers, Woolsey said. An average of one train an hour passes through on the three sets of tracks.

When the railroad closed the depot, vandals invaded.

"They broke all the windows, smashed the walls and painted graffiti everywhere," Woolsey said. "They took all the furniture, stripped out the fixtures and tore up the staircase."

They even stole the toilets.

"The railroad wanted to tear the place down, " Woolsey said. "They bulldozed all the old houses along here because they didn't want to take care of them.

"A lot of local folks got very upset when they proposed tearing this place down," he said. "It's a very stately building and an important piece of the history of the desert."

In the late 1980s, Union Pacific sold the depot building to the federal government for a nominal fee. The Bureau of Land Management boarded up the structure to prevent more damage until its future could be decided.

A big part of that decision was the passage in 1994 of the Desert Protection Act, which established the Mojave National Preserve.

"There was a lot of discussion about what to do" with the park, Woolsey said. "But the one thing everybody agreed on was what to do with the Kelso Depot. A visitor center was the obvious thing. It's a beautiful building. The paved roads (Kelbaker and Kelso Cima) come together here, so it's a perfect location."

The restoration of the building started in August 2002 and was completed in January 2004, said David Moore, a landscape architect for the National Park Service. He helped supervise the work.

"It was in such bad shape that they had to take the whole structure almost down to the frame," Moore said. "We had a specialist from our Denver service center do some research and he was able to come up with the original drawings of the building."

So much conduit had been run through the studs supporting the east wall of the building that the supports were weakened, he said.

"You could go up to the wall and push it and watch the whole wall wiggle," Moore said. "It was scary."

Restoration crews also discovered that the original contractor wrote his name at the top of the staircase and some workers had stuffed postcards in the walls.

Woolsey said the Park Service will install equipment in the kitchen and hopes to find a private vendor to reopen and run the restaurant. He said the Park Service will hire a third ranger to help staff the depot and is recruiting unpaid volunteers.

The depot sometimes gets a boost in visitors when traffic problems cause the California Highway Patrol to shut down Interstate 15 and reroute vehicles through Kelso, Woolsey said.

Synja Meyneken, 63, a tourist from the Netherlands, found her way to the depot recently. "We like nature and more or less go for nature parks," she said. "We were just driving around. We decided to travel for a year, so we bought a pickup truck and we're doing the states."

Meyneken's favorite part of the depot was the saddle mounted in one of the rooms surrounded by murals showing old-time cowboy life. She climbed into the saddle and her husband took her picture -- tipping the camera to just the right angle to show her and the saddle and the backdrop without revealing the absence of a horse.

Bob Carlisle, 59, and his wife, Rita, 60, pored over the exhibits, the maps and the décor. "The building is nice," he said. "I can't figure the depot yet. Why a train depot in the middle of the desert? I haven't figured it out yet."

U.S. Loosens Its Policy on Building Roads in Parkland

The action by the Interior Department, though not legally binding, makes it easier for counties to claim rights of way.

By Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart, Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times

Guidelines issued by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton on Wednesday will make it easier for counties to lay claim to old trails and closed roads they would like to open across federal lands in the West, including national parks in Southern California.

In one of her final actions before leaving her post next week, Norton issued a policy dealing with right-of-way claims under a Civil War-era law that county officials in several Western states have tried to use to circumvent federal land-use restrictions on motorized access.

Norton's memo gives Interior officials nationwide latitude to grant rights of way to counties and other claimants and even approve road construction and improvements.

For a definitive legal ruling, claimants would still have to go to court. Though the policy does not bar claims in national parks and wilderness areas, Interior officials insisted that land managers would not allow destructive road building or improvements.

"Even if you have a right of way, that doesn't mean you can take a two-track and turn it into a two-lane road," said Dan Domenico, special assistant to Interior's solicitor.

"We still have the duty and obligation to protect federal lands surrounding and underlying the right of way."

But environmentalists said the secretary's guidelines amounted to an invitation to counties and other entities to claim everything from hiking trails to dry stream beds and start using them as roads.

"The barriers to [these] claims have been lowered to practically nothing," said Ted Zukoski, a Denver-based attorney with Earthjustice who was involved in a major court case on the matter. "The bar is so low that it has the effect of telling everyone: 'We're open for business. Make a claim.' "

The controversy is rooted in an 1866 law intended to give miners access to their stakes and cattlemen a way to move their herds by granting them rights of way over federal land. Congress repealed the law in 1976 but allowed claims for routes already in existence.

Claims in national parks and wilderness areas would have to be based on uses in existence before those areas were protected.

In 1997, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt put all but the most pressing claims on hold. But that didn't quiet the controversy.

In Utah, three southern counties asserted their right to control roads and trails within national parks, monuments and other federal land. San Juan County claimed a 10-mile stretch of stream bed in Canyonlands National Park, contending that a rocky trail in Salt Creek Canyon — once open to four-wheel-drive traffic — was a "highway" the National Park Service had no right to close.

The route provides the only vehicular access to Angel Arch, one of the park's most famous geologic formations.

Another claim was made by officials in Kane County for rights of way in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Ruling in a lawsuit that stemmed from the Utah actions, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last year said the BLM could recognize local rights-of-way claims but did not have the authority to make final legal determinations.

Citing that ruling, Norton said Wednesday that agencies under her purview — which include the BLM and U.S. Park Service — could recognize rights of way as long as they adhered to state laws.

In San Bernardino County, which has inventoried 5,000 miles of roads and tracks said to be in use on federal lands before 1976, officials said they hoped the new policy would settle at least some of the controversy.

"The county is asserting rights of way … to protect the access for county residents and agencies to be able to get where they need to go in the desert," said Brad Mitzelfelt, chief of staff for Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Postmus, whose district includes large federal holdings in the Mojave Desert.

