Conservationist worked 42 years for park service

Obituary: STANLEY ALBRIGHT, 74

BY VALERIE J. NELSON
Los Angeles Times

Despite many accomplishments during 42 years with the National Park Service, Stanley T. Albright was often known as ''the nephew of.'' His uncle, Horace Albright, co-founded the park service in 1916.

Stanley T. Albright died Aug. 18 in a care facility in West Linn, Ore., after a long illness, said his wife, Kris. He was 74.

During the Reagan administration, Albright served under Interior Secretary James G. Watt, who was known for favoring profit over preservation when it came to federal land. A resolute conservationist, Albright preserved many national park programs Watt sought to dismantle, according to the park service.

In 1987, Albright became director of the western region, overseeing national parks in California and five other states for ''10 tumultuous years'' as the park budgets flattened, the park service said.
However, he trained the generation of superintendents now running many of the nation's parks.

And he played a key role in the passage of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act that created Death Valley National Park. With 3.4 million acres, it is the largest national park in the contiguous United States. The act also spawned Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve.

Tapped in 1997 to return to Yosemite -- he had served on the ski patrol decades before -- park superintendent Albright led an effort to repair extensive damage to the park from a Merced River flood.

Two years into his Yosemite stewardship, Albright was replaced. He ended his career as a natural resources consultant before retiring from the park service in 2000 .

Albright was born in Oakland and grew up in Bishop, Calif. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1958 with a degree in biology. He became a fire lookout in the Inyo National Forest, and later managed concessions at the Grand Canyon.

As state director of the National Park Service in Alaska in the 1970s, Albright helped lay the groundwork for the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which created 10 national parks and expanded several others. The 44 million acres effectively doubled the size of the national park system.

In addition to his second wife, Kris, Albright is survived by a son, Sean Albright of Walnut Creek, Calif., and a stepson, Jon Finney of Lake Oswego, Ore.

Desert Fires' Damage Will Last

It will take centuries for plant life to recover. Many experts say invasive vegetation is largely to blame.

By Janet Wilson, Times Staff Writer
ktla 5 [Los Angeles, CA]


Sawtooth fire as it moves through the Morongo Valley desert landscape.

April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old piñon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps.

More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze. It was one of half a dozen fast-moving fires this summer that burned 65,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, fueling debate over whether the desert is burning more frequently and explosively as a result of invasive weeds, smog, development and climate change.

"It's heartbreaking to see," said Sall, a biologist who manages the preserve and whose grandmother homesteaded the land a century ago. "We'll never see those piñon or juniper trees again in our lifetimes, nor will our children, nor will their grandchildren. It's a bitter pill…. This land isn't meant to burn."

Many scientists agree, saying the recent blazes offer fresh evidence that deserts across the Southwest are undergoing a profound shift, as ancient native pine, shrubs and cactuses give way to young, highly flammable weeds and grasses.

"Right now we're losing very large pieces of landscape," said Todd Esque, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Henderson, Nev., who studies the cause and effect of fires in the desert. "It's happening in Joshua Tree National Park, it's happening in Mojave National Preserve … up in southwestern Utah … and in Arizona. We lost 750,000 acres of desert to fire in Nevada alone last summer."

This summer, five blazes have seared parts of Joshua Tree, where a fire only every few years was the norm for the last 50 years.

Esque and other researchers say that unlike forests and chaparral, the sparsely vegetated desert is not meant to burn frequently.

"The public has come to understand that fire is a necessary part of the life of forests," Esque said. "That is not the case with deserts. We have a major problem going on."

A vocal minority disagrees, contending there is no clear-cut evidence of far-reaching change. They blame this year's fires on bumper crops of wildflowers nourished by heavy spring rains two years ago. According to the theory, dried remnants of the prolific blooms fueled a 50,000-acre fire in the Mojave National Preserve last summer and in this year's conflagrations.

"The winter of 2004-05 was the wettest ever in 100 years of recorded data in the desert. We had a phenomenal crop of annual native wildflowers, and it was dry the next year and it stayed there," said Richard Minnich, a professor of Earth sciences at UC Riverside. "It's flash fuel of 1 to 2 tons per acre. What's really scary is, there's still a lot of it out there."

Scientists do agree that it will take centuries, if not millenniums, for the desert to recover.

"It won't be on a timeline we humans would like, but it will happen," said Tasha LaDoux, Joshua Tree National Park's botanist.

Inside the park, new growth provides fodder for the debate over whether the fragile, arid landscape is undergoing dramatic change.

At the scene of a 1995 fire, not a single juniper or piñon pine seedling has come up after 11 years. But healthy, 3-foot "pups" have sprouted from the roots of once seemingly dead Joshua trees. The pups may or may not survive, scientists say, because in drought years they may be gnawed by thirsty rodents and ground squirrels. Meanwhile, native apricot mallow, bright-green cheesebush and golden California marigold are blooming even in August.

Along a sandy road in the western section, the scene of a 1999 blaze that scorched 14,000 acres, a beige sea of grasses spreads beneath burned Joshua trees bleached silver by sun and rain. The new growth consists of native bunch grasses and a pair of noxious, ankle-scratching weeds.

These two nonnatives, known as red brome and cheatgrass, form highly flammable carpets between native shrubs and trees, and many scientists believe they are the main culprits behind increasing fires.

"These invasive grasses fill in the spaces between the desert plants. They carry the flame through at a very high rate, and much hotter. It spreads a lot faster," Sall said.

The weeds are also bad for animals.

"The ranchers call it cheatgrass because for the first few years it's good grass, but after that it cheats the cattle of their nutrients," Esque said.

Native to Mediterranean Europe and Asia, the weeds were probably blown across the West by the wind, tracked in by hikers' boots and construction equipment, and excreted by livestock. Researchers at UCLA and elsewhere say the weeds appear to capture nitrogen from smog-laden air more readily than native plants, eventually choking them out.

But Minnich of UC Riverside said years of drought had actually caused most of the red brome to die out, while annual native grasses remain safely stored in natural seed banks on adjoining, unburned islands of habitat.

Richard Halsey couldn't disagree more.

"You're going to see a solid blanket of yellow felt next year," he said, meaning a blanket of dried nonnative grasses. Halsey, a former biology teacher who is now a researcher and firefighter, was asked by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to evaluate the role of vegetation in the Sawtooth fire.

"No one else on the planet agrees with Rich Minnich," Halsey said. "I went out there during the fire and after the fire and looked…. Not only didn't I see the volumes of wildflowers he's talking about, but in the burn area specifically…. I had a hard time finding natives. The predominant fire fuel mix was cheatgrass and red brome."

Robert Webb, a hydrologist with the Geological Survey's Tucson office who has studied botany in the Mojave for 30 years, laughed when he heard about the debate.

"The truth is, they may all be right. The desert is very complicated. There is incredible local variability," he said. Echoing other scientists, he said, "Minnich often heaves these ideas out there that are different…. It's healthy, it makes us all look very carefully at our own data."

Webb is writing a paper with other researchers that looks at three post-fire scenarios for the Mojave, all plausible, all different. Rather than focusing on Joshua trees or pines, they studied ancient black brush, a gray-brown shrub that has evolved to withstand desert temperatures and scarce rain.

A single bush can survive thousands of years. But it is highly flammable, proof to Webb that fire is not natural in the desert. One scenario does show nonnatives replacing black brush and causing more frequent fires. But he said data gathered so far made that scenario "only slightly more likely" than two others in which black brush grows back.

"Some of those Joshua trees may sprout too," Wall said, referring to the Pipes Canyon Preserve. "They're an amazing tree."

But others say such a destructive fire in a preserve like Pipes Canyon did lasting harm.

Tom Scott, a zoologist affiliated with UC Berkeley and UC Riverside, said the canyon preserve encompassed "one of the greatest transition zones in North America. If you look at where it starts way up on top of the San Bernardino Mountains, and then descends down to the desert, you're covering this incredible array of habitats, from montane forest down to low desert."

Scott said there were probably smaller pockets of plants and animals that evolved over millenniums in nooks in the preserve, only to be wiped out by this summer's catastrophic fire.

"If we've introduced grasses that are driving fire much further than it used to go, and you've got a lot of these small patches that are really unique in terms of species, then you're erasing them with large conflagrations," he said.

Esque worries about vulnerable desert species such as the reclusive desert tortoise, Scott's oriole, logger-headed shrike and least Bell's vireo songbirds, as mature shrubs that offered shelter are replaced with grasses.

"When you have less cover, with that goes less diversity," he said.

Webb is most concerned about warming temperatures in the desert. Besides causing less winter snow, warmer weather generates more summer thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Lightning started all the fires that ravaged Pipes Canyon Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park this summer.

Others said urbanization, motorized recreation and military activities were also taking a toll on the natural desert.

"What will be the one thing that does in the desert as we know it? It's not one thing. It's the onslaught of all these things," Esque said. He said there was little that could be done to turn back the clock. Many nonnative weeds are too far spread to be dug out, while native seeds are not widely available and can cost millions of dollars to gather and plant.

