Woman will vacate home

DESERT: Connie Connelly loses her fight with the National Park Service and is going to Wyoming.

By MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA

Threatened with jail, a Mojave Desert woman has agreed to vacate her remote home of 32 years this week -- bound for land and a mobile home that the National Park Service bought for her in Wyoming.

"If I'm not out of here by (Friday), I am subject to arrest," said Connie Connelly , who was scrambling Monday to figure out a means of moving her belongings, 11 dogs, a cat and a horse from her rustic five-acre home within the windswept Mojave National Preserve.

Connelly has spent years battling efforts by the National Park Service to evict her from the venerable Ivanpah general store her family turned into a homestead in 1966. The house sits near the California stateline, about 23 miles from Primm, Nev.

At a hearing last week before a federal magistrate, prosecutors agreed that if Connelly leaves by 1 p.m. Friday , they will dismiss a trespassing charge pending against her, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

But if Connelly does not move by the deadline, prosecutors will instead seek a warrant for her arrest that afternoon, he said.

As long as she vacates her house, prosecutors will not object to her staying temporarily with friends on other property within the 1.6-million acre preserve if she cannot orchestrate the move by Friday, Mrozek said.

For Connelly, this week could mark the end of her long fight with National Park officials.

"I'm just frantic here," said Connelly, who is struggling to find vehicles to pull trailers loaded with her possessions and animals. "It's down to the wire."

Connelly, 44, says that her father bought their six-room house when her family moved from Hemet in the 1960s. She disputes a contention by park officials who say the family leased, but never owned the land that sits within the Mojave National Preserve, created in 1994.

Connelly's father died in 1990 and her mother died about three years ago.

Authorities argue that Connelly's name is not on the lease, and she is not entitled to live on the land.

Connelly was cited last year for allegedly trespassing on federal land. She pleaded not guilty and her trial, scheduled for last week, was delayed a month.

If convicted, she faces up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. Connelly said she ultimately had no choice but to agree to move.

Under a deal reached last year, the Park Service bought Connelly a double-wide mobile home on 3 acres near Lovell, Wy., about 145 miles east of Yellowstone National Park. Escrow closed earlier this year.

"It was a pretty extraordinary deal and the intention was for her to move to the property obtained for her by the federal government at some cost." Mrozek said.

But Connelly's plans to move stalled during the past several months as she struggled without success to obtain a health certificate needed to transport her horse to another state.

Connelly said she intends to leave in the coming days, if she can find help from friends or sympathizers who can aid her in transporting her belongings and animals to Wyoming.

Mojave National Preserve's preservation efforts criticized

Source: Center for the State of the Parks: Park Assessments

California Desert

Published June 2005




View full report: http://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks/californiadesert/californiadesert.pdf

Current overall conditions of the Mojave National Preserve’s known natural resources rated a “poor” score of 59 out of 100. The loss of critical habitat because of historic grazing and recreational activities (principally, off-road vehicle use) as well as isolation associated with increased transportation corridors and traffic density between Los Angeles and Las Vegas are high-ranking resource protection threats at the preserve. Additionally, nonnative species, mining-related releases of hazardous materials, air and light pollution, and continued grazing are prominent concerns for the preserve’s natural resources.

Overall conditions of the park’s known cultural resources rated 50 out of a possible 100, indicating “poor” conditions. Mojave National Preserve is a relatively new addition to the National Park System, and is the first national preserve assessed by the State of the Parks program. The fledgling cultural resource program at Mojave National Preserve has accomplished much planning work and archaeological site documentation in the last three years, but additional staff and resources are needed to further stewardship efforts. For example, the preserve currently lacks staff to care for museum and archival collections and develop relationships with traditionally associated groups of people.

KEY FINDINGS

Mojave National Preserve would benefit from the services of a term historian to complete historical research to provide park contexts for mining, structures, and cultural landscapes.

Mojave National Preserve also would benefit, as would the other California desert parks, from a shared historic preservation crew to inspect, monitor, and perform preventive maintenance on park structures.

None of the objects in Mojave National Preserve’s small museum collection have been catalogued, and a management plan is needed.

Funding is needed for specialists to help update the Cultural Landscape Inventory for the Kelso Depot, and the Mojave Road needs to be surveyed for the Cultural Landscape Inventory and nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

CULTURAL RESOURCES—VALUABLE HISTORIC TREASURES AT RISK

State of the Parks researchers assessed and assigned scores to cultural resource conditions at Mojave National Preserve. Categories included history, ethnography (peoples and cultures), historic structures, archaeology, and archive and museum collections. The scores for cultural resources are based on the results of indicator questions that reflect the National Park Service’s own Cultural Resource Management Guideline and other policies related to cultural and historical resources.

The assessments rated the overall conditions of cultural resources at Mojave National Preserve as 50. This score indicate that cultural resources are in poor condition at Mojave National Preserve. Prominent factors influencing the ratings are funding and staffing shortfalls that limit cultural resource protection activities.

HISTORY—RICH REGIONAL HISTORY MERITS ADDITIONAL RESEARCH

Completed or ongoing historical research at Mojave National Preserve includes a transportation study, town site study, historic resource studies on the region’s ranching history, and a railroad history that is part of a historic structure report on the Kelso Depot. The preserve also has an administrative history that was completed in March 2003, and an overview of the preserve’s mining history will commence in 2005. Regional Park Service historians and consultants complete most of this research.