Mitzelfelt said the county would press claims only on the most heavily used routes, not all 5,000 miles. The old roads and trails cross BLM land as well as the Mojave National Preserve, where he said locals have lost access since its creation in the 1990s.

Larry Whalon, the preserve's chief of resources, said expanding the road system and upgrading certain roads would expose remote cultural and historical sites to increased human traffic and potential vandalism. He cited Ft. Paiute, a crumbled adobe Army post, as among the places that would be vulnerable.

"If that road were to be improved, you'd have a lot more easy access, and that could be a problem," Whalon said. "Even though it's been vandalized, it's not been completely ruined."

Utah officials hailed Norton's policy as a way to settle the claims in a more consistent manner.

"We think this memorandum is absolutely appropriate. We think the guidelines make life easy for everybody," said Lynn Stevens, chair of the San Juan County Commission and Utah's public lands policy director. "It creates consistency. That's not to say we don't have issues with aspects of it. But insofar as it embraces the 10th Circuit's decision, we are not opposed to it."

But Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the policy created a situation of "legal limbo" because federal agencies would be making right-of-way decisions that weren't binding.

"No one really knows if they will be meaningful," he said.

Before She Steps Down, Interior Sec. Norton Rushes Out Damaging Highway Policy Today

Road construction policy could impact National Parks and other premier public lands

The Wilderness Society and
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Press Release

WASHINGTON - March 22 - As outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton prepares to leave her post in less than two weeks, she has hastily finalized a policy that could result in destructive and unnecessary road development and off-road vehicle use in National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, Monuments, and other special public lands. The policy involves a new process for recognizing purported highway rights-of-way under a Civil War-era loophole known as R.S. 2477 and could allow states and counties to perform widespread highway maintenance and construction across even protected federal lands in the West.

Secretary Norton has not involved the public in developing the new policy, even though it will guide every agency under the Interior Department’s jurisdiction, including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which manages National Wildlife Refuges). On the whole, the Interior Department manages 1 out of every 5 acres of land in the U.S.

The policy would make it easier for states or counties to perform landscape-changing highway maintenance and construction on public lands. In certain cases, that maintenance and construction could directly conflict with long-standing federal protections for national parks and other Western public lands, with devastating impacts for rivers, streams, and archeological and cultural resources. It could also disqualify deserving places from protection as Wilderness Areas. For example, nine million acres of proposed redrock canyon and desert wilderness in Utah is at risk.

The policy is also a rollback of the Department’s existing position on R.S. 2477 claims in National Parks, Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Refuges, and Wilderness Study Areas. In a 2003 Memorandum of Understanding with then-Utah Governor Michael Leavitt, both Sec. Norton and the Governor touted the fact that R.S. 2477 claims would not be considered in these special places.

“The Interior Department has developed this new policy without seeking input from Congress or the public, even though it could cause damage to our nation’s premier public lands for years to come,” said. Kristen Brengel of The Wilderness Society. “This secretive scheme is typical of how Secretary Norton’s has made decisions over the last five years, even though these decisions have devastating impacts on the protection afforded to National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and other lands.”

Although some RS 2477 road claims are potentially legitimate, the Interior Department’s upcoming policy could also recognize unfounded highway claims, such as those on cattle paths, streambeds, and little-used or long-abandoned jeep tracks that have little connection to legitimate transportation needs. These sorts of claims abound in several Western states. The state of Utah, for example, submitted a map to the Interior Department in 2000, claiming that 100,000 miles of routes, including every hiking trail in Zion National Park and routes across every designated wilderness in the state, are highways under R.S. 2477. California’s San Bernardino County has claimed that more than 5,000 miles of highways crisscrossing the Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park, and Alaska has asserted 164 separate routes through 14 national parks, including Denali, totaling almost 3,000 miles.

“Units of the National Park System should not be on the table,” said Denny Huffman, former superintendent of Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Colorado. “Secretary Norton must consider, as she has before, taking National Parks out of any policy that could force road construction under R.S. 2477 across these iconic landscapes.

Additionally, if the BLM adopts a lenient approach to highway claims on its lands, it may directly threaten neighboring Park Service units that are traversed by the same claims. A relaxed approach by BLM to a claim can point a loaded gun at the neighboring Park that disagrees with a highway claim.” As an example, Huffman cited highway claims across Dinosaur National Monument, where he was superintendent for 10 years.

“Ill-conceived policies that open culturally sensitive areas to road development place thousands of archaeological sites at increased risk of vandalism and destruction,” said Jerry Spangler, executive director of the Utah-based Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance. “The evidence is indisputable: Unrestricted road access is coequal with rampant vandalism. Improved access means greater opportunity for the unsavory and unethical to wreck havoc on archaeological treasures of national importance.”

Conservationists have expressed concern about recent testimony from David Bernhardt, the nominee for Interior Department Solicitor. In his answers to recent questions from Senators, Mr. Bernhardt did not address how the Department’s ability to comply with laws that protect wildlife, water quality, and archeological treasures will be affected by allowing counties and states to perform highway construction and maintenance without studying how bulldozing, grading and road use may undermine protection of these resource. Mr. Bernhardt also inadequately addressed whether the Interior Department would provide assurances to private property owners whose lands may be subject to disputed RS 2477 claims.

“If they truly care about private property rights, they would make a statement that the new policy will not affect private lands,” said A.J. Chamberlin of Property Owners for Sensible Roads Policy. “It’s hard to believe that the Interior Department would move forward on a final policy without consulting private landowners.”