Beyond planting a bit of native seed, Sall said, she plans to let Pipes Canyon come back on its own, however long it takes.

Greg Hill of the Bureau of Land Management's Palm Springs office said his agency will take a similar approach to other burned areas in the desert.

"We'll let it regenerate naturally," he said. "It's the largest big chunk of undeveloped land left in Southern California."

Handling of '05 Hackberry fire called inadequate

'Too many structures burned,' says Lewis,
Mojave chief defends Park Service

By George Watson, Staff Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Historic Pettit corral burned to the ground.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jerry Lewis criticized the National Park Service's handling of a 2005 wildfire in the Mojave National Preserve.

In a March 22 letter, Lewis, a Redlands Republican, wrote that "the appropriateness and responsiveness" of the park service's management of the Hackberry Complex Fire needed to be closely examined.

"In my opinion, too many structures burned during this fire," Lewis wrote in his letter to the agency's director, Fran Minella. "I would like to know how this happened and what steps the NPS will take to insure (sic) this doesn't happen again."

Apparently, the agency's fire management priorities remain an issue, not only for Lewis but at least one San Bernardino County leader. At the heart of the matter appears to be a divide over how wildfires are fought by firefighters -- whether the primary action should be to defend the occasional homes in the preserve or the vast environment that makes up the area.

Lewis was not available for comment. His spokesman, Jim Specht, said the congressman remains concerned about the matter and has a staff member keeping track of the issues.

Last Tuesday, a resident whose property was engulfed in flames from that wildfire sought help from the county's Board of Supervisors. Jim Walker, of Anaheim, told the supervisors that he feared another wildfire would cause similar results for others who own property in the Mojave National Preserve.

Board Chairman Bill Postmus, whose 1st District encompasses the High Desert, had stepped out of the meeting at the time and missed Walker's comments.

But as soon as Walker concluded speaking, Postmus' chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, strode to a microphone.

"I can't disagree with much of what he actually said, and I just want to update you on where our office is at," Mitzelfelt told the three supervisors in attendance.

Postmus believes the problems, Mitzelfelt said, could be an "outgrowth of the park service's unwillingness to work cooperatively with the county, and part of that is their refusal to adopt, update and maintain partnerships with the county as the (Bureau of Land Management) did when the BLM had management of the preserve."

Dennis Schramm, the Mojave National Preserve's supervisor, disagreed with Lewis and Postmus.

The Hackberry fire, which charred 70,000 acres of land filled with pinyon pine, juniper and sagebrush, was an anomaly caused by a destructive compilation of weather conditions, he said.

"This was an event that had never been seen before in this part of the desert," Schramm said.

The Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994 through the California Desert Protection Act -- despite the objections of the county. The law gave greater protection to protected species living within the preserve, along with the vegetation that makes the area so unique.

At the time the Hackberry fire ignited, several other wildfires were burning in Nevada, Arizona and California, which meant resources, particularly the number of available firefighters, were spread thin.

Lightning strikes caused eight wildfires to ignite on June 22, 2005, according to the Burned Area Emergency Response report. The blazes merged together, creating the Hackberry fire. Winds gusting up to 28 miles per hour spurred the flames, and high humidity allowed them to burn faster and hotter.

"People want to say, we didn't do this or that or couldn't save these houses," Schramm said. "What doesn't get out there is how many homes we did save."

But Lewis was not impressed with the Burned Area Emergency Response team's report.
"There seems to be a lack of review of the fire management itself," Lewis wrote, adding later, "I also find it hard to believe that the NPS did not consult with anyone from San Bernardino County or from the private sector while completing this report."

Walker took the issue of defending homes in the preserve to another level.
"The lightning strikes did not burn us out," said Walker, who had planned to retire to the property. "The restrictions out on the firefighters by the National Park Service burned us out."

Schramm vehemently disputed the contention that some other property owners share with Walker.

"It's coming out of their emotions, and some of those feelings are about the past superintendent, but it's just nonsense," Schramm said.

He added that he was unsure how much the property owners' issues were related to his predecessor, Mary Martin. Some of them had called Martin's actions too liberal toward protecting the environment ahead of man-made property.

"Over time, they developed some problems with the way she managed things," Schramm said.

He added that while he has a different background than Martin, even mentioning that he grew up a hunter, "Mary and I had to follow the same laws and regulations."

Schramm also addressed one other concern mentioned by Lewis and Postmus. During the wildfire, officers relied upon a fire management plan that had not yet been approved.

Technically, Schramm said, the plan was not yet valid at the time of the blaze.

But the plan proved a valuable tool that helped augment the management skills of the officers, he said.

"It was a draft plan," he said. "But it had some of the best information out there."
Still, the county also had complaints about the plan because its firefighters were not consulted. Since then, the county has been able to have its viewpoints considered.

Bush signs bill transferring Mount Soledad cross to federal control

By Dana Wilkie
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

White House photo
President Bush prepares to sign the bill transferring the Mount Soledad cross to federal control Monday. Behind Bush were, from left, Bill Kellogg; Phil Thalheimer; San Diego Congressmen Brian Bilbray, Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter; and Chuck LiMandri.

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Monday signed into law a plan to transfer San Diego's Mount Soledad cross to federal control in an effort to avoid its court-ordered removal.

In an Oval office ceremony, the Republican president signed a bill by three San Diego-area congressmen that immediately transfers the memorial land to the U.S. Defense Department in an effort to avoid a court-ordered removal of the cross that has towered over La Jolla on-and-off for nearly a century.

He was flanked by cross supporters from San Diego and the bill's chief architect, GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon.

“The president was pleased to sign this important piece of legislation into law,” said spokesman Peter Watkins:

“Today is a great day for America's veterans and the San Diego community,” said Hunter, whose bill passed the House last month with a 349-74 vote and passed the Senate unanimously two weeks later.

“The president's endorsement of this legislation validates years of tireless work and sends a clear message that America appreciates and respects its military men and women.”

James McElroy, the attorney for an atheist who first sued to remove the cross 17 years ago, said he petitioned the federal district court in San Diego last Thursday to void Congress' transfer.

“It's unfortunate that this is what our politicians do instead of respecting our constitution and the fact that we've had 17 years of decisions that have all come out the same way,” said McElroy, whose client won a ruling from a federal judge to remove the 29-foot cross by Aug. 1, an order the U.S. Supreme Court has put on hold.

The bill's final approval may mark a new era in the long-running parochial battle over the cross. Not only will the cross' future likely rest on interpretations of the federal Constitution instead of California's, it could become a national cause for supporters and opponents of religious symbols on public property.

“The president and Congress have no business intervening in this way in an ongoing legal proceeding,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Today's action is an unwarranted, heavy-handed maneuver that undercuts the separation of church and state and the integrity of the judicial system.”

About 35 people were milling around the cross and memorial as the legislation was being signed.

Sue Bourne, 53, a Catholic school teacher's aide from San Diego was visiting the cross with her mother Betty. She said it was wonderful that the president had signed the bill and that she was tired of the ongoing fight.

“We vote for things to become law and then we have people that fight it,” she said. “If they don't want to look at the cross then don't come up here.”

She said she hopes the legislation would put an end to the fighting.

“How can they go against the president?” she said, shaking her head.

Kurt Olney, 57, a landscape contractor from La Jolla, came to the cross to take some pictures. His father, a World War II veteran, is on one of the plaques on the memorial and he is a Vietnam veteran himself. He said he thinks now that the tide has turned on the fight to keep the cross and that the memorial wouldn't be the same without it.

“What are they going to do, take the crosses off Arlington?” he asked

Catherine Williams, 54, a housewife from San Diego, said she came to the cross Monday specifically to be there when the president signed the law.

“I never knew how much the cross meant to me until the fight came and we almost lost it,” she said. “I'm proud to be in a city that puts up such a hard fight to keep it. And I'll be one of them.”

The first Soledad cross was built in 1913 and was featured in Easter sunrise services. The one built there in 1954 and dedicated as a veterans' memorial replaced another that had fallen in a windstorm.

Those fighting to remove the cross say it's a Christian religious symbol and should not sit on city land atop a prominent hill. They note that even historical maps refer to the monument as the “Mount Soledad Easter Cross.”

Bush clearly sided with those who believe the cross is part of a long-standing and culturally significant tribute to the war dead honored at the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, and that it does not amount to a government preference for one religion over others.

Hunter's legislation aims to preserve the cross by vesting title to the memorial in the federal government and having it administered by the Secretary of Defense. The Department of Defense would manage the monument and the Mount Soledad Memorial Association would maintain it.

“As a native of San Diego for some 51 years now, I share the happiness of so many other people in the city that we're that much closer to being able to permanently preserve this great icon,” said Charles LiMandri, an attorney advising a group of cross supporters.

LiMandri was among those who attended the signing ceremony at the White House. Also there were Phil Thalheimer, chairman of the private group San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial and William Kellogg, president of the Mount Soledad Memorial Association.

Mayor Jerry Sanders, who has fought to keep the cross atop 800-foot high Mount Soledad, could not make the ceremony, a spokesman said. He was planning to speak at the cross Monday afternoon.