Local citizens hold a wealth of information on the region’s history. Productive collaboration with these people benefits the preserve and strengthens ties with the local community. Additional historical research would help park staff understand Mojave National Preserve’s historic context and help them develop more interpretive tools to teach visitors about the preserve’s history. Mining, military, and historic landscape studies would contribute to evaluations of historic and cultural resources for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

CULTURAL LANDSCAPES—FUNDS NEEDED TO SUPPORT ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION AND PRESERVATION

Zzyzx, Kelso Depot, Rock Springs Land and Cattle Company, and the Mojave Road are the park’s four identified landscapes. Other cultural landscapes likely exist, but staff have not had the time or the resources to systematically identify or evaluate potentially important landscapes throughout the preserve.

The Kelso Depot, the only landscape in the preserve that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was once a major railroad depot. Completed in 1924, the depot included a restaurant and employee boardinghouse. The depot closed in 1985, but it has recently been restored to its 1920s heyday and now houses a visitor information center that will re-open to the public in the fall of 2005.

Zzyzx was once a health resort and mineral springs built by self-proclaimed minister and doctor Curtis Springer and his wife, Mary Loise Berkebile. The two operated the resort from 1944 to 1974, when it was closed for food and drug violations and unauthorized use of federal land. The site has been officially evaluated for its significance and eligibility for listing in the National Register, but the California State Historic Preservation Office is not reviewing new National Register nominations because of a budget crisis. California State University, Fullerton, leases the buildings and land at Zzyzx to host its Desert Studies Center, and is actively involved in rehabilitation of the landscape.

The Mojave Road is the name given to a corridor that travelers used for centuries to cross the harsh desert. Springs and watering holes along the way provided critical water. American Indians traveled the corridor on trading expeditions, and the route was once a major thoroughfare that served military outposts, miners, settlers, and trappers. After the advent of steamships and trains, the Mojave Road became obsolete. However, it retains importance today because it teaches contemporary visitors about the history of transportation in the region. This landscape has not had a condition assessment and has not been formally recorded and evaluated.

As grazing leases have been retired, Mojave National Preserve has assumed responsibility for remaining ranching infrastructure, which is scattered over nearly 1 million acres. The Rock Springs Land and Cattle Company was the primary ranching company in the region between 1894 and 1927. With the onset of the Depression, the company was sold and its holdings divided into the OX, Kessler Springs, and Valley View ranches within the current preserve and the Walking Box Ranch just across the border in Nevada. Park Service regional staff recently completed a Cultural Landscape Inventory of the former Rock Springs territory, and this will be submitted with a nomination for National Register of Historic Places listing for the Rock Springs Land and Cattle Company National Historic District in 2005.

Mojave National Preserve’s staff do not have enough time or resources to work on stewardship of the preserve’s historic and cultural landscapes. Park Service landscape specialists are available at the regional level, but Mojave National Preserve cannot afford to pay for their services. These specialists are also in demand in many other parks, and regional funding for their services is dwindling.

HISTORIC STRUCTURES—A DESERT REGION PRESERVATION CREW NEEDED FOR ADEQUATE STEWARDSHIP

In 2003, Mojave National Preserve’s List of Classified Structures contained about 77 entries. This list needs to be updated to include additional known structures such as the more than 100 structures Mojave National Preserve acquired when grazing leases were retired. Recent condition assessments of most of the listed historic structures found that 58 percent are in good condition. But in 2004, Park Service policy regarding the List of Classified Structures changed so that only those structures that have been formally determined to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places can be included on the list and thus benefit from preservation funding from certain sources. As a result of this policy change, Mojave National Preserve’s List of Classified Structures was reduced to a total of 12structures.

Mojave National Preserve does not have an annual historic structure monitoring program, and staff struggle to keep pace with preventive maintenance. The preserve’s maintenance staff perform some routine maintenance on historic structures, and regional Park Service staff, when available, assist with larger restoration and rehabilitation projects. If funding permits, Mojave National Preserve’s facility manager and other maintenance staff will obtain historic preservation training.

Several historic structures at the OX Ranch and Kessler Spring Ranch are being rehabilitated to house preserve staff. This will help alleviate Mojave National Preserve’s housing shortage and should facilitate resource protection since buildings that are used tend to receive regular maintenance attention. In addition, the Kelso schoolhouse and associated buildings have been stabilized and the Rock House has been rehabilitated. The Rock Springs Land and Cattle Co. Historic District is currently being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

ARCHIVAL AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS—ADDITIONAL STORAGE AND EXHIBIT SPACE NEEDED

Mojave National Preserve has never had any staff to care for museum or archival collections. As a result, none of the collection items has been catalogued and no condition assessments have been done. In addition, the park is meeting just 17 percent of Park Service museum collection standards. However, the park’s cultural resource manager believes that most collection items, which include library items, papers and photographic archives, and historic items from the Kelso Depot, are in good condition. Mojave National Preserve needs a temporary curator or archivist to help catalog its holdings and facilitate the efforts of researchers. A recent agreement with Joshua Tree will provide an upgrade to the park’s museum technician position to curator. At that time, Joshua Tree’s curator will oversee the Mojave National Preserve collections and train the existing cultural resources staff in how to carry out the more routine museum management activities.

Storage for museum objects is not an issue for Mojave National Preserve, partly because its collection is so small. Some of the park’s archaeological items are kept at the Western Archaeological Conservation Center in Tucson, and some Chemehuevi baskets are stored at Death Valley. Additionally, the park recently built a 600-square-foot collection storage facility as part of its new park headquarters in Barstow, more than 50 miles away from the boundaries of the preserve. This new facility has excellent security, shelving, and environmental controls.

Library to house desert history

Mojave group gets grant for building

By Chuck Mueller, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

GOFFS - A former railroad depot that six decades ago hosted thousands of troops training in the Mojave Desert is to be reborn as a library to house a rich collection of desert history.