Interior Department Announces Guidelines to Implement Court Decision on R.S. 2477

For Immediate Release:
March 22, 2006

WASHINGTON, — Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton today announced new guidelines to assist Interior land managers in implementing a recent court decision regarding roads across federally owned lands. The new guidelines implement the principles outlined in the 2005 Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Bureau of Land Management (SUWA v. BLM) decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. This decision and the new guidelines protect federal lands by clarifying that these roads cannot be expanded or significantly improved without consultation with federal land managers.

SUWA v. BLM clarified many legal issues related to Revised Statute 2477 (R.S. 2477), which granted rights of way for the construction of public roads across federal land. Because of this clarification by the 10th Circuit, Secretary Norton today also formally revoked the interim Departmental policy on R.S. 2477, issued in 1997. In addition, the new guidelines direct the termination of the Memorandum of Understanding entered into between the Department and the State of Utah in April, 2003.

R.S. 2477 granted rights of way for public use across federal land prior to 1976, when Congress repealed the law. Congress specified that any valid R.S. 2477 rights of way existing at the time of the repeal would continue in effect. This has resulted in considerable doubt as to whether counties or the federal government own certain roads on federal lands.

"The Court's decision provides a thoughtful and reasonable way to resolve road disputes between the federal government and counties," Norton said. "The decision allows the roads to be maintained at the status quo; it does not authorize automatic expansion of roads. Our new guidelines respect the obligation that Interior has to protect federal lands and environmentally sensitive areas, particularly parks, refuges and congressionally designated wilderness areas."

In SUWA v. BLM, the 10th Circuit clarified that only courts could finally determine the ownership issue, but that federal agencies are permitted to develop a process to analyze claims for administrative purposes. The new guidelines announced today clarify how Interior will carry out its obligations following SUWA v. BLM.

"For example, under the guidelines announced today, a dirt road will remain a dirt road and a two-track road will remain a two-track road unless there is a permitting process and environmental analysis," Norton said.

The new guidelines recognize the special status of national parks, wildlife refuges and congressionally designated wilderness areas and direct Interior land managers to issue, as necessary, revised instructions or guidance consistent with the SUWA V. BLM decision and their obligation to protect federal lands and resources. The new guidelines recognize a number of options for Interior land managers to address claimed rights of way:

• where a claimant wishes to do no more than maintain the existing status quo of a road and the current use and maintenance are consistent with the land manager's duty to protect the surrounding and underlying federal lands, the parties may utilize a road maintenance agreement;
• where title to the road is already vested in an entity other than the federal government, the parties may utilize a recordable disclaimer, which formalizes that the federal government itself does not dispute the entity's road claim;
• where a road has an unclear R.S. 2477 status but the land manager and a claimant agree on the need for the road, the BLM, pursuant to FLPLMA Title V, may grant rights of way irrespective of R.S. 2477;
• where a claimant wishes to perform construction or expand use beyond the status quo, the land manager may make an informal, nonbinding determination (NBD) of whether the R.S. 2477 claim is valid and whether the proposed improvements are reasonable and necessary in light of the traditional uses that established the claimed right of way. A land manager would allow improvement only if the land manager determines that the improvement is consistent with the traditional uses and is consistent with Interior's duty to protect surrounding and underlying lands;
• where a claimant seeks a binding determination of a claimed right of way, the claimant may file a quiet title action. A court would then make a determination.

Before a land manager implements any of the above options, members of the public will be given notice and an opportunity to comment.

Kelso Depot building renovation and tour

Backward Glance

by Steve Smith
Desert Dispatch

Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part story.

One of the first projects I worked on as a volunteer at the Mojave River Valley Museum was a picture search for the displays at Kelso. James Woolsey came to the museum and talked about what they were looking for. He also showed me the plans. I must admit the plans didn't mean much to me at the time, but now that I can go to Kelso Depot, I have a sense of pride at my small contribution and I now can see what those plans were leading to.

Work on restoring the depot started in 1999. The first stages of the restoration was to gut the building. As is often the case, lead-based paints were used in the building and had to be cleaned out. During the clean up it was discovered where the building needed extra construction work. They also uncovered a few surprises. In the walls was discovered time cards from kitchen employees, old batteries and small wires that powered a doorbell system that ran to the upstairs sleeping rooms.

Once the tearing apart was done, they had to rebuild. The plan was to do the best job possible to bring the depot back to its original state. Most of the original wood trim and doors were salvaged. The great old staircase was stripped of enamel paint revealing the beautiful wood underneath. Everything was carefully researched and made to look as original as possible. The one addition to the building is the elevator, which allows visitors access to all three floors of the building.

One good example of the meticulous work is the red awnings over the second-story windows. These awnings were on the building when it was first built. A few years after that the awnings were removed. So now when you look at the exterior of the depot you are getting a close as possible view of the building as it was when it was built.

The first sight as you come in the front door is the Beanery counter. It is restored to how it looked originally, only smaller. All of the wood has been stained, and even the pie case has been brought back. The only thing missing is someone to serve you. The National Park Service is looking for vendors to run the counter. From what I have heard of the number of visitors that have come to the depot recently it should be a good business opportunity.

The old front counter is also in the room and is manned by staff. This is the place to ask questions and find out what is going on in the preserve. Behind the counter is the room that introduces you to the desert with sounds of the desert playing in the background. These are very realistic. During my visit I went outside to take some pictures and heard what I thought was the recording but in looking around I saw the bird singing.

What I liked about the depot (heck, it should be called a museum) is that all the senses are taken care of. There are soundbased displays on the booming of the Kelso Dunes and recordings of Curtis Howe Springer, the evangelist who sold mineral cures and ran the health resort at Zzyzx. There are also displays that let you try lifting a railroad tie and using a tool to move a rail road wheel and kids can actually climb a saddle in the ranching section. Smellwise you can enjoy the fresh air outside the depot or the diesel fumes of the passing trains.