“Today's action allows our Federal government to take the lead in preserving the integrity of the memorial against all those that would alter this key part of San Diego's history,” Sanders said in an early version of the remarks he planned to deliver at the cross.

“I believe the President has substantially improved the chances that the desires of a vast majority of San Diego voters – all those that voted to preserve the integrity of the memorial – will finally be fulfilled.”

Charlie Berwanger, attorney for the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, said the memorial's land would be transferred to the Defense Department immediately upon Bush's signature.

But he said federal attorneys must still file a notice of condemnation proceedings in federal court in San Diego. He said it remains unresolved what amount of compensation the federal government will offer the city and the association for the land.

“If we strike a deal with the (Defense Department) that we can manage and operate the property and do fundraising up there and have events, my client may not be too terribly concerned about compensation,” Berwanger said.

Many believe that with the cross in federal hands, the U.S. Constitution, not California's, will now become the yardstick by which its constitutionality is measured.

Cross supporters say the courts have been more willing to allow religious symbols on public land on federal constitutional grounds, particularly if the symbol has historic or cultural significance. Cross foes note that a pair of 5-4 rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in separate cases involving the Ten Commandments established fuzzy guidelines.

The court found that a display inside a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional, but that a six-foot granite monument outside the Texas Capitol was legal.

Senate votes to put Mount Soledad cross in federal hands

By Dana Wilkie
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON – With a speed and decisiveness that surprised some, the Senate on Tuesday approved a plan to transfer the land beneath the Mount Soledad war memorial to federal control in an effort to avoid a court-ordered removal of the cross that stands there.

The Senate's unanimous vote sent the cross-transfer plan to President Bush for his expected signature. It creates what some consider an entirely new dynamic in the 17-year effort to save the cross, but which others say is a hopeless attempt to preserve a symbol on city land that courts have said unconstitutionally favors one religion over others.

“Obviously we're delighted,” said Charles LiMandri, an attorney advising a group of Soledad cross supporters. “I think even the more liberal side of the Democratic party has to recognize that there is widespread, grassroots support for preserving veterans memorials in general, and the Soledad cross in particular.”

James McElroy, the attorney representing atheist Philip Paulson – who first sued to remove the cross on the grounds it amounts to an unconstitutional preference of the Christian religion over others – said the bill is “still unconstitutional.”

“I guess the Senate has a short memory,” he said. “You've got a local issue here. What business does the federal government have getting involved?”

The legislation would preserve the 29-foot-tall cross on Mount Soledad by vesting title to the memorial in the federal government and having the Secretary of Defense administer it. The Department of Defense would manage the monument. The Mount Soledad Memorial Association, a private group that built the current cross in 1954 to honor Korean War veterans, would continue to maintain the site.

“Today's vote represents a significant step forward,” said El Cajon Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican who joined his two GOP colleagues from San Diego to write the cross-transfer legislation, which passed the House late last month. “The action taken by both the House and Senate reaffirm the overwhelming desire of the San Diego community to keep the memorial exactly where it has proudly stood for over 50 years.”

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who has fought to keep the cross atop 800-foot-high Mount Soledad, said through spokesman Fred Sainz that he was grateful for “the resonance” with which the Senate spoke on the issue.

“I think that the Senate was able to put political correctness aside for a moment and understand this truly is a war memorial,” Sainz said. “The fact there that a cross is part of it is an issue that senators of all religious faiths were able to come to terms with and accept.”

In July the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court order forcing the city to remove the cross by yesterday (Aug.1) on grounds it violated the state constitution's ban on government support of religion.

The deadline was set by U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson Jr., who first ordered the cross removed in 1991. It would have imposed a $5,000-a-day fine for failing to comply.

Senate approval came less than two weeks after the House voted 349-74 on July 19 to seize the land and give it to the Defense Department. After some brief wrangling among senators over who would carry the Hunter legislation through the upper chamber, the bill was placed on a so-called “consent calendar,” which indicated it had little opposition. “It's a hot potato, and I suspect the Senate would just as soon pass it and get it to the president and let the courts deal with it,” said Charlie Berwanger, attorney for the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, which has fought to keep the cross where it is.

McElroy said he didn't expect California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, to embrace the measure as they did.

“I didn't expect them to go with this fad,” McElroy said. “But this has become good fodder for politicians in an election year.”

Feinstein and Boxer tend to be staunch church-state separation advocates. But both also support a plan to spend federal money to preserve California missions that hold church services because, the senators argue, the missions have historical significance.

“The Mount Soledad cross has been a great source of hope and inspiration for decades, and it has important historical significance to veterans and San Diegans alike,” Feinstein said.

Boxer said, “I believe this monument to be a memorial to our veterans, and therefore should be allowed to stay. The Hunter bill was drafted in a way that is consistent with the latest court action.”

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also supported the Senate action, saying that “allowing this landmark to be destroyed would send the wrong message to our nation's veterans.” Should the Mount Soledad cross end up in federal hands, its future likely will rest on interpretations of the federal Constitution, not California's. Cross supporters say the courts have been more willing to allow religious symbols on public land on federal constitutional grounds, particularly if the symbol has historic or cultural significance.

Last year, a pair of 5-4 rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in separate cases involving the Ten Commandments established fuzzy guidelines: The court found that a display inside a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional, but that a 6-foot granite monument outside the Texas Capitol was all right.

“The time may be ripe for the court to revisit the issue,” said LiMandri. “They'll take this case because the law needs clarity.”

Cross foes note that the courts have ordered the removal of other crosses based on federal constitutional grounds. Five years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued to remove a 5-foot-tall cross of metal tubing in the Mojave National Preserve, although the removal is on appeal.

“I don't think the Supreme Court is going to rewrite the Constitution or the last 50 years of precedent,” McElroy said. “This is not like the Ten Commandments cases. The Latin cross is a powerful symbol of religion.”

For now, congressional action does not interfere with various lawsuits being pursued in state and federal courts.

In state court, cross supporters are appealing a decision by a Superior Court judge that invalidated Proposition A, a measure approved last fall by 76 percent of San Diego voters that would have donated the cross to the federal government, but which the judge said violated the state Constitution.

In federal court, the city is appealing Thompson's order to remove the cross or be fined. That case is to be heard in October.

Experts sow seeds of hope for regrowth

Sawtooth Complex Wildfire Recovery

By Mark Wheeler
Hi-Desert Star


PIONEERTOWN - “Don't give up on the plants.”

This was an oft-repeated and important message delivered Wednesday night at a fire recovery workshop staged in Pioneertown by the SummerTree Institute and Unique Garden Center, with the California Chaparral Field Institute.

Representatives from these three groups stood before approximately 175 to 200 victims of the Sawtooth fire who essentially had one burning question.

“Is all the natural beauty we once had here gone forever?”

Three experts on desert plants and plant ecology answered this question with an only slightly qualified “no.”

The pines and junipers which gave the Sawtooth and Pipes Canyon areas much of their botanical character, the speakers were sorry to say, would not regenerate to their prefire status in any near- or even mid-term future.

Many of the other icon species though, they were happier to report, would make reasonably good progress toward restoration; that is, if their prospects weren't interfered with by poor land management activities in the meantime or competition from invasive species.

Native desert plants are strongest underground, listeners were assured. What this means, they were informed, is that many of the plants here will regenerate from the roots.

Of course, this maxim will apply variably throughout the plant diversity in the area, and some species will demonstrate greater vigor than others in their recovery efforts. However, the primary message from the experts was to give nature a chance.

It's been taking care of itself for a long time, quite nicely enough without our help, they observed.

Not that neighbors can't take some action to help facilitate restoration, and most of the meeting's content was a steady stream of practical suggestions for everything from local sources for seedlings and transplants to growing tips to landscape design against future fire threat.

Central to all the individual suggestions was a single concept all the speakers elaborated on at length and urged with the greatest emphasis. Preserving the integrity of the soil crust, they insisted, would not only be vital to promoting restoration of the beloved native landscape, but would also be the first line of defense against exposing homes and properties to future fire threat.

Specifically, listeners were warned not to scrape, blade, drag or in any way break the soil crust, not even in their sensible efforts to disperse or dig-in the ash and soot on their properties.

They were advised to thin the residue with a leaf rake, and each speaker took pains to explain that the advisory against disturbing the soil crust was based on the vital need to discourage rampant invasion of non-native grasses.

These are powerful rivals of native plants for water, sun and space. In many places in the West, they are displacing natives and weakening ecological diversity.

Moreover, the spreading and dense nature of their growth patterns establishes a fuel highway over the landscape that carries fire easily and quickly from place to place, and their habitat of choice is disturbed soil.

Overheard in the audience were comments on the workshop that expressed everything from awe at how integrated the desert ecology is to vows that, “I'll certainly pay more attention to my landscaping in the future.”

For the most part, people were grateful for the hope they heard in the professional testimony. They were given good reason to believe the Hi-Desert around them would once again flourish with beauty and that they could, in all reality, expect to see it.