Directors of the California Cultural and Historical Endowment have awarded a grant of $499,500 to build a library to hold the Mojave Desert Archives, gathered by Western historian Dennis G. Casebier during the past 50 years.

The archives, the single largest collection of historical material dealing with the Western migration and pioneering ventures in the Mojave, includes more than 6,000 volumes of published works, 50,000 photographs and 4,500 maps of the region dating to the pioneering quest for the West.

The collection is housed in various buildings at the 20-structure Goffs Cultural Center. The center includes the original Goffs School, which was built in 1914 and is now a museum, and a twice-moved dwelling constructed in 1927 that serves as a library.

It will take about two years to construct the library, which will be designed in the image of the historical Goffs railroad depot, which operated from 1902 to 1956. In the early 1940s, thousands of soldiers training in desert warfare arrived and departed from the depot, which was demolished in 1956, Casebier said.

The grant to the Mojave Desert Heritage Cultural Association, founded by Casebier and his wife, Jo Ann, in 1993, is one of 13 awarded out of 276 applications for funds through the endowment, supported by Proposition 40.

In 2002, California voters approved the Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks and Coastal Protection Act, known as Proposition 40, to set aside $267 million for historical and cultural resource preservation.

Kevin Starr, California historian emeritus, said the endowment's mission is to document the contributions of the many groups of people who make up California. It also helps Californians to deepen their understanding of the state's history, its present society, and themselves.

"The receipt of this generous grant marks the first time we've gotten support from outside our own membership of about 800 people," Casebier said. "The bulk of the work at the Goffs Cultural Center ... has been done by volunteers from California, Arizona and Nevada."

Viewing the upcoming construction project, volunteer Chris Ervin said, "Now the work really begins."

Among the volumes in the collection at Goffs are originals of official reports of the 1853-54 Whipple expedition, which surveyed a route for a Pacific railroad across the Mojave.

"We also have the official reports and map of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who brought camels to California from Texas in 1850," Casebier said.

"The collection includes everything related to the East Mojave, dating to 1850. There was nothing before that."

Casebier said the center acquired the volumes "one at a time and there is a story behind each one."

The volumes also include 2,000 loose subject files pertaining to individuals of interest and specific cultural sites. It also contains an extensive collection of old area newspapers, periodicals and pamphlets, and material culled from federal records in the National Archives.

"We also have compiled 700 oral histories," Casebier said. "We're constantly looking for volunteers to help us continue this important work, and are searching for desert old-timers to participate in our extensive oral history program."

Casebier, 72, a Kansan who served in the Marine Corps at Twentynine Palms for 22 years, later was employed as a Navy physicist working with guided missile systems in Corona. During visits to Washington, D.C., he frequented the Library of Congress and the National Archives, conducting research on the East Mojave.

After writing a book in 1970 about the Arizona territory, Casebier started Tales of the Mojave Road Publishing Co., which has produced 24 titles. Sixteen were authored by Casebier.

"In 1980, I started in earnest with the library collection," he said.

A year later, Casebier formed a volunteer group that continues today, called the Friends of the Mojave Road.

"We worked with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to develop the Mojave Road and other historic trails into the back country," he said.

For this work, Casebier and the group received the bureau's highest national award for volunteer service.

Upon retiring in 1990, the Casebiers bought the old Goffs school and 113 acres around it, intent on opening a desert cultural center. Three years later, they helped found the nonprofit, tax-exempt Mojave Desert Heritage Cultural Association to take over the property.

"In 1998, Jo Ann and I deeded the school and the 1-acre school yard to the association, restoring the school to its 1914 condition," Casebier said. "In 2001, the school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places."

The Casebiers donated 70 acres of their property to the cultural association in late 2002.

GAO Releases Desert Tortoise Recovery Results

$100 Million Later We Still Don't Know Anything About The Mojave Desert Tortoise

WatchDog Watch
Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE)

According to the Government Accounting Office, the federal government in the last 25 years has spent over $100,000,000 on recovery actions and research for the Mojave Desert Tortoise, a listed species under the Endangered Species Act. Despite all this time and money, GAO found that "it is still unclear what the status of the tortoise is and what effect, if any, recovery actions are having on the species...."

Winston has no reason to question GAO's facts and conclusions. He does have some other questions, though.

First, why is the federal government spending $100,000,000 on a tortoise found only in the Mojave Desert? The answer is that it's on the ESA list. That, however, doesn't answer the next question: Is it worth it?

Leaving that question unanswered, Winston wants to know why after all this time and money do we still have no idea whether the time and money have done any good? According to GAO, the answer to this question is "research has not been coordinated in a way to provide essential management information." Winston is not an expert in this area, but he suspect he could find a nice place for the tortoise to live for a lot less money and in a lot less time. Real estate is still cheap in the Mojave Desert.

By the way, this GAO report contains a list of all the reports GAO has issued with regard to the ESA. They provide good but depressing reading. Rarely has a government program with such good intentions wasted so much time and money and accomplished so little.

GAO Desert Tortoise Recovery Results Report

County Buying Tax-Delinquent Mountain Lots

Redevelopment official cites need for complete infrastructure study; project foes are skeptical

Old Fire of October 2003

The Alpenhorn News
by Glenn Barr

In a move sure to trigger suspicion among local property owners, the San Bernardino County Redevelopment Agency quietly signaled its intention Friday to buy up 134 tax-delinquent residential lots in Cedar Glen rather than allow them to be sold to the highest bidder.

Assistant Tax Collector Dennis Draeger told The Alpenhorn News on Tuesday that the Redevelopment Agency had filed with his office on the eve of the scheduled, semi-annual tax sale a request for what’s called a Chapter 8 sale. The request means that ownership of the lots in the Old Fire-ravaged community will pass to the agency – whose governing body is the County Board of Supervisors – rather than individual buyers, including Cedar Glen residents wishing to rebuild their devastated homes larger than before.