The Mojave Preserve is a big place and is full of interesting history and the depot represents everything there. At the depot you will find rooms dedicated to ranching, the railroad, Route 66, the people who lived at Kelso and samples of what the sleeping rooms looked like in Kelso's heyday and many more interesting displays. One of my favorite places in the building is the reading room upstairs. This is a small library with all sorts of information regarding the preserve and maps, old and new. If you are planning a trip into the preserve this is a good place to see what is out there and to learn about the great resources in our backyard. Of course after you go around in the desert, you can sit in the comfortable chairs and nap like I did at the end of a long day.

Actions Renew Tensions Over Use of Desert Land

Release of the west Mojave plan and a judge's rejection of a proposal for the Algodones Dunes reignite debate.

By Janet Wilson, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A pair of decisions in the last two days governing recreation, conservation and development across several million acres of California desert are reigniting tensions over endangered species and motorized access in the fast-growing region.

Late Tuesday, U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials signed the west Mojave management plan, designed to streamline construction and map areas for motorized recreation and wildlife protection on 9.3 million acres of public land in five counties and 11 cities. Parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern and Inyo counties are included in the plan, which took 12 years to craft.

"You have tremendous, growing populations in … the west Mojave, and then you try to balance that with conservation of species, and it becomes a very, very delicate balancing act, and that's what we think this plan achieved," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the bureau's California office. The plan identifies vital areas for the threatened desert tortoise, Mohave squirrel and 98 other species, pinpoints off-road trails, and lays out areas that could be developed.

But the plan was promptly lambasted by environmentalists and off-road vehicle groups, who said that thousands of miles of riding trails had been improperly mapped, that there were no funds for enforcement or implementation, and that lawsuits were inevitable.

"They don't have a nickel — not a nickel — to implement any of it," said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Assn., who was appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to serve on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council and who has monitored the plan closely.

"It wasn't done well," he said. "What they were trying to do — and it's pretty naive — is they were trying to provide for every kind of environmental concern they could with the idea that it would prevent lawsuits, and it's just the other way around. They're going to get sued by the environmental extremists … and off-road access is going to be cut off. It's a joke."

Tom Egan, a former bureau biologist who worked on the early stages of the plan before leaving the agency, called the final version "egregious," and said it would lead to the disappearance of the tortoise in many areas and leave other species "on hospital beds." He noted that the plan included measures for placing signs indicating trails were open to off-roading, but none to say which areas were closed.

A spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity — an environmental group that has long opposed the expansion of off-road driving in the desert — said that the plan would harm the desert tortoise in particular, and that the organization probably would sue to stop it.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston threw out another bureau plan and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological report for the Algodones Dunes to the south that would have greatly expanded off-roading, saying that the plan would harm the federally protected Pierson's milk vetch wildflower and the desert tortoise, and that the agencies had wrongly interpreted the Endangered Species Act.

The judge "basically shredded their plan," said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Noting that about half of the most popular parts of the dunes remain open to riders, he said: "It's time for them to compromise and recognize that 50% is enough."

Bedrosian said bureau officials had not seen the decision and could not comment immediately. She said officials thought they had adequately protected species by calling for tightly controlled riding on designated routes with heavy monitoring.

Vince Brunasso of the American Sand Assn., which intervened on the side of the government to have 49,000 acres of the popular dunes reopened to riding, said: "I agree. Let's compromise. Let's have 50% of the dunes in North America reopened then, because if you do the math and add up all the acres we have access to, it falls far short of 50%."

Brunasso said the Algodones Dunes "are different, and they're beautiful, and we can't go to the deep center section. The American people are being robbed of the ability to enjoy that beauty … we're not done fighting."

He said his group would try to have the Pierson's milk vetch delisted as an endangered species.

"The BLM counted 1.8 million milk vetch last year. I don't know how many you have to have before an official person would say its not endangered or threatened" and off-highway vehicle use can coexist with it, he said.

Patterson and others have said the wildflower is doing better for now because of good rains last year and because off-roading has been banned in key areas.

Remodeled Kelso Depot has rich desert history

Backward Glance

by Steve Smith
Desert Dispatch [Barstow, CA]

Editor's note: This is the first of two parts.

In desert history and in fiction much centers around oases. Recently I got a chance to visit an oasis that had undergone a rejuvenation and on March 25 will have its grand opening, Kelso Depot.

The town of Kelso got its start when the Union Pacific Railroad came through in 1904. How the town got its name is one of my favorite stories. Three railroad workers decided to draw one of their names out of a hat to decide the name of the town. One of the gentlemen had recently left the area but the other two threw his name in for him. Wouldn't you know it the guy that left, John H. Kelso, won.

The town was founded because of the water needed for steam engines. The nearby steep grade at Cima Summit (which rises in elevation 2,000 feet in 18 miles) was also a reason for the town's founding. Helper engines would tie onto passing trains and help them over the grade. The helper crews lived at the depot or at other houses in town so when they got a train over the hill they would turn around and head back to Kelso.

The first depot at Kelso was built in 1905 when the Los Angeles to Salt Lake line was established. One of the influence on building the depot was the Santa Fe's Harvey Houses. Harvey Houses were so profitable and popular with passengers that the Union Pacific wanted to copy the success. They built a separate building for a lunch counter. When a new station was built, the old depot was moved and used for a number of purposes.

The present station was built in 1923. It was planned as an "all-in-one facility." The station had rooms for workers, telegraph office, Beanery lunch counter, downstairs hall and billiard room. The station also served the people of the small town as a meeting hall.

The Depot also provided amusement for the children of the town. The dump in back of the depot attracted wild burros. The town's children would lay out a noose and capture the burros by a hoof. Many a time the children would get drug for a bit and suffer rope burns. They sometimes tamed the burros and kept them as pets.