In their different ways, the three speakers did, indeed, apply their expertise to the germination of hope. This was the starting place SummerTree's Robin Kobaly said in her opening remarks was the purpose of the workshop.

Continuing with her own part of the presentation, she gave the audience solid botanical reasons to expect that many of the native plants would, in fact, regenerate.

Nursery owner Mike Branning advised listeners how best not to interfere with nature's recovery processes on their property and how to cultivate natives and arid land plants they could obtain from nurseries.

For his part, fire ecologist Richard Halsey explained how landscapes are quite capable of recovering from fire's effects and that we can apply ourselves most appropriately to restoration by not making land-use errors which only increases wildfire fuel loads.

“This is an opportunity,” Halsey encouraged. He and the others defined that opportunity throughout the evening as one for learning from nature's own processes.

Nature will heal itself, the speakers urged, and the abundant instruction in their presentation that evening was to inform people how they might best participate in that process and also, somewhat, help nurture beauty, finally, from their own grief.

Visitor Days: New Math for USFS and NPS

Posted by Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc.

The San Bernardino National Forest was recently caught using a highway counter strip at Big Bear Dam in Big Bear Lake, California to count all vehicles entering and leaving this community of 16,000 people. This was used to “document” the Visitor Days for this portion of the national forest; however, every day many of the local folks are commuting to and from their jobs in the Inland Empire.

These are residents and definitely NOT visitors to the national forest.

The American Land Rights Association (www.landrights.org) revealed the National Park Service was doing the same thing to commuters living in Virginia on the George Washington Parkway in Washington D.C.

Recently, I have been told by a reliable source that the National Park Service staffer in charge of documenting Visitor Days to the 249,000-acre Channel Islands National Park (a U.N. biosphere reserve off the coast of Southern California) has been counting passengers and crew on commercial airplanes and cruise liners that pass within eyesight of the islands. This NPS employee allegedly even calls the cruise line and airline offices to get the exact number of passengers and crew on board. They then become “Visitor Day” visitors to the National Park.

This national park is very difficult to visit, and is very desperate to justify its existence.

Tuffnut Fire News Update

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE - CA

Tuffnut Fire News Updates
July 20, 2006 (Initial Report)
July 26, 2006 (Update)

This fire has been 100% contained

Wildland Fire started on or about 07/20/2006
Cause - Natural (Lightning)
Providence Mtns. (CA)

Latitude 35.037 Longitude -115.509

Status as of 07/26/2006
Acreage - 1321 acres.
Fire is 100% contained
Resources committed - 1 crew, 1 helicopter, 1 helitack, 2 engines, 4 overhead. Total personnel is 47.

Estimated containment date is 7/25/2006.

Updates on fire
Steep terrain, remoteness of location, and high temperatures hampered control efforts.

Overview
Lightning caused 100 acre fire with only 5% containment as of 2000 on 7/20/06. Steep terrain and the remoteness of the location is hampering control efforts. Winds are 7-10 mph, tempurature is 106.

Strategy
Full suppression.

Vegetation affected
Short grass

Partners involved
Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service.

Lightning ignites yet another blaze

By Joe Nelson and Guy McCarthy, Staff Writers
Ontario Daily Bulletin

YUCCA VALLEY - Firefighters preparing to go home after battling a 61,000-plus-acre brush fire near Yucca Valley got back into action Thursday when a lightning strike ignited yet another blaze in Joshua Tree National Park.

Lightning struck about 1:30 p.m. in the Covington Flat area of the park. It crept up a hill, crested a ridge and shot down into a canyon, burning toward the southeast tip of Yucca Valley and threatening homes there.

As of 9:30 p.m., it had chewed through 282 acres and burned near the mouth of Black Rock Canyon. Officials ordered 400 breakfasts for hundreds of firefighters who were pulled from the Sawtooth Complex Fire and other blazes for deployment to Joshua Tree.

"This time we had the resources real fast from the Sawtooth (fire)," said Cindy Von Halle, a ranger for Joshua Tree National Park. "Right now we have about 200 firefighters and more are coming."

As night fell, the fire burned in an easterly direction farther into the 794,000-acre park. The blaze was 80 percent contained by 9:30 p.m., and officials expected to have it fully contained by 2 a.m. today.

Residents living on Carmelita Circle in Yucca Valley were advised they might need to evacuate their homes if the fire burned too close, but as of Thursday night, mandatory evacuations had not been ordered.

Pinion Juniper, Pinion Pines, scrub oak, Joshua Trees, Black Brush and a host of other native shrubs stand in the path of the blaze, said Joe Zarki, spokesman for Joshua Tree National Park.

Fires that burned in the park in 1995, 1996, 1998 and 1999 left behind a patchwork of burn areas that could thwart the progress of the fire, Zarki said.

"We'll have to wait and see. It depends on where the wind blows, what the terrain is like and how the air movements affect the fire," Zarki said.

If the fire burns into more vulnerable areas, it could prove disastrous.
"In the unburned zoned area there's quite a bit of fuel that can carry a fire," Zarki said.

Covington Flat Road, also known on some maps as Vermiculate Mine Road, was closed off Thursday to public access. The remainder of the park remained open.

The Covington fire came as a cluster of storm cells passed over the Morongo Basin and San Bernardino Mountains, producing thunder, rain and lightning. Several other brush fires flared up from Thursday afternoon, and a flash-flood warning remained in effect in the Morongo Basin.

The storm threat was expected to diminish overnight and should not pose the threat it did on Thursday, said Philip Gonsalves, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.

"We're probably still going to get some showers and thunderstorms, but they're going to be more isolated," Gonsalves said.

On Thursday, however, the county went into high alert, sending pre-recorded telephone messages to residents living in flood-prone areas near Yucca Valley where the Sawtooth fire burned, incinerating vegetation that served as ground cover to trap rainwater and deter mudslides and debris flows.

Earlier in the day, about 200 firefighters were cutting a fire break against the 24,695-acre Heart-Millard Fire in the San Gorgonio Wilderness near Coon Creek when rain began falling and lightning ignited at least six small fires, said Rich Phelps, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service.

"When the storm cells came through this afternoon, we pulled our ground crews off," Phelps said, noting that the risk of flash floods was a concern for firefighters who hike through drainage areas.

Nine helicopters and six helitankers dropped water and retardant on the Heart-Millard blaze throughout the day, and about 14.9 miles of fire break still needed to be cut, Phelps said, adding that the fire is not an immediate threat to the Big Bear Valley and is still burning about eight miles southeast of the mountain resort communities.

The Millard Complex Fire north of Cabazon and the 800-acre Heart Fire, originally part of the 61,700-acre Sawtooth Complex Fire near Big Bear Valley, were combined Wednesday, a day after the Sawtooth blaze was declared 100 percent contained. The Heart-Millard Fire was declared 62 percent contained Thursday.

The Millard and Sawtooth fires were ignited by lighting strikes on July 9, and combined killed one man, destroyed more than 85,000 acres of desert terrain, 50 homes, 171 other structures and 191 cars and trucks.

The combination of fire and rain was a double-edged sword for firefighters and residents.

"It could help things as far as the fires go, but it could make debris flows even more dangerous because there's nothing holding the water back," said Dave Dowling, emergency communications manager for the San Bernardino County Fire Department. "There's no ground cover there now, so people need to stay clear of these washes."

Shortly after lightning ignited the fire in Joshua Tree, other lightning strikes were reported. The 100-acre Tuffnut Fire was burning atop a ridge on the west side of Providence Mountain in the Globe Mine area in the Mojave National Preserve.

In Irwin Lake near Lake Arrowhead, lightning struck and area near Highway 38 and State Lane at 1:42 p.m. and burned about one-eighth of an acre before it was contained at 2:02 p.m., a county fire dispatcher said.

Experts blame grasses, pollution, temperatures for helping fires

By Andrew Silva, Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin [Ontario, CA]

It's not supposed to happen.

Mojave National Preserve: 71,000 acres in flames a year ago.

Joshua Tree National Park: 14,000 acres burned in 1999.

And in the past week, more than 80,000 acres have gone up in smoke as two large fires merged in the Mojave Desert.

In a pine forest, fire is an integral part of the life cycle and is necessary for a healthy, thriving forest.

But in the desert, flames are an unnatural, unwelcome and destructive force when they roar through Joshua trees, cactuses, juniper and pinyon trees.

"In our lifetime, we won't see it back the way it was," said Larry Whalon, chief of resources management for the Mojave National Preserve.

Desert plants may be the hardiest on earth, able to thrive in blistering temperatures and long stretches without water. The harsh conditions also mean it takes a long time for the plants to grow and establish themselves, usually with wide spaces between them.

Sprawling infernos in the desert are a phenomenon not seen until recent decades.

The obvious culprits are grasses that weren't here 200 years ago. Air pollution and average temperatures that have been creeping higher may also be accomplices.

The arrival of settlers in the 19th century also meant the arrival of non-native grasses that have blanketed the desert floor.

In the past, "a lightning strike had a good chance of hitting bare ground," said Joe Zarki, chief naturalist for Joshua Tree National Park.