Under a Chapter 8 sale, Draeger said, a government agency may request that properties scheduled for tax sales be sold to the agency instead, to satisfy a public purpose, as required in the California Revenue and Taxation Code.

“We don’t have the authority to deny that request,” said Draeger. “We have no choice.”

John Nowak, manager of the Redevelopment Agency, identified the public purpose of the lots as possible sites for infrastructure upgrades in the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Area project, which the Board of Supervisors initiated last fall.

Many Cedar Glen residents have questioned the involvement of their County representative, Supervisor Dennis L. Hansberger, in the redevelopment project, noting that Hansberger’s parents, who are in their late 80s, are part owners of land adjacent to the project area, land that could skyrocket in value once the redevelopment and its infrastructure were in place.

Though the supervisor’s father, Leroy Hansberger, has revoked his son’s power of attorney on the land holdings, skeptical opponents of redevelopment say Dennis Hansberger still stands to inherit the land, along with his brother.

The upgrades, Nowak said, would likely include new roads, widening existing roads for emergency vehicle turnarounds, water pipelines and even a reservoir.

By purchasing the lots, the Redevelopment Agency could end the ability of some Cedar Glen residents to rebuild their fire-ravaged homes any larger than they were by denying them the ability to merge their tiny lots with adjoining properties. They can rebuild on existing lots if the new house is fully within the lot boundaries and if it has a septic tank.

Though by having a public purpose Nowak’s explanation for his agency’s action apparently meets the test of state law, some community residents are not satisfied, seeing the move instead as a way for the county agency to acquire land for redevelopment easier and faster than through the cumbersome eminent domain process. Others interpret the move as an example of the county’s disregard for their wishes about rebuilding.

Redevelopment Agency ownership of the lots could also slash the overall cost of the project by allowing public acquisition of more than one-fifth of the community’s lots at the cost of unpaid taxes plus administrative costs, rather than at fair market value.

Draeger and Kelly McKee, the tax sale supervisor for the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office of San Bernardino County, said the Redevelopment Agency can buy the lots for the minimum bid, which equals the amount of unpaid taxes plus fees. In most cases that figure ranges from $2,000 to $5,000, they said, meaning the agency might be able to acquire all the properties for a sum ranging from $268,000 to $670,000 – far less than would have to be paid if they had first been sold to private owners.

In a redevelopment district, the governing agency acquires properties from their owners at fair-market value, through a process called eminent domain, and then makes them available to developers contracted to build housing and other facilities within the district.

Every May and August, properties throughout the county on which taxes are at least five years in arrears are offered for sale to the highest bidder by the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office, over the Internet. The current week-long sale began May 13 and runs through Friday. The Cedar Glen properties were removed from the sales list on Friday, May 13. Owners with overdue taxes had until May 12 to pay the arrearages and redeem their lots.

Nowak told The Alpenhorn News on Tuesday that the Redevelopment Agency requested the removal of the Cedar Glen lots so a “full analysis” of the properties could be conducted by the county to determine their suitability for meeting future infrastructure needs for the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Project.

Specifically, he said, roads will be needed for the project, as well as turnarounds for fire trucks and other emergency equipment. Water-system improvements will also be needed for the redevelopment, he said, including pipelines and possibly a reservoir.

Nowak said he hopes the property analysis can be completed “in just a few months,” after which lots the redevelopment agency has determined it does not need can be sold to the highest bidder. However, Draeger called the processing of a Chapter 8 request “an elaborate process” and said it could take up to 12 months for the Redevelopment Agency to acquire the property.

First, he said, the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office will put together the require documentation, and the Board of Supervisors will have to approve the request. Then it must receive approval from the State Controller.

“We didn’t have time to do a detailed analysis, parcel by parcel,” Nowak said in response to observations by some community residents, skeptical about the redevelopment plan, that many of the lots are steep and not appropriate for building roads or other infrastructure.

The Alpenhorn News learned of the Redevelopment Agency’s action from Dave Stuart, executive director of Rebuilding Mountain Hearts and Lives (RMHL), an organization formed to help victims of 2003’s Old Fire to rebuild their homes. A total of 336 homes were destroyed in Cedar Glen by the arson-caused fire.

Stuart said he learned of the action from a Cedar Glen resident named Sue Bowen who, along with her husband, had been trying to buy one of the lots adjacent to a lot they own on which the house was burned.

Contacted by this newspaper, Bowen said she had tried to buy the lot on Eucalyptus Road last year but was outbid. However, “the buyer didn’t perform,” she said, so the lot was returned to the sale list. Bowen and her husband were ready to bid when the sale opened Friday, only to discover, to their disappointment, that it was missing from the list, along with all other delinquent Cedar Glen lots.

Stuart said Cedar Glen properties can be identified on the tax-sale section of the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s web site by the four-digit numerical prefix “0330” or “0331.” A check Monday evening of the still-available properties revealed no properties with either prefix.

Bowen said she and her husband lost three houses in the Old Fire, one their residence and two they hoped to fix up and rent. Since the fire, she said, they have purchased a Cedar Glen home that survived the blaze, but still want to rebuild the homes they lost.

“I just feel this is kind of a dirty trick,” Bowen said. “Cedar Glen properties should stay with Cedar Glen people, and not be given to some developer.”

She said her attitude toward the proposed redevelopment project – which is expected to allow 2,000 homes, though the community is zoned for up to 4,400 – began to change at a Board of Supervisors meeting last November where the project was discussed.

Bowen said she witnessed two women, one a senior citizen, “dragged away in handcuffs” while voicing their concerns.