The lunch counter not only served the workers but also served passengers traveling on trains with no dining cars. One item on the menu, stew, lent itself to a humorous story at the beginning of the station. The new lunch counter requested a stew pot from the head office. What arrived was a thunder mug, a pot used as a urinal before flush toilets. Despite the many odd looks visitor's gave it, the thunder mug did serve as a passable stew pot.

On average the town had a population of around two hun- dred. During World War II the town had its biggest boom. Kaiser Steel started the Vulcan Iron Mine nine miles south of Kelso. They shipped its ore to the steel mills in Fontana. From 1942 to 1948 it was estimated that 2,500 tons of ore passed through Kelso daily. At its peak the town housed 2,000 workers.

The population of Kelso took hits from different sources after World War II. Kaiser Steel shut down the mine because of high sulfur content in the ore and the railroad started using more powerful diesel locomotives so the helper engines weren't needed and the water wasn't as important. By the 1950s Kelso was becoming a ghost town.

The depot continued to be open during the seventies when it became a gathering spot for desert visitors and locals. One visitor, James Woolsey, once had an ice cream cone there. He doesn't remember it but his father told him about it. James went on to work on the depot restoration and the displays in it. The nearby water was a particular draw for birds and their watchers.

In 1985 the railroad decided that it was not feasible to run the station any more so they closed the depot entirely. The railroad company had planned to demolish it but through efforts of local people and the Bureau of Land Management it was spared the wrecking ball.

In 1992 the Bureau of Land Management purchased the depot and the property around it for one dollar. The depot came under the care of the National Park Service when the Desert Protection Act was signed into law and created the Mojave National Preserve in 1994. Renovation work was started 1999 and continued until last year when the Depot opened up as the Preserve's visitor center. The depot is open seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Grand Opening for the restored Kelso Depot will be March 25, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be tours and field trips starting at 10 a.m. The dedication ceremony will be at 2 p.m.

The depot is located 35 miles south of Baker. From I-15, exit at Kelbaker Road and drive south 35 miles to Kelso. From I-40, exit at Kelbaker Road and drive north 22 miles to Kelso.

Come back next week when I will talk a bit about the renovation of the Kelso Depot and a tour of the building.

Park Service plans Kelso Depot grand opening

HIGH DESERT

San Bernardino Sun

The National Park Service will hold a grand opening ceremony for the renovated Kelso Depot on March 25.

The event, open free to the public, will begin at 2 p.m. at the historic depot, located 35 miles south of Baker on Kelbaker Road. It also can be reached by driving 22 miles north of Interstate 40 on Kelbaker Road.

Built in 1924 by Union Pacific Railroad, the depot has been transformed into the Mojave National Preserve's main visitor center. It also contains a museum, theater and bookstore.

The depot will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with tours and field trips starting at 10 a.m. on March 25.

Light refreshments will be served, park officials said.

Visitors who have old photographs of the depot are invited to share them and have them scanned for others to enjoy.

For more information, call the preserve headquarters at (760) 252-6101, or visit the preserve's Web site at www.nps.gov/moja.

Rare Pupfish In Mojave On Brink of Extinction

In the best of times, the desert's a tough place for a fish. At Devil's Hole, times have been better.

By Louis Sahagun, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times



GUARDIAN: David Ek of the National Park Service points to a pupfish in Devil’s Hole, Nev. Two years ago hundreds of the fish lived in the pool, part of the Death Valley park. Fewer than 80 remain. (Stephen Osman / LAT)

SHOSHONE, Calif. — The imperiled Devil's Hole pupfish, which has been clinging to existence in a remote rock tub in the Mojave Desert since the Ice Age, may not survive another year, federal biologists warned.

Regional groundwater pumping, mysterious changes in mating behaviors and habitat disruptions inadvertently caused by scientists who have been trying to protect the pupfish are being blamed for decimating the species, long regarded as a symbol of the desert conservation movement.

In a tragedy that was not publicly announced, scientists two years ago accidentally killed 80 of the iridescent blue fish — about one-third of the population at the time. Fewer than 80 of the inch-long fish still swim in the spa-like turquoise waters of a small pool at the bottom of an isolated limestone depression that became part of Death Valley National Monument — now a national park — by proclamation of President Truman in 1952.

Only two years ago, the fish, whose plight escalated into a highly publicized U.S. Supreme Court battle in 1976, numbered in the hundreds.

"We're definitely concerned that the population has fallen to so low a number it may not be able to rebound," said Cynthia Martinez, assistant field supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Southern Nevada office. "This is the lowest number ever. It's a very serious situation."

David Ek, an assistant chief with the National Park Service in Death Valley, put it this way: "If they don't breed this spring — the height of the breeding season — they'll be gone in a year, year and a half."

On Thursday, a special recovery team is expected to convene in Las Vegas to weigh possible emergency measures, then make recommendations to Fish and Wildlife managers and National Park Service Regional Manager John Jarvis.

Options include capturing fish and breeding them in controlled conditions elsewhere, then restocking Devil's Hole with the offspring, or just leaving the site alone in hopes the fish can rebound without human help.

Time is running out, biologists said, because of the precarious life cycle and population dynamics of what ichthyologists call one of the rarest fish in the world in one of the world's most restricted habitats.

"Threats abound," said Death Valley biologist Linda Manning. "This fish is almost infertile, with females laying up to 10 eggs in their 10-month life span. So we're hoping there are enough fish of breeding age to begin spawning."

Scientists from California and Nevada have worked for decades to save the fish. About 30 miles north of this Mojave Desert village, Devil's Hole is part of Death Valley National Park, even though it lies in Nevada outside the main park boundary.