Some grasses spread across the landscape once seeds carried by non-native settlers and livestock hit the ground. Others were planted deliberately for cattle grazing.

Native grasses and flowers in the desert tend to dry up and blow away when they die, or they remain isolated in bunches.

The exotic grasses, though, remain standing, even after they die.

"In a good wet year like last year, it'll create a carpet" across the desert floor, Zarki said. "Nowadays, lightning is going to hit these fine fuels that ignite easily."

Before, even if lighting struck a tree or patch of shrubs, that small area would burn but there was no way for the flames to move between plants.

The Sawtooth Complex Fire, which destroyed several dozen homes in Pioneertown, is an example. Drive through the burn area and there's mostly a fine layer of ash on the otherwise bare ground where grasses had carried fire to the widely spaced Joshua trees and other native plants.

"Oaks, juniper, Joshua trees don't appear to do well in response to fire," Zarki said.

The ecosystem that exists in the desert now took hundreds of years to get established. A pine forest will look pretty normal a few decades after a fire.

However, desert trees can take hundreds of years to grow.

If the grasses lead to fires every five, 10 or 15 years, the landscape could be altered permanently in a phenomenon called "type conversion," Zarki said. With frequent fires, the native trees won't be able to re-establish themselves, turning the desert into a scrubby grassland.

"Talking about the natural ecosystem in California is like talking about the dodo bird," said William Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

That appears to go for climate as well.

Temperatures have been rising in the West since the 1970s, and many temperature records have been set in recent years.

Southern California, despite near-record rains in the winter of 2004-05, is effectively in its eighth year of drought, Patzert said.

Part of the increase in temperatures is because of sprawling development. Heat is trapped by the hundreds of square miles of concrete and asphalt, creating what have been dubbed "urban heat islands."

Patzert called it Southern California's "extreme makeover."

The Inland Empire has seen a 5-degree jump in average temperature in just 50 years, he said.

Kelly Redmond, a regional climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev., said he was skeptical that the temperature increase since 1970 was real.

But after looking more carefully at the data and other climate indicators, such as snow melt and when flowers bloom, he now believes the increase is broad and genuine.

His research indicates temperatures across 11 western states have increased an average of 2 degrees since 1970. June was the warmest in 25 years and July appears to be headed for a record also, he said.

At least part of that increase could be attributable to global climate change, the experts said.

To make matters worse, take blistering temperatures, combine them with non-native grasses and mix in some fertilizer. And air pollution could actually be feeding the grasses and helping them spread.

Air pollution is loaded with nitrogen compounds, providing a readily available fertilizer, some researchers have said.

"Without nitrogen, the grasses aren't doing that well," said Philip Rundel, a biology professor at UCLA. "We're doing a massive fertilization experiment and don't know it."

Under Kelso's dusty top layer is vivid history

A boarded-up post office and restored depot dot the landscape in Kelso. The town attracts as many as 400 people a day to explore the Kelso Dunes and the visitor center. Photo by Greg Vojtko / The Press-Enterprise

By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
The Press-Enterprise

KELSO - Tim Duncan was not quick to jump nine years ago when the National Park Service asked him to leave his job as a ranger at the Manassas Battlefield in Virginia and move to the dusty and nearly deserted outpost of Kelso in the Mojave Desert.

He had visited California once on vacation, and drove the desolate stretch between Needles and Barstow.

But he took the assignment, in part because one of the Park Service's attractions has been the opportunity to work all over the country, from Alaska to Virginia, he said.

Duncan, 50, has come to love his home in Kelso, hidden against the Granite Mountains. The nearest civilization is in rural Baker, along Interstate 15, some 30 miles to the northwest.

"I enjoy the quietness, I enjoy the remoteness, I enjoy the terrain," he said. "I enjoy the railroad community and the visitor center, which has just been restored."

He was referring to Kelso's 15 other inhabitants: Union Pacific Railroad employees who maintain the track between Barstow and Las Vegas. And to the two-story rail depot officially reopened in March as a visitor center for the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve.

The visitor center, renovated at a cost of $5.5 million, has fostered something of a renaissance for a town that was founded in 1905 as a water stop for steam-driven trains, boomed as a mining town during World War II, and has been little more than a ghost town ever since.

As many as 400 people a day venture off Interstates 40 and 15 on weekends to sift through the artifacts on display here. They also explore the nearby Kelso Dunes, where weather-polished grains of sand emit an eerie, growling boom sound as they cascade during avalanches.

The only other visitors Duncan sees are the motorists who are detoured through town when traffic accidents prompt the California Highway Patrol to shut down one of the interstates.

"The traffic backs up for 50 miles," Duncan said. "It's a slow crawl, and I have to go out and make sure it keeps moving."

How Kelso Came to Be

James Woolsey, chief of resource interpretation and outreach for the preserve, likes to amuse visitors with the not-so-compelling story of how Kelso got its name.

Three railroad surveyors took turns naming the stops, he said. Only two of them were on hand at the Kelso founding and they decided to throw their names, and the name of the third guy, into a hat and choose one for the town.

The name they drew? "The guy who wasn't there," Woolsey said.

He is not certain how often John Kelso visited his namesake, or whether he ever visited it.

When the first trains started running, Kelso had a small store and a few-dozen residents, including a smattering of gold and silver miners.

Soon after, the railroad built a roundhouse to service them and parked half a dozen extra locomotives to help the engines make it up the grueling 19-mile, 2,000-foot grade to Cima.

"That's what made Kelso," said Theo Packard, 95, who moved to the town with his parents in 1920 and stayed for a quarter century.

"Sometimes, the trains were so long, they had to hitch on two or three helpers to make it," Packard said.

Kelso had about 200 residents then.

"It was just a regular, work-a-day town," he said. "Mostly, we worked."

A Busy Little Place

Packard's father opened a general store that doubled as the post office. There were no saloons.

Packard attended Kelso's one-room school, which closed in the 1970s. The building, which still stands, was home to the town's one big social event: a monthly dance where the railroad workers, ranchers and miners converged to foxtrot and waltz.

"They had a kind of a makeshift orchestra," he said. "My mother played the piano."

The school had one teacher who instructed students through the eighth grade, after which they commuted by train to Barstow or Las Vegas to attend high school.

The massive two-story depot, which would eventually house railroad workers, restaurant employees, and telegraph and baggage workers, was constructed in 1924.

Four passenger trains a day, two each in the early morning and evening, stopped in Kelso to load up with water and feed the passengers.

The telegraph operator was something of a gossip, Packard remembers, and would pass the word when celebrities were on the way. Packard ran down to the station one day to meet silent-movie cowboy Tom Mix and look at his horse in the baggage car.

Kelso's "boom" came at the start of World War II, Woolsey said, when iron ore-mines in the area supplied raw material for the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana. The plant, in turn, turned out steel for the Liberty ships that ferried beans and bullets to Europe during the war. At one point, the town had 2,000 residents.

By war's end, Kelso was on a track to oblivion. Packard left to seek work for a rail delivery service.

'Tin Cans and String'

Today, Kelso has no general store, no restaurant, no movie theater and still no saloon.

Duncan has two freezers and drives to Las Vegas once a month for supplies. He says it's quicker than going south to Barstow and there is a wider variety of stores, which saves trips.

Only a few of the railroad workers are in town at any given time, he said. Their only entertainment, he said, is what it has always been: They get together every now and then to have dinner.

That isn't all that's stayed the same. The telephone at his ranger station has a scratchy signal and frequently cuts out, like poor cell-phone service.

"The lines, the equipment, everything, is 50 years old," Duncan said. "I guess they don't see the need for improvement. We're on tin cans and string out here."

Not exactly the way he likes it.

Video: A history of Kelso, the once flourishing railroad town in the Mojave Desert

Pappy & Harriet's remains standing

Eric Burdon among legends who have taken stage at historic site

Bruce Fessier
The Desert Sun

Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace isn't just a musty historical landmark. It's the pantheon of a vibrant high desert music scene.

Queens of the Stone Age, Eric Burdon, Donovan, Camper Van Beethoven. This is the home venue for rock legends who live in the Morongo Basin.

And that scene was saved on Tuesday when the wildfire passed by Pappy & Harriet's.

When U2 producer singer songwriter Daniel Lanois was performing at the now fire-endangered saloon in 2004, it was almost expected that his friend Burdon would show up. Lanois lives in New Orleans. Burdon sings "The House of the Rising Sun" about New Orleans. So Burdon did show up and he did sang "House of the Rising Sun."

Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin recorded the song "29 Palms." And he stayed at the 29 Palms Inn earlier this year. But he didn't sing in the 29 Palms Inn lounge. He drove to Pappy & Harriet's and sang seven songs at that rustic Western saloon.

Dave Lowery, leader of Camper Van Beethoven and the more recent alt rock band Cracker, is hoping to hold his second annual Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven Campout Sept. 8-9.

Pappy & Harriet's isn't just a place for old cowboys. Its diversity is what makes it so legendary, the public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica often tapes shows for broadcast from there.