“That changed my whole idea of what these people (county officials) are capable of,” she said. “They don’t want to hear us. I don’t think they have our best interests at heart.”

Bowen noted that it’s been more than 18 months since the Old Fire, “and we don’t even know what the redevelopment plan is. Something stinks.”

But even slashing the project’s density by more than half, from 4,400 to 2,000 homes, still represents a threefold increase in Cedar Glen’s residential density. Just before the fire, Stuart said, there were 709 residential water connections serviced by the Arrowhead Manor Water Company, Cedar Glen’s water supplier, which is now in receivership. Of that number, 637 connections were active.

Because of the shaky financial state of the community’s water supplier, the future of water service in Cedar Glen is a topic of intense interest to property owners. Stuart said RMHL has commissioned a wide-ranging independent study of Arrowhead Manor and other water-supply options for Cedar Glen, along with the costs of each.

The contractor performing the study, San Bernardino-based Engineering Resources of Southern California, will complete the study this week and present the 20-page report at an RMHL-sponsored public meeting this Saturday at 1 p.m. at Lake Arrowhead Community Presbyterian Church on Highway 173.

In a telephone interview, Nowak declined to comment on the fate of Arrowhead Manor or how water might be supplied to a redeveloped Cedar Glen, saying only that that issue “is being addressed in the EIR (environmental impact report).”

Meanwhile, a recent occurrence that may complicate water-related decisions for Cedar Glen is the mailing of a May 12 letter to Cedar Glen property owners by Thomas L. Sutton, director of San Bernardino County’s Special Districts Department.

Sutton’s letter describes a proposal by Supervisor Hansberger to form an “improvement zone” within existing countywide County Service Area 70 to provide roads and water service for Cedar Glen.

The letter says forming the zone could result in public acquisition of Arrowhead Manor, which he said currently owes more than it is worth. If the water system were publicly owned, Sutton said, it would be “operated independently under my office. We have approximately 20 other water and sewer districts under our control, and this would just be another.”

The biggest benefit of forming the improvement zone, Sutton said, could be the potential for federal grant funds to finance some of the project’s infrastructure, including upgrading the water system “to a public standard.” Doing so would give the system sufficient pressure to fight fires without assistance from other water agencies.

Sutton said the zone’s formation could upgrade Cedar Glen’s road system and enable the county, with property owners’ consent, to provide an agreed-upon level of road service – like snow plowing, culvert repairs and maintenance – for a set price each year, payable on the owners’ tax bills. A similar arrangement exists in Cedarpines Park.

As dramatized in the Old Fire, one of Cedar Glen’s biggest needs may be an alternate exit route, other than Hook Creek Road, the long cul-de-sac serving much of the community. Sutton said the County Public Works Department’s transportation section is analyzing Cedar Glen’s road system and will recommend specific needs to the Redevelopment Agency.

“I can’t imagine that an alternative route wouldn’t be included in that report,” Sutton said.

Deserted towns await reshaping by new hands

By HENRY BREAN
Las Vegas Review-Journal




The deserted town of Amboy, Calif., waits for traffic along its stretch of historic Route 66. The new owner of the town wants to restore it and reopen many of its businesses. Photo by WARREN BATES/REVIEW-JOURNAL

One of them started as a 19th-century whistle-stop on the almost-finished transcontinental railroad. The other is even older but didn't bloom until Route 66 went from dirt to pavement in the 1920s.

Now the towns of Palisade, Nev., and Amboy, Calif., could find fresh life in the hands of new owners.

The 160-acre Palisade township site was sold at auction for $168,750 on April 26. Then, last week, Southern California restaurant owner Albert Okura closed a $425,000 deal to buy Amboy.

"It's just the way it was 40 years ago. It has not changed," said Okura, 53. "And it's in the middle of nowhere. It's like time stood still in Amboy."

The historic town lies 150 miles southwest of Las Vegas, in a stretch of Mojave Desert that Nat King Cole and others have dismissed with barely a pause between "Kingman" and "Barstow" in the song "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66."

The remains of Palisade can be found along the Humboldt River at the northeastern edge of Eureka County, a 400-mile drive north of Las Vegas.


Besides new owners, the two deserted towns have something else in common: Both managed to cling to life long after the world moved on without them.

For Palisade, the boom and bust came about 55 years apart, and the town's slow death lasted almost as long.

The town was born in 1868, as the Central Pacific Railroad -- later known as the Southern Pacific Railroad -- pushed east toward its historic meeting with the westbound Union Pacific on May 10, 1869, near Promontory, Utah.

"What really hurt Palisade was the railroad decided to put the division point in Carlin, about 10 miles to the north and east," Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha said.

The division point served as the railroad's maintenance yard for the area and the spot where locomotives were added to eastbound trains to pull them over the Pequop Mountains.

As a result, Palisade never grew larger than a few hundred people, but it did get its own post office in 1870. "That was something," Rocha said.

Three years later, it became part of newly formed Eureka County.

"Major mining around Eureka was really starting to take off," Rocha said. "What gave Palisade some life was the construction of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad."

But by the late 1930s, the mines had been tapped out and the railroads were struggling against new competition brought by the burgeoning highway system.

"As Eureka goes, so goes Palisade," Rocha explained. "Once that railroad went under, once the rails were torn up, that pretty much signaled the start of a long decline for Palisade."

The town's only real brush with infamy -- and lasting fame -- came late on the night of Nov. 7, 1932.

President Herbert Hoover had just delivered the final radio address of his doomed re-election campaign during a stop in Elko, and the presidential train was headed west toward Palo Alto, Calif., so that Hoover could vote in his hometown the next day.

But as "Railroad One" neared Palisade, it was forced to make an unscheduled stop when railroad personnel surprised two men who appeared to be trying to sabotage a railroad bridge up ahead.