Carl L. Hubbs, known as the father of Western ichthyology, persuaded Truman to have the unique fish and its pocket ecology added to Death Valley as a protective measure.

"I like to call these unique specimens 'pupfish' because they play just like puppies," Hubbs said at the time.

There are other kinds of pupfish in the desert, but the Devil's Hole species is unique — as is its unlikely home.

The "hole" is a large, sloping depression with a pool of water at the base. The pool is just 10 feet across and 70 feet long but amazingly deep. Divers have ventured down 468 feet without reaching the bottom.

Key to the pupfish's survival is a 23-square-yard slab of rock that juts out into the pool, just a few inches below the surface. The fish spawn on the slab, which often is covered with layers of gravel and pebbles washed into the pool by rain.

Water temperatures average about 93 degrees, and the fish's primary food source, a thin blanket of green algae, grows here.

On a recent weekday, a dozen pupfish could be seen browsing among the submerged algae meadows, paddling slowly or darting off to chase away invaders. This habit of nipping at each other's tails is what reminded Hubbs of puppies when he named them.

Beyond the shelf, where the pool becomes deep, the water is tinted blue by high concentrations of minerals, including calcium carbonate.

In ancient times, the Timbisha Shoshone tribe regarded Devil's Hole as a mythical home of the child-swallowing giant called Tso'apittse. Later, Death Valley 49ers liked to bathe in the warm mineral waters shared by the tiny fish that tickled their toes.

The Devil's Hole pupfish thrived until the late 1960s, when the water level and pupfish population began to fall precipitously because of irrigation pumping.

The population crash triggered a classic environmental clash between conservationists, who wanted to stop the pumping to save the fish, and locals who placed a higher value on economic growth.

Two popular bumper stickers at the time were "Save the Pupfish" and "Kill the Pupfish."

The conflict ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was resolved in favor of the pupfish. Later, federal authorities tried to secure the creature's future by surrounding the hole with barbed wire fences and radio antennas.

But the pupfish's troubles were far from over.

Over the last decade, "for as yet unknown reasons, we've seen a gradual decline in population," said James Deacon, a University of Nevada emeritus professor of environmental studies and the leading expert on the pupfish. "It may be because a larger percentage of fish have been laying their eggs in the deeper water, where they can't develop as well."

Deacon has also discovered that security fences rimming the Devil's Hole have prevented gravel and pebbles from washing into the pool. Such infusions are needed to renew the pupfish's habitat.

He's also concerned that a metal walkway, suspended over the pool and used by federal divers to avoid stepping on the rock shelf, has somehow affected the fish's environment.

Then there was the pupfish crisis of Sept. 11, 2004: Empty fish traps had been stacked by researchers on dry land, but a flash flood sent them tumbling into the pool. The traps, made of glass jars outfitted with inverted funnels, were used by researchers who caught, studied, then quickly released the fish.

"A week later, we returned to discover jars floating on the shelf, or broken," recalled Manning. "Many of those intact had expired fish in them. We lost about 80 fish.

"It was a stunning, horrible, nauseating discovery," she said.

The incident was immediately reported to park officials, who said they did not announce the accident to the public at the time because they were overwhelmed by flood-related problems throughout the park.

Biologists fear that, given their short lifespan and troubled breeding cycles, as few as 50 pupfish will remain in the pool by the time mating season arrives.

About 40 more Devil's Hole pupfish are being studied in artificial conditions at a Fish and Wildlife facility at Hoover Dam. Those fish, too, however, are steadily declining in numbers.

Surveying a dozen survivors meandering about in the hole on the southern flanks of a isolated and barren crimson mountain, Ek said, "Doing nothing doesn't seem a realistic alternative.

"But with the population so low and in decline, we don't have much room for error," he said. "Whatever we do, we have to do it quickly."

Mojave Preserve -- better than ever

After last year's fire, flooding
park is making dramatic comeback

By TRACIE TROHA, Staff Writer
Victorville Daily Press

MOJAVE PRESERVE — After a long recovery from a fire that damaged 71,000 acres, the Mojave National Preserve has come back as strong as ever.

With assistance from federal funds totaling $1,084,000, the preserve has repaired damaged roads, reopened the campground and taken measures to prevent erosion.

Park Ranger Linda Slater said preparations are also underway for the grand opening ceremony of the Kelso Depot information center in March.

Slater said the fire that burned through the preserve last June was sparked by lighting from a storm.
"No rain accompanied the storm and the fire really took off," she said.

Slater said the campground suffered the most damage from the fire, with two-thirds of the area destroyed. It took months for crews to remove the dead trees and debris and replace the picnic tables. The campground opened to the public again last month.

Following the fire, the preserve experienced a rainy season that caused flooding and washed out several roads.

"The roads have been re-graded so visitors can travel through the park," Slater said.

Slater said bundles of hay bales also had to be placed around archeological sites to prevent damage from rain water.

"Mines that were over 100 years old were burned in the fire," Slater said. "They had to be reevaluated and those that were considered unstable had to be protected so people wouldn't go into them."

Slater said the federal funds are also being used to help restore lost vegetation on a rancher's property.

"We are fencing off a section of his lot to protect the fragile first-year growth," she said.

The preserve's general plan indicates natural areas damaged by fires, earthquakes or flooding would be left undisturbed unless there is a threat to public safety or endangered species. Non-native plants and animals that could take over these areas, however, may be managed or eradicated if deemed necessary.

Since the fire and the rehabilitation projects, Slater said the preserve has enjoyed a resurgence of visitors.

The preserve has been welcoming up to 300 visitors on Sundays and between 100 to 200 visitors on weekdays.

"People are really enjoying it," she said.