Young people, old people, middle-aged hippies. They all mix comfortably at Pappy & Harriet's with an appreciation that the music is honest. It's organic.

It was founded in 1946 by a group of investors including Roy Rogers to serve as a place to make cowboy movies. When television came in and they stopped making "B" Westerns, it fell into disuse, but attracted artists and eccentrics who liked the idea of living in a place that was literally a fantasy land.

A group tried to turn it into an amusement park in the 1960s, but the plans by designer Will Hanson never got off the ground. Tumbleweeds and manufactured amusements just didn't fit.

The '60s troubadour Donovan used to sing there in the late 1970s and early '80s, but the place became known as a biker bar around that time.

Pappy Allen and his wife, Harriet. bought the saloon in the mid-1980s and Harriet ran it by herself after Pappy's death in 1994. But it was Robyn Celia and Linda Krantz who brought in the big-name entertainment and fostered the growth of new talent when they bought the club in 2004.

Now emigrés from Los Angeles and San Francisco are coming to the desert to try out new material at Pappy & Harriet's. The palace offers songwriter showcases and jam sessions with the "house band" Thrift Store All Stars.

Fires spark warnings

Gina Tenorio, Staff Writer

Fire crews throughout the county are being vigilant and feeling fortunate.

Despite warm weather and a number of fires - some caused by humans, some by nature - no serious damage has been done, officials say.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service worked together to extinguish the flames before they crept into the San Bernardino National Forest, said Bill Peters, A CDF spokesman.

Dozens of lighting strikes have sparked small fires. In the Mojave National Preserve, a blaze called the Valley View Fire had blackened 40 acres off Cima Road east of Interstate 15, east of Baker on Wednesday.

As of Wednesday evening, it was 80 percent contained, U.S. Forest Service officials said.

In Oak Hills, crews fought a 50-acre fire. On Wednesday, Forest Service personnel fought small fires ignited by more lightning throughout the area, Martinez said.

They've been fortunate the fire season has been moderate but the bottom line for residents is they need to be careful, Peters said.

Watering holes get new look

By JIM MATTHEWS
Press-Enterprise

Mojave Preserve management, wildlife scientists, environmentalists and sporting groups are actually coming together over the issue of water in the Mojave National Preserve. The result is going to be good things for wildlife.

All of these different groups have been embroiled in a battle over the deactivation of more than 130 different water sources connected to the former cattle operations on the preserve. All of those water sources also supported a vast network of desert wildlife.

Wildlife and hunting groups were outraged the National Park Service violated its management plan and promises made during the drafting of this plan to study the impact shutting off these water sources would have on wildlife before the valves were turned off.

Wildlife biologists who have seen species expand their ranges and populations when water was added to desert mountain ranges said the losses caused by the former park superintendent's demand the water be shut off were likely very significant. But because the promised research on the preserve was never done, no one could actually put numbers on wildlife losses or measure the decrease in range and habitat usage.

Cliff McDonald, a Needles hunter and wildlife activist, and the Safari Club led a drive to restore just 12 of the original wells on the preserve for wildlife use. The preserve staff prepared an environmental assessment that would have allowed that to occur, but everyone involved agreed there was inadequate, comprehensive scientific data to support adding or removing the water.

Lawsuits were threatened on both sides of the debate, and then the park superintendent left. In an amazing transformation, people started talking again, wanting to work together and solve obvious problems, get answers to honest questions and move forward.

The Park Service has proposed a comprehensive study to look at "added water" in the desert and its effect and importance. And professional wildlife biologists from all over the West are enthused about the research because it would involve before and after measurements and data gathering. The research project and the well reactivation have been rolled together. Sort of.

"It's not that the 12 wells idea is dead," said Larry Whalon, chief of resources for the preserve. "But we're not going to hold ourselves to those 12 locations."

The research will determine the best places to put water and then measure the effects once the water is in.

For the first time, we'll really know with scientific certainty the effect adding water has on desert environments and wildlife populations in those environments.

"This has the potential to demonstrate the importance -- or lack thereof -- of water sources on this type in desert ecosystems," said Dr. Vern Bleich, Department of Fish and Game bighorn sheep biologist.

Healing Desert's Wounds

College-age activists camp in the Mojave for months as they work to restore land that has been trashed by garbage, off-roaders and graffiti vandals.

CAMOUFLAGE: Paul Miles, 24, rigs a fake bush to hide an illegal trail.

By Eric Bailey, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

BARSTOW — Twenty miles from town, in a brutally lovely land where the road and sky collide, a ragamuffin tribe of college-age kids is hard at work in the middle of nowhere.

They're healing the desert.

Dan Prell whacks the sun-scorched earth with a sodbuster pick, his dreadlocks shimmying under a blue bandanna. He grins habitually, happy to miss another cold winter in his native Neenah, Wis.

"It's a blast," the 21-year-old said between swings, no trace of irony hedging his words. "It lets me get out of a small city and go camping for eight months. What could be better?"

In Southern California's vast outback, a century of mankind's heedless incursions — from George Patton's tanks in training for World War II to survivalists taking target practice — have left lasting wounds on a fragile landscape slow to mend.

Those infirmities bring young men and women such as Prell and crew leader Mizuki Seita, a 4-foot, 11-inch whirlwind called Miz by her six-person team.

Theirs is a boot camp existence in the middle of the Mojave. For little pay, three square vegetarian meals and a tent overhead, these twentysomethings camp out in California's badlands of biodiversity for months at a time, rising early to wield shovels and rakes in a ritual of surgical repair.

The goal is to make assaulted swaths of desert look as if humankind had never set foot or knobby tire there.

Such repair parties started combing Southern California's arid backyard after Congress passed the Desert Protection Act in 1994.

They come in all persuasions. Suburban sagebrush-huggers spend volunteer weekends pulling up invasive saltcedar, prison crews troll for trash among the yucca, teen groups try their hand at rehabilitation.

But in recent years the most devoted restorative presence has been the Student Conservation Assn., the nonprofit organization that dispatched Seita and her crew to the East Mojave for an eight-month hitch.

Founded nearly 50 years ago and headquartered in New Hampshire, the group sends small teams of college-age adults to ecological sanctuaries all around the country. They first came to the Southland desert in 2001 and have returned every year since. This season 40 workers have toiled in places that include Dead Mountains Wilderness, Stepladder Mountains and the Kingston Range.

They find plenty of scars.

This day, Seita and company pull up into rolling folds of rock hugging the south slope of the Ord Mountains, a craggy range southeast of Barstow. Their main mission: to make a couple of motorcycle trail heads disappear.

Fresh from the usual bagel breakfast and a warmup game of Hacky Sack, the workers bounce up in a bulky bronze Suburban. Clouds embrace distant mountains shouldering snow.

Summer Farmer, 23, of Springfield, Ill., spots the day's first indignity: a boulder painted with graffiti. She grabs a steel-wire brush.

Some guy named Rudy just had to let the jack rabbits and coyotes know he loves the L.A. Dodgers. In doing so, he spoiled the antique sheen, known as desert varnish, running in stratified ribbons across the rock. It could take nature a thousand years to replace it.

Scrubbing under the sun, Farmer talks about snow.

Back on Presidents Day, they awakened to find the desert covered with white. They weren't "Illinois-sized" flakes, Farmer said, "but they were getting there."

Prell, a self-confessed sissy about the cold despite his Wisconsin roots, fled to a car in the sub-zero sleeping bag he had his mom send out. He awoke to find "Good Morning" scrawled on the snow-covered windshield.

It was the work of Paul Miles, 24, late of the University of Georgia. At 6 feet 4, with wire-rim glasses and the dreadlocks he's been cultivating without a haircut for the last five years, Miles would stick out even without a crowd.

He's one of the veterans, on his third gig with the conservation group. The California desert astounds him. So does the abuse it has endured.

"It's spectacular out here," Miles said. "But it's a mess, a real mess." Trampled plants. Scattered shell casings. Abandoned cars. You don't see it, Miles noted, zooming by at 75 mph on the interstate.

Mary Verrilli, 25, scrabbles along, raking out the well-worn trail edge. Puny roadside berms can loom like a brick wall to a desert tortoise, the Mojave's famously imperiled critter.

Besides marring the landscape, the pathways the team is trying to obliterate can have other unfortunate effects on the desert landscape. Errant food scraps draw ravens to prey on vulnerable young tortoises. A traveler can unwittingly carry invasive seeds on tires or shock absorbers for miles, introducing rapacious plants that overtake native flora.

Prell and 21-year-old Aaron Drake of Boone, N.C., are whacking holes in the trail. They're preparing a bit of camouflage, a sort of re-imagineering in a desert Disneyland.

Miles delivers an armload of dead creosote branches. Twisted and blackened, they go into the shallow holes, small rocks anchoring the base.

Seita calls it her desert restoration flower arrangement.

These faux bouquets of creosote and burro weed and other flora are planted a few dozen yards up to where the path disappears over a knoll. Beach ball-size boulders are rolled into the way to complete the effect.