Varying accounts of the thwarted assassination attempt appeared in newspapers the next day.

Rocha said the "Reno Evening Gazette" quoted one railroad official who claimed the bridge had been rigged with 22 sticks of dynamite. Another official told the paper that nothing was found "but an old stick of powder."

Within 20 years, Palisade was all but done. The government closed the post office in 1961, and "it was a virtual ghost town" by 1970.

Amboy's decline was much more sudden, though the town itself outdates Palisade by half a century.

Founded by miners in 1815, Amboy did not truly boom until Route 66 did in the 1920s. The town's heyday as a desert oasis for highway travelers lasted 40 years.

Then in 1972, brand new Interstate 40 opened 15 miles to the north, and Amboy found itself on the road to nowhere.

Despite the decline, Okura said he was thrilled to buy the town last week from 88-year-old Bessie Burris, who spent more than 20 years in Amboy before moving to nearby Wonder Valley.

Apparently, Burris was pretty pleased, too.

Bonnie Barnes said her grandmother got several higher offers, but what sold Burris on Okura was his enthusiasm.

"He wanted it real bad, but now he's not quite sure what to do with it. You could tell that," Barnes said. "But that's OK. If there's passion, there's good. This was the right way to go to preserve the town."

After all, Okura knows a little something about historic preservation.

In 1998, he paid $135,000 to buy the site of the first McDonald's restaurant. Now the old building in San Bernardino, Calif., houses an office for his chain of 30 Juan Pollo restaurants and a museum filled with McDonald's memorabilia.

A museum is also a possibility for Amboy, which Okura has promised would not be the sort of place where tourists would be gouged.

But Okura's motives are not entirely selfless. He said he hopes to use some of the "good will" he gets from buying Amboy to expand his restaurant chain eastward, along the old Route 66 corridor.

One place he will not be putting a new Juan Pollo outlet, though, is Amboy itself. "Never, ever, ever," he said. "I want to keep that the way it is, and restore it."

To Okura, that means the eventual reopening of the town's most widely photographed structure, Roy's cafe.

In all, Okura's $425,000 bought him 10 buildings on 934 acres, including the cafe, a gas station, a motel, a post office, a school, a church and an airstrip. It was a pretty good deal for him, considering he offered to buy Amboy from another owner just two years ago for $1.2 million.

Okura said that offer eventually was rejected, as was the high bid of $900,000 when the town was offered for sale on e-Bay in 2003.

Two years later, the bank foreclosed and ownership of the town reverted to Burris. By then, Barnes said, the place had been picked clean and was badly neglected.

"I hope the people who live out in the area don't expect miracles," Okura said. "I'm not the miracle man."

The future of Palisade is even less certain.

Out of a crop of several hundred potential bidders, the townsite was purchased by an unidentified buyer who asked to be known only as "the Ghost from the East Coast."

Greg Martin, owner of the San Francisco auction house that conducted the sale, said he knows the new owner but does not know what the man has planned for the property.

"He doesn't know himself, but he likes the idea (of owning it)," Martin said. "You can buy 150 or 160 acres somewhere, but that's all it is.

"To me, (Palisade) is the equivalent of buying a valuable antique."

Amboy changes hands

Businessman pays $425,000 for historic desert town





By PAUL HERRERA
The Press-Enterprise







For roughly the median price of a home in Redlands, Juan Pollo founder Albert Okura bought himself a town.

Amboy, a desert relic along historic Route 66, gained a new owner Tuesday afternoon. Bessie Burris, who owned the land with her late husband, Buster, signed over the deed to Okura on Tuesday in downtown San Bernardino.

Okura said he paid $425,000 for the 690 acres that is Amboy. The land includes Roy's Café and adjacent gas station, a town office, a motel building with cottages, a restroom, an airplane hanger and a church, all closed. Bonnie Barnes, Burris' granddaughter, said the post office is the only piece of Amboy still open.

At its peak in the 1950s, Amboy had a population of more than 800 and served as a key stop along Route 66.

When Interstate 40 opened in 1972, the traffic moved north and Amboy became another fading oasis in the desert. Amboy's schoolhouse closed in 1999 when the last of its students moved away.

Amboy is nearly a ghost town today, but Barnes said the highway is starting to see cars again as the desert's population grows.

The town made news two years ago when owners Walt Wilson and Timothy White put it up for bid on eBay.

The highest bid, $995,900, was below the undisclosed minimum bid and the sale didn't proceed. The asking price was $1.9 million.

Burris, who sold the town to Wilson and White in 2000, regained the town in a foreclosure this year.

As she prepared to sign her name to documents closing the sale, Burris, 89, talked about her memories of the town.

"We used to have a lot of fun," Burris said, standing in a shaded spot outside First American Title. "We had motorbikes, we had a houseboat. We had everything we wanted."

The sale price is less than a quarter of the asking price from two years ago and less than other offers, Barnes said. The family chose to sell to Okura on the promise that he will preserve and restore Amboy as part of the lore of Route 66, she said.

Okura said his first task will be to restore electricity and basic utilities to the town.

He then plans to reopen the restroom near the gas station, and work on getting the motel, café and gas station ready to reopen.

And no, there won't be a Juan Pollo in Amboy. But that doesn't mean the town won't help his business.

"I will get much more goodwill from restoring Amboy than anything else I could do with it," Okura said.

The company is planning a broad expansion into desert communities, and Okura said he hopes Amboy will be a friendly gesture toward residents he wants to court as customers.