Fish/Game seeks guzzlers for Mojave Preserve

News West

By LEE CHOQUETTE
Mohave Valley News [Laughlin, NV]

NEEDLES - A proposal first floated by the California Department of Fish and Game to restore artificial water sources in the Mojave National Preserve has finally reached the public comment stage.

The state agency began meeting with the National Park Service in the summer of 2004 regarding the proposal to retrofit 12 former ranch wells in the Mojave National Preserve as wildlife guzzlers.

Ranchers raised cattle for many decades in what became the preserve in 1994. They drilled wells to provide water for their cattle. One well was first developed in the 1860s and many of them date to the dominant period of the Rock Springs Land and Cattle Company between 1894 and 1927, according to the park service.

Cattle ranchers turned their wells on and off to move cattle around, according to the park service, to keep them from overgrazing in a particular area.

Most of the larger grazing leases in the preserve have been retired, and the ranchers have shut off their wells and removed much of the above-ground equipment.

Wildlife have come to depend on the water sources initially developed for cattle and the state agency believes that the shutdown has had a detrimental effect on wildlife populations.

The state agency proposes to transform 12 ranch wells into guzzlers over a three-year period, for use by mule deer and other wildlife. The guzzlers would be filled by well water pumped into a holding tank. Generators would be carried to each guzzler periodically to refill the tank. The drinkers themselves would be placed a foot or two off the ground to keep desert tortoises from crawling into them.

Routine monitoring would try to prevent an incident similar to the one in 1995 when lambs fell into a guzzler on Old Dad Peak. The lambs' decomposing bodies poisoned the water drunk by other bighorn sheep, ultimately killing 38 sheep.

The park service has called for public comment on three possible alternatives: take no action, leaving the shut-down wells as they are; permitting the state agency to proceed with its proposal; and leaving things as they are while further scientific studies are conducted.

The park service has issued an environmental assessment that compares these three alternatives. According to the service, the assessment was distributed to libraries, but the Needles Branch Library did not receive a copy.

A copy of the assessment is available at www.nps. gov/moja and by request from Superintendent, Mojave National Preserve, 2701 Barstow Road, Barstow CA 92311. Public comments on the proposal must be postmarked by Jan. 31 and sent to this address or to MOJA_Superintendent@nps.gov.

Wild horses denied free rein

Thousands kept in pens as numbers exceed rangeland capacity

By Electa Draper, Staff Writer
Denver Post

Dove Creek - The notion of wild horses roaming the American West might be more a national delusion than a reality.

Almost 35 years ago, Congress proclaimed that the West's wild horses were an American treasure. It passed a law in 1971 to protect them from slaughter.

But the realities of the Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro program are different from the romantic images painted then by Congress and still held by many Americans. Roughly 32,000 wild horses and burros roam the range in 10 Western states, but there were, by October of this year, another 24,500 wild horses and burros in holding facilities.

Of last year's BLM wild horse and burro budget of $39.6 million, more than half, $20.1 million, was spent to keep the animals off the range and in these holding facilities.

The problem with wild horses is basically a math problem. It has left the BLM looking for that magic sustainable number.

"It's a question of how you divide the forage pie. It always has been and always will be," says Fran Ackley, who heads up the BLM wild horse training and adoption facility in Cañon City. "There are some who want wild horses to get more and some who don't want them to get any."

With federal protection, wild horses and burros have virtually no natural predators left. Herd sizes can double about every five years, BLM spokesman Thomas Gorey says. As a result, the agency must remove thousands of animals from the range each year to control herd sizes.

Already, about 16,000 wild horses and burros, considered too old or too wild for adoption, are in long-term facilities, typically fenced grassy pastures of 15,000 to 35,000 acres. The BLM calls them sanctuaries. But more than 8,000 other animals are held in small pens.

And even the wild horses and burros on the range are confined to fenced herd-management areas to prevent their intrusion on private lands and their competition with grazing cattle.

Wild horses and burros are managed today in places where they were found roaming in 1971, when their numbers had dwindled to an estimated 17,000 because of their slaughter for profit. With the passage of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act, the BLM began designating 201 Herd Management Areas, 29.5 million acres. By comparison, private livestock grazing is authorized on 160 million acres of BLM-managed land.

Too few adoptions

Since 1973, the bureau has placed more than 207,000 animals into private ownership through its Adopt-A Horse Program. It isn't enough.

"We recognized a few years ago that we can't adopt our way out of the overpopulation problem," Ackley says.

The BLM has determined that the appropriate management level for horses and burros on the range should be 28,000 to keep the land healthy and to create a balance with other public uses, Gorey says. The plan is to round up 4,000 more horses over the next few years.

"I think we're going to be at our magic number in two years," Ackley says. "Then we will just have to remove yearly what can be adopted."

The small pens will be empty. In 10 or 15 years, the older animals in sanctuaries will pass away, Ackley says. It will relieve the American taxpayer of a $400 to $500 bill per horse per year.

"It's on the horizon," Ackley says. "We can do the job as long as the funding stays consistent."

But some wild-horse advocates say the BLM created the adoption backlog in the first place.

Andrea Lococo, a consultant with the Washington-based Animal Welfare Institute, says horses are removed from the range to cater to livestock owners hurt by droughts and wildfires. Until 2000, when the BLM decided to halve the number of wild horses and began massive roundups, she says, BLM adoptions could keep up.

Last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the BLM had planned to remove 9,800 wild horses and burros from public rangelands. The BLM actually removed 11,023. The agency placed 5,701 into private ownership through adoption. The rest were "surplus" horses that required relocation to holding facilities.

The average adoption rate is 6,000 to 7,000 a year, but the BLM in recent years has taken about 10,000 animals off the range a year to preserve range health, BLM officials say.