Seita holds her hands up like a cinematographer framing a movie scene. The goal is to make this trail portal vanish, giving nature time to reclaim the land.

"I've done trail building in Tennessee," Verrilli said. "This is the reverse."

The dead branches will stand several years, acting as a little oasis to catch water, deflect breezes and provide shade so young plants take root.

Rangers used to post signs on closed trails, but that proved "0% effective," said Steve Borchard, the federal Bureau of Land Management's Desert District manager in California. Scofflaws riddled the placards with bullets and ran them down with all-terrain vehicles. Hay bales blocking the trails fared a bit better, Borchard said, but the students' pick-and-shovel subterfuge works best.

In the last three years, the Student Conservation Assn. has closed more than 1,700 unauthorized desert trails.

Heather Bosserman, 26, spreads a topographical map on the sport utility vehicle's hood. The pages are laced by a spider web of red lines marking "illegal incursions" — off-road routes that shouldn't exist.

Peering through wire-rim glasses, auburn hair tucked under a Yellowstone baseball hat, Bosserman seems the no-nonsense one. She loves the work but can't help being realistic.

Plenty of days they clean up trash or close a trail only to come back the next day and find everything undone. After cleaning up a campsite one morning, they returned in the afternoon to find an abandoned Porsche.

"You do what you can," Bosserman lamented.

Seita, the shortest and oldest at 28, refuses to go down without a fight. If a cyclist zips by on an illegal trail, she scampers in pursuit, waving her arms until the offender stops.

"Most people are nice about it," she said. "They don't understand that once you've done damage to the desert, it's hard to get it back. They don't think of these plants as unique, like a redwood or sequoia."

After a lunch of pasta salad and hummus on homemade bread, they spread out among the boulders looking for trash.

Farmer comes back with an old VCR. Miles, a merry prankster, trudges to the truck with his head poking out of a latrine lid.

They are, Miles said with pride, "a motley crew."

This sort of job — hard work, a token $160-a-week paycheck, a hardy embrace of solitary wilds — tends to attract nature-lovers looking to break into the environmental field. After half a year working and living together, Drake said, they're all "pretty much family by now."

Seita is the lone Californian. She grew up in Japan, came to the U.S. at 13 when her dad was transferred to Southern California. Seita stayed when her family returned to Japan and has worked three years now in the desert.

"It's hard to explain to them what I'm doing," she said. "They think I'm cleaning up trash in a national park."

As the sun edges toward the mountaintops, the team begins a slow ride back to camp. "The car is pretty stinky on the ride home," Prell said, chortling. "Lets you know you're alive."

Camp is on the far side of the Ords in a canyon that cleaves the ridge. The fading light casts a rosy glow on a mosaic of rock sculpted by time. Dinner in the big, olive-green, Army tent that serves as a mess hall is a hash of potato, cabbage, carrots, onions, yogurt, dill and sunflower that Bosserman and Seita prepare in a Dutch oven over an open fire.

After dinner, Farmer flips through a paperback. Verrilli and Bosserman talk of playing cribbage. Miles mends a sock.

The mice are out; a brave scavenger skitters among chair legs. Coyotes are gearing up to howl as some of the crew members begin heading to bed at 8 p.m.

A new desert dawn, and a new desert workday, will soon be upon them.

Cameo of George Palmer Putnam

George Palmer Putnam
1887 - 1950

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UPPER MOJAVE DESERT
HSUMD Newsletter
Vol. 21 No. 6 June 2006
HISTORICAL ARTICLE

Amelia Earhart with George Palmer Putnam.

(Following is an article prepared by Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert member and local historian, John Di Pol, drawn from his library of history books. Ed).

With your indulgence, permit me to diverge a bit from our usual fare, although there is a connection of our topic, tenuous as it may be, with the history of our region.

Who was Mr. Putnam? Well, he was the husband of the famous aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, at the time of her tragic disappearance in the Western Pacific while on her around-the-world flight in 1937.

George Putnam was born in 1887 in Rye, NY, to the comfortably wealthy family of the publishing company G. P. Putnam Sons, Inc. George attended schools in New York and Connecticut, then Harvard, but that lasted only a year. Putnam had restless feet and he headed west. Before departing he had met the heiress Dorothy Binney and continued corresponding with her. Marriage was proposed and accepted. George brought his bride out west to Bend, Oregon. There he entered politics, became mayor and publisher and owner of the Bend newspaper. After a few years, including a stint in the Army during WW I, George and Dorothy moved back to New York where George accepted a position in the family's publishing business.

George was a driver and hard worker. He was a member of two Arctic expeditions, in 1926 and 1927, both sponsored by reputable scientific societies. He authored several books and made the "big leagues" when he signed Charles Lindbergh to publish the book "We", Lindberg's account of his solo flight across the Atlantic. Because of his reputation of working with Lindbergh, he was contacted by a wealthy American dowager who wanted to sponsor the first flight of a woman across the Atlantic and commissioned Putnam to find a suitable candidate. And George did so: he came up with the essentially unknown Amelia Earhart. The rest is history.

George was instrumental in organizing the flight, which was made in 1928. Because Amelia was not instrument qualified, two rated pilots accompanied her. No matter, Amelia made the international headlines. George rapidly became Amelia's agent, promoter, publicist, confidant. Successes followed: Amelia's solo transatlantic flight in 1932; first person to solo Hawaii to California and many other honors, with George busy in the background. George's marriage to Dorothy suffered and divorce followed in 1929. His relationship with Amelia had deepened; marriage proposals followed, with Amelia finally accepting and they were married in 1931.

By the mid-1930s, planning started for Amelia's around-the-world flight. On May 29, 1937 Amelia, with Fred Noonan as navigator, took off from Oakland eastbound on her historic attempt. It was July 2nd, on the leg from New Guinea to Howland Island in the Pacific, that Amelia and Fred were lost at sea. George was devastated, as was the rest of the nation, literally. In addition to the search efforts of the U.S. government, Putnam enlisted help of his own and, obsessed with finding her, spent months tracking down every lead.

Putnam rebuilt his life with writing, publishing and lectures. In 1940 he moved to Lone Pine where he purchased a cabin lodge high up at Whitney Portal in the Eastern Sierras. With the advent of WW II, George, at age 55, applied for a commission in the Army Air Corps. He was accepted and served as an intelligence officer in the China-Burma-India theater. After the war George returned to Lone Pine, in poor health. He began corresponding with Margaret (Peg) Haviland, whom he had met while at Intelligence School before "shipping out". This lead to their marriage in late 1945, with Peg joining him at Whitney Portal.

Their life at the Portal was serene, but full, with George writing, doing consulting for publishers, maintaining contacts around the country. But, a problem. Peg could not stand the winter cold, so the following year they spent time at Stovepipe Wells Inn in Death Valley. During these years George wrote two books: Death Valley and Its Country, 1946, and Death Valley Handbook, 1947. The royalties helped him to surprise Peg. He purchased the Stovepipe Wells Inn for her! Peg stayed most of the year at Stovepipe to operate the place, with George at the Portal working on his latest book Up In Our Country, a conversational essay on the inhabitants, flora and fauna of the area. But by 1949 George's health was failing. By winter he was at Stovepipe too ill to travel. Later, after Christmas, he was taken to the hospital in Trona with kidney failure and died there on January 4th, 1950. He was cremated and his ashes are in the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

Peg continued to operate Stovepipe Wells. As tourism increased she built up the business by expansion and improvements. In 1962 Mrs. Putnam met and married Willard Lewis. She ultimately sold the Stovepipe in 1966 to the Fred Harvey Co., or was it AmFac, or whatever. Mrs. Putnam-Lewis passed away in 1981.

Up In Our Country was published posthumously in 1950. Your writer had found a copy in a used book store several years ago - the only copy he has ever seen. A slim, handsome volume, conservatively designed. He bought it.

Ref: THE SOUND OF WINGS, The Biography of Amelia Earhart, Mary S. Lovell, 1989. L.A. TIMES, April 22, 2001.

UP IN OUR COUNTRY, George Palmer Putnam, 1950

LLEWELLYN BARRACKMAN DIES

OBITUARY
LLEWELLYN BARRACKMAN

Needles Desert Star

Beloved and respected long-time Mojave leader, Llewellyn Barrackman passed away on May 21, 2006, in Bullhead City, Ariz. Mr. Barrackman was nationally recognized as a force in American Indian politics and local economic development. Llewellyn was born in Needles, Calif., on July 4, 1918, to Roger Barrackman and Mabel Kempton.

After losing his mother as a young boy, he was raised by his grandmother until he was captured and forcibly sent to the Fort Mojave Boarding School in 1927. When the school closed in 1930 he transferred to Phoenix Indian School, where he graduated in 1938. Given his military training from boarding school, he readily enlisted in the U. S. Army during WWII. He served in the Engineering Corps, which built the Trans-Alaska Highway. In 1944, he married his sweetheart Betty Vanderbilt, who he remained married to for 62 years.