OUR OPINION: Pulling the plug on wildlife

Victor Valley Daily Press

So the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmentalist group that has taken the appelation "tree huggers" to new heights, is again on the march in its attempt to control the desert. This time, the group has resorted to its favorite tactic — a lawsuit — to stop the conversion of wells left on abandoned ranches into "guzzlers" as watering holes for wildlife. Another environmentalist organization, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, has joined in the suit.

Daniel Patterson, speaking for the Center, told the Daily Press this week he was not opposed to hunting in the Mojave National Preserve — where the wells are — but that hunting "would be better" if a natural ecosystem were maintained.

"Better," of course, is entirely subjective. We're reasonably certain the Center would agree that the presence of a more accessible and dependable water supply would result in more wild animals, which, for hunters, means "better" hunting.

Absence of water would mean fewer animals, wouldn't it? So the Center seems to be making an argument that, if applied to housing, would insist that fewer houses make it easier to buy one. That's upside down.

But of course the hunting argument is a pretext. What's really of concern to the Center, and to PEER, is our old friend the desert tortoise. The guzzlers, they say, attract ravens, which prey on desert tortoise hatchlings.

But even that is wide of the real reason for all of this, which is that hunters are humans who like to go into the wild to pursue their avocation, and the Center for Biological Diversity and PEER, as do all environmental activists, think humans should be barred from places like the Mojave National Preserve.

OUR OPINION: Every day is court day for some 'environmentalists'

Steve Williams
Victorville Daily Press - Victorville, CA

The Center for Biological Diversity, which likes to call itself an environmentalist organization, isn't. It's a litigious society bent on eliminating private property rights in America through intimidation by the courts. The environmental movement is only its cat's paw, but one which it has used with amazing success, first because it rarely encounters more than token resistance to its legal forays, and second, because most Americans are "environmentalists" in the sense that they enjoy the beauty of natural vistas and believe in the preservation of the wild.

The Center counts on both these things when it attacks such groups as hunters, off-road enthusiasts, farmers, loggers, miners, oil companies, ranchers ... it's a long list.

On occasion, though, the intended victim bites back with success. That happened last January in Tuscon, Ariz., where a jury found the Center for Biological Diversity's Tuscon branch guilty of making "false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements" against Jim Chilton, a Southern Arizona rancher. The Tucson jury awarded Chilton $100,000 in actual damages, and $500,000 in punitive damages from the Center for defaming him and his family business.

It all started with a two-page press release and 21 photographs posted by the Center on its Web site in July 2002 regarding Chilton's 21,500-acre Montana grazing Allotment northwest of Nogales. The suit was filed, according to Chilton, because he wanted to challenge the way the Center for Biological Diversity does business. "They don't use science, they use scare tactics," he told the Nogales International newspaper. "They also use endangered species as surrogates to obtain their own goals and to raise money."

The Center had published its material to block renewal of Chilton's grazing permit, and the jury agreed with Chilton's claim that the Center did make false statements in it, and that misleading photographs were used.

This all comes to mind because of the Center's most recent resort to the courts to get its way, this time to eliminate "guzzlers" in the Mojave Preserve. Two letters today note that a lawsuit filed by the Center in March apparently caused the National Park Service to withdraw its approval of a plan to establish artificial watering sources in the Mojave National Preserve. Intimidation via the courts caused the Park Service to reverse itself. So what's new?

Chilton is one of those rare public birds who refused to be intimidated. He's a fifth-generation rancher, and when a reporter for the Nogales paper asked after the jury came in if ranchers and environmental activists did not have a common interest in conserving the environment, he said, "Cattle have been grazing on the Montana Allotment for 300 years. We (ranchers) have to maintain the land so grazing can be sustainable for the next few centuries." And added, "I, too, consider myself an environmentalist. Because every day is Earth Day for me."

Unlike the Center, for which every day seems to be court day.

You might remember all this when "environmentalist" groups such as the Sierra Club file suit to prevent the public from improving its roads. Measure I comes to mind.

PARK SERVICE RESCINDS APPROVAL OF MOJAVE “GUZZLERS”

Facing a Lawsuit, Agency Withdraws Its Okay for Artificial Watering in Desert Park

Press Release:
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) & Center For Biological Diversity

Washington, DC — The National Park Service has abruptly reversed course and blocked installation of artificial water systems in California’s Mojave National Preserve, according to a letter from the park superintendent released today by Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Biological Diversity. Last month the two groups filed a federal lawsuit to stop the artificial watering plan on the grounds that it harmed native wildlife and violated Park Service policy.

Yesterday, on April 5, 2005, Mary Martin, Superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve, sent a letter to the California Department of Fish and Game, which stated:

“[T]he National Park Service is withdrawing the approval, set forth in our letter of January 21, 2005, for the California Department of Fish and Game to convert four ranching well developments in Mojave National Preserve into wildlife watering devices…Upon further review, the National Park Service has determined that additional NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] compliance is desirable before a decision is made…”

Ironically, the position taken by Martin this week reflects the same stance that she had communicated in a June 17, 2002 memo to Paul Hoffman, a former Dick Cheney aide serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Hoffman, however, disregarded Martin’s concerns and ordered her to set up artificial water sources (called “guzzlers”) in order to enhance “coyote and varmint hunting,” according to an email he sent to a sportsmen’s group.

“This is a classic example of a Bush Administration appointee inappropriately intervening to countermand wildlife professionals for political reasons,” stated PEER Board member Frank Buono, the former assistant superintendent at Mojave NP, noting that Hoffman, a former Dick Cheney aide, has no biological training. “Paul Hoffman should be fired for incompetence.”

The Mojave National Preserve covers 1.6 million acres of desert and is home to more than 2,500 native species of which approximately 100 are considered imperiled. The two groups pointed to the opinions of more than 50 wildlife experts that the guzzlers would threaten desert wildlife, particularly the desert tortoise, the flagship species of the Mojave Preserve.