In Colorado, the BLM rounded up 357 horses in 2005. About 700 wild horses remain on five Western Slope ranges.

More in pens than range

In contrast to the state population of 700 wild animals on the range, up to 1,400 at a time have been kept at the BLM's Cañon City training and adoption facility. The average horse's stay there is nine months, Ackley says.

Even if the designated ideal national number of 28,000 is reached and holding pens emptied, gathers will continue as a necessary evil to maintain it. The events are costly to taxpayers (several hundred dollars per horse). And these roundups break up bands and social order and frequently cause injuries and even death among horses.

The BLM also is expanding its use and study of fertility control to keep herd sizes down and delay roundups, but they will still be necessary, Gorey, the BLM spokesman, says.

But wild horses have another math problem. Roughly three- quarters of the herds are already smaller than 150, considered the minimum size at which a herd can maintain genetic vigor, Ackley says. The BLM compensates in many areas by occasionally introducing new blood lines into a herd - by bringing in a few mares from another herd every eight to 10 years.

Despite the problems with the program, Americans' romance with wild horses continues.
Wild-horse advocacy and support groups proliferate. The southwestern Colorado chapter of the National Mustang Association sprang into being in 1997 to help the 35 to 90 horses of the Spring Creek Herd north of Dove Creek. The group has purchased grazing permits, constructed water catchments and replaced hazardous fencing and is trying to talk the local BLM office into letting the group reseed some native grasses and other projects.

"All the BLM ever needs to say is 'help,' and we're right there," says founder Sherwood McGuigan. "But sometimes the BLM is not flexible about accepting help."

Desert bighorn ewes may be farmed out

FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Victorville Daily Press

BARSTOW — Fifteen ewes from a thriving herd of desert bighorn sheep in Mojave National Preserve may be moved to rebuild a dwindling herd 100 miles away in the China Lakes Naval Air Weapons Station area near Ridgecrest.

"We have a healthy population of bighorns in the preserve, but the herd at China Lake is small and consists of only 17 rams and two ewes," Old Dad Mountain preserve spokesman James Woolsey said.

California's Department of Fish and Game said the preserve's bighorn population numbers about 250. The department proposes capturing up to 15 ewes in the Old Dad Mountain area for relocation to Eagle Crags, to correct the imbalance between rams and ewes, officials said.

"If that ratio is as low as our data now suggests, we need to reverse the trend," said Vern Bleich, senior environmental scientist and project manager.

In August, the sudden deaths of five endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep sparked worries among scientists that there might be a major die-off that could wipe out the bighorn population near Palm Springs.

In the Victor Valley, bighorn populations appear to be doing well, according to recent reports. A population of 30 to 50 bighorns lives in the mountains above Lucerne Valley.

Bighorns also live in the upper San Gabriel Mountains near Wrightwood.

Mojave National Preserve gets new boss

ENVIRONMENT: A decision about wildlife watering holes awaits the superintendent.

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

Dennis Schramm, a 28-year veteran of the National Park Service, will return to his old stomping grounds at the Mojave National Preserve as its superintendent.

Schramm, 53, returns in February to the 1.6 million-acre park in eastern San Bernardino County -- known for its sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones and lava flows, Joshua trees and towering mountains. He worked there for seven years as an assistant manager until 2002.

In announcing the selection last week, Jonathan Jarvis, the park service's regional director, said Schramm has extensive experience as a biologist and manager in the Mojave Desert and that his leadership in the 1990s in crafting the preserve's management plan demonstrated strong leadership skills.

Schramm replaces Mary Martin, who transferred to Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California.

Among Schramm's first decisions will be whether to approve a controversial plan to turn 12 groundwater wells left over from a cattle grazing operation into wildlife guzzlers to help mule deer flourish for hunting.

The proposal is available for public comment until Jan. 31.

The three options are to abandon the project, allow it to go forward or conduct further studies to assess whether the guzzlers, artificial water sources, are needed.

"It's really a matter of taking that information (from the public) and seeing whether or not it makes sense to allow something to happen," Schramm said about the proposal in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he works at the park service's national planning office.

The California Department of Fish and Game and hunters with Safari Club International are pushing for the artificial water sources. Environmentalist says they're a bad crutch for plants and animals that already have adapted to an arid landscape.

In addition, the guzzlers will promote mule deer, a non-native species, said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group in Joshua Tree.

"You're just messing with the whole web of life out there," he said.

A lawsuit from Patterson's group filed this year prompted the National Park Service to back off from approving the guzzlers until an environmental assessment was completed. The lawsuit alleged that the federal agency, under orders from a Bush administration official -- Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary of Interior for fish, wildlife and parks -- violated environmental laws by approving the man-made watering holes.

During his tenure, Schramm said, he would like to draw more attention to the preserve, sandwiched between the better-known Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, and to expose more young children to the desert environment.

"They're involved with too many video games," he said. But children "are important for the future of the parks, so it helps if they know they have a connection to the land."

The park's new visitors' center at the Kelso Depot, a railroad station built more than 80 years ago and refurbished, will help in promoting the park, Schramm said.

But the preserve also has threats, he said, including a proposed airport for cargo and charter flights six miles from the preserve's border in Nevada.

In addition, the preserve is dotted with hundreds of old mines, mostly gold mines, where the precious metal was leached from the ore with cyanide in large, open pits.

"We have no active mines," he said, "but we have a lot of cleanup issues."

Wildlife Guzzlers

The Mojave National Preserve is seeking public comment on a proposal to convert ranching wells into wildlife guzzlers:

Deadline: Jan. 31

By e-Mail: MOJA_Superintendent@nps.gov

By letter: Superintendent, Mojave National Preserve, 2701 Barstow Road, Barstow, CA 92311

To get the report: www.nps.gov/moja