After the war he worked at Sierra Ordinance Depot in Herlong, Calif., until 1958 when he brought his young family back to Needles. In those years he volunteered his time and automobile to the Tribal Council and earned the lasting trust of the senior Mojave leadership. His energy and love for the community was fulfilled through is involvement in coaching local sports teams and playing the trombone in the Fort Mojave Band. Also, Llewellyn and Betty served as foster parents to many orphaned and abandoned Mojave children.

In 1962, he was elected to the Fort Mojave Tribal Council, where he served his people for over 40 years. In 1965, Mr. Barrackman became chairman and set in motion a bold and unique economic development plan that resulted in the enormous economic success of the tribe today. Under his leadership fort Mojave developed an irrigation system for agriculture, planned and implemented numerous economic enterprises, and built its own casino and gambling industry. Mr. Barrackman constructed new housing for tribal members, created numerous employment opportunities, and instituted a per capita profit sharing for each member of the tribe. In his later years, Llewellyn served as vice-chairman until his retirement in 2004.

Throughout his political career Llewellyn served on numerous national, state, and private boards and commissions, including the Nevada Gaming Commission.

During his lifetime, Mr. Barrackman and his wife Betty preserved and promoted both Mojave language and culture. His motto "Time doesn't wait for anyone," led to great success in teaching younger tribal members. His direct involvement in traditional affairs created a Mojave cultural renaissance.

Llewellyn shared his immense knowledge with many and ensured that Mojave culture and history will not be forgotten. Llewellyn and Betty's efforts were recognized by the Smithsonian Institution in 1993 and the Mashantuckett Pequot Museum in 1996.

In later years, Llewellyn was consulted and recognized by world-renowned linguists and anthropologists.

Mr. Barrackman's greatest pride was in the Fort Mojave Band, which remains a vital part of the community due in large part to his efforts. Llewellyn recently organized the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the band and its illustrious history.

The entire tribe as well as the Laughlin-Bullhead area benefit today from the strong and thoughtful leadership of this legendary man. Llewellyn Barrackman is remembered for his powerful presence, eloquence, quiet dignity, generosity and humility.

Llewellyn is survived by his loving wife, Betty; daughters, Barbara Barrackman and Iris Scerato; son, Joe Scerato; granddaughter, Melanie Otero; and great-grandsons Keenan Jenkins and Joaquin Otero. He is also survived by his aunt, Faith Wilson; and his brother, Lionel Barrackman.

Fort Mojave Indian Tribal traditional services were held on May 24 at the Fort Mojave Tribal Mourning Hall. Fort Mojave traditional rites were held May 25 at the Fort Mojave Indian Cemetery.

Arrangements were handled by Dimond & Sons Needles Mortuary.

Barstow students buy acre of desert land

Chuck Mueller, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

BARSTOW - Appreciation for nature begins in childhood, and a group of youngsters has demonstrated how anyone who cares can help protect a small patch of the Mojave Desert and its creatures.

After collecting aluminum cans and plastic bottles for a year, 80 first-graders at Lenwood School raised $214 to help buy an acre of land at Mojave National Preserve.

"With their effort, coupled with an $86 contribution from San Bernardino County's waste-management department, we presented a check for $300 (recently) to the National Park Service to add a bit of land to the preserve," teacher Ginger O'Brien said.

"Students in four classrooms brought recyclables from home and turned them in for vouchers. It was a part of our program to teach children to understand and appreciate the desert. Hopefully they will continue this appreciation throughout their lives."

Superintendent Dennis Schramm and resource chief James Woolsey of Mojave National Preserve accepted the check. "We welcome the efforts of these young people," Schramm said. "We want children to learn about the natural world early in their lives so they can enjoy it throughout their lives."

Lenwood School's nature-awareness programs, which include field trips to Barstow-area museums and hands-on involvement in caring for a cactus garden, awakens the children to the wonders of the vast Mojave region.

"Children are our future," Woolsey said. "If we don't teach them early about our environment, they may never appreciate it. We have millions of acres of wild lands around us. For youngsters not to go out and enjoy them would be a shame."

Since the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve was established in 1994, an ongoing effort has been made to acquire parcels of privately held land within its borders. Private land within the preserve has dropped from 220,000 acres to just under 100,000 acres.

"Every year, we ask landowners if they want to sell their property," the superintendent explained.

"The National Park Foundation, chartered by Congress to support the park system, negotiates to buy land. Whatever it acquires is donated to the park system."

Several thousand private landowners hold chunks of land in a checkerboard pattern scattered throughout the national preserve. Among these parcels are state-school lands that sometimes are exchanged for surplus federal property, Schramm said.

Mojave National Preserve contains the world's largest Joshua tree forest, lofty sand dunes, the historic Mojave wagon road, Indian wall paintings known as petroglyphs, and hundreds of wild creatures like the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

It is the only place where three desert ecosystems meet the Mojave, the Great Basin and the Sonora.

"Lenwood School's efforts match up with the goal of Park Service Director Fran Mainella to improve the relevance of the park system in the 21st century," Schramm said. "Many children don't have the chance to sit around a campfire in the wilderness today. We want to attract more of them to our parks to help amplify the marvelous heritage they represent."

At Lenwood School, two first graders shared their feelings on the fund-raising effort.

"I brought in a lot of cans and bottles to buy more land for the desert tortoise," said Karina Cruz, 6, daughter of Manuel and Maria Cruz.

Michelle Kounovsky, also, 6, daughter of Brian and Kimberly Kounovsky, said the yearlong effort was fun. "We want to help the national preserve get bigger," she explained.

In addition to O'Brien, first-grade teachers Wendi Matley, Melissa Moor and Debbie Williams, helped spearhead the conservation program.

"The children took home bags with brochures about the desert tortoise to share with their family and neighbors," O'Brien said. "And they drew pictures of various Mojave creatures to fill a book in which they described the animals."

Among the children's comments that accompanied the drawings:

"Kangaroo rats hop on long back legs and use their tails to balance," said Gabriel Alvarez.

"Cactus wrens build a nest like a football. They eat lizards. They take dust baths," Faith Aguirre said.

"Burrowing owls live in the ground and come out during the day," Delena Chavez said. "They are not smarter than other birds."

"Cougars jump high. They walk quietly. They make a purring sound," Vernon Colbert said.

Applauding the conservation program, Lenwood School Principal Tom Reynolds said first-graders are eager to learn about the environment. "By learning about it early in their lives, their appreciation of the natural world will stay with them," he said. "It's important that our children appreciate the desert around us and help conserve it."

Fighting to save the desert tortoise

Population has declined 90 percent since 1980s

By TRACIE TROHA Staff Writer
Barstow Desert Dispatch

VICTORVILLE — Wildlife experts say the threatened desert tortoise has virtually disappeared from the High Desert, and efforts to save it are being hampered by constant construction and the spread of disease.

Once common and widespread, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the desert tortoise population has declined 90 percent since the 1980s, when it was first listed as a threatened species.

Randy Arnold, a biologist and head of the Hesperia consulting firm RCA and Associates, has been doing desert tortoise surveys for the last 20 years and says these days its rare to find one in the Victor Valley.

"Part of the reason is because development activity has resulted in a reduction of their habitat," Arnold said. "They also suffer from a respiratory infection. It is a fairly nasty disease that has hit the tortoise population pretty hard."

Arnold's company conducts biological surveys for a majority of the development projects in the High Desert and said the discovery of a tortoise does not stop the project. The tortoise is just relocated to land operated by the Bureau of Land Management.

While the move may be helpful to the tortoise, its habitat is being destroyed, said Michael Connor, executive director of the Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee.

"The desert is getting smaller and smaller everyday," Connor said. "Big cities are slowly spreading into the desert."

In an effort to save the desert tortoise, non-profit organizations like the Preserve Committee are working with government agencies to protect the tortoises' habitat.

Connor said the Preserve Committee is currently working with BLM to retire a grazing permit on a portion of the Blackwater Well Ranch in northwestern San Bernardino County in order to restore a critical habitat.

"Right now we are trying to reduce the grazing of domestic livestock in the desert," Connor said. "The tortoises can be trampled, their eggs get damaged and their burrows get damaged. Cows and sheep will eat anything green out there and compete with the tortoise."

By saving the habitat, Connor said, the organization is also saving other threatened species as well, including the Mojave ground squirrel and the burrowing owl.

Connor said educational programs are also an important part of saving the desert tortoise.

Members of the High Desert Chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club often visit schools and other groups to talk about the need to save the desert tortoise, according to member Judy Rogers.

The club, along with the Joshua Tree Turtle and Tortoise Rescue, also adopt tortoises to "caregiver" families.

Yet as long as construction work continues in the High Desert, the desert tortoise could eventually disappear, according to Rae Packard, director of the Joshua Tree Turtle and Tortoise Rescue.

"Environmental encroachment is the number one threat to the desert tortoise," Packard said. "And the respiratory disease really did a lot of damage to the healthy population that was left."

Connor said trying to save the tortoise habitat is a long and tedious process.

"We are not going to see an immediate impact. It's going to take 20 years or more," he said. "People should take after the tortoise. They are slow moving and patient. We should do the same. We have to be patient."