“Superintendent Martin did the right thing to follow the law and involve the public,” said Daniel R. Patterson, Desert Ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “More guzzlers would harm native desert wildlife, and violate an agreement Interior made to keep these wells capped. There are already many natural waters and guzzlers on the Mojave National Preserve, which should be managed as a natural area, not a game farm.”

“Mojave National Preserve must obey the long-established policies of the National Park Service which mandate that artificial water sources for wildlife may be provided only in extreme conditions; conditions hardly evident at Mojave,” Buono concluded.

Federal Plans Aim to Control Use of the Desert

Development and off-road use in the Mojave and Algodones Dunes would increase. Critics threaten to sue.

By Janet Wilson and Julie Cart, Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times

Federal officials on Thursday released a pair of desert management plans to accommodate recreation, development and wildlife in the booming western Mojave and in the Algodones Dunes, a popular destination for off-road vehicles in far southeastern California.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said its design for 9.3 million acres of the western Mojave Desert is the largest habitat conservation plan in the United States, encompassing parts of four counties and numerous towns.

The plan, one of nearly 500 around the country, is aimed at expediting development in western San Bernardino, Kern, Los Angeles and Inyo counties while seeking to preserve more than 100 rare plant and animal species, including the threatened desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel.

Such plans allow home builders, miners, water and sewage companies, and others to destroy endangered and threatened species in exchange for setting aside or paying to preserve wildlife habitat elsewhere.

"Everybody out there in this tremendously large, 9-million-acre area will know which areas are targeted for conservation and which areas would be allowed for development," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management's California office, which began developing the plan a decade ago.

Larry Lapre, the BLM staffer overseeing final development of the plan, said the fast-growing area covered under the plan stretches from the San Gabriel Mountains east to Baker, and from Olancha in the Owens Valley south to Joshua Tree National Park. It takes in Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Apple Valley, Lancaster, Palmdale and Ridgecrest.

"It's an hour away from 15 million people," he said.

"Lancaster and Palmdale in particular are experiencing very rapid growth, and Victorville is too…. It's suburban sprawl."

"Every time you do a subdivision in Victorville, you have to do a tortoise survey and a ground squirrel survey and a burrowing owl survey, and usually you find one of each," Lapre said. "Then you have to go get permits, and there's hundreds of those pending. Hundreds of housing projects are being delayed."

Under the new plan, developers could pay fees or set aside land, then acquire one "take" permit covering all the species.

Lapre, a biologist who has worked on such plans for years, said the large swaths of land that would be set aside for the tortoise and other wildlife would help preserve them.

But environmental groups disagreed sharply. Daniel Patterson said the Center for Biological Diversity would sue if necessary to block the plan, which, he said, would ignore an existing recovery plan for the tortoise.

The BLM plan for the Algodones Dunes, long a mecca for off-road vehicle enthusiasts, calls for opening all of the areas that were placed off-limits as a result of a temporary court settlement five years ago.

However, Bedrosian of the BLM said the closures on slightly less than one-third of the area — 49,300 acres — would remain in place until at least Oct. 15 while a federal judge considers competing lawsuits from off-roaders and environmentalists.

Most of the currently restricted area — about 33,000 acres — will be opened to limited motorized use. The BLM said it would issue up to 525 permits per day for that part of the dunes, prohibit overnight camping, and close the area from April to mid-October.

For the time being, the BLM proposes instituting a zoning system that divides the entire 160,000-acre dune system into eight management areas. The 26,000-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area would be closed to any motorized travel, for example, and the 21,000-acre Gecko area would be open to unlimited off-road use.

Altogether, more than 85% of the dunes would be open to off-road vehicles.

Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, assailed the plan as a reversal of the 2000 court agreement and said it fails to provide protection for a threatened plant.

"The worst part is that the plan fails to deal with the crowds," Patterson said. "They totally failed to consider the carrying capacity of the dunes. The caps are only for a small area. It's a paper plan that will have no on-the-ground enforceability."

On holiday weekends, as many as 250,000 people roar over the dunes in sand rails, trucks and dune buggies. Four years ago, three people were killed and dozens injured, including a park ranger who was run over during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Bedrosian said the agency considers the 33,000 acres of limited use a "laboratory," adding that vehicle limits could be adjusted if necessary.

Don’t Mince Birds

Wind power for Los Angeles faces down a new foe

Judith Lewis
LA Weekly

It began with a fanfare that fast became a public-relations nightmare; it has been stalled for nearly a year awaiting impact reports. And just when it seemed poised to go forward in advance of a mayoral election that could be decided by a handful of environmentalist votes, the Pine Tree Wind Farm has hit yet another obstacle: the defenders of the hundreds of songbirds that some ornithologists believe fly through the proposed 22,000-acre site in the Mojave Desert every year.

“It’s a prime location on the north-south migration pattern every fall and spring,” says Garry George, first vice president and conservation chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Audubon Society. “Flycatchers, warblers, vireos, those kinds of birds.” An environmental impact report (EIR) published in July 2004 acknowledged potential harm to red-tailed hawks, but estimated that Pine Tree’s 80 turbines would kill only four raptors per year (the average among all North American wind farms is 2.19 deaths per year) — not much impact to a healthy population. But there’s no evidence in the EIR that anyone even observed a single songbird. “They visited only one time and only for an hour during the birds’ peak migration period, which is April 15th to May 30th,” George says. “How could they conclude it wasn’t harmful to songbirds if they weren’t there when most birds come through?”

A proposed $162 million project that would supply clean energy to 120,000 Los Angeles homes, the Pine Tree Wind Farm could help the DWP meet a goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2017, as set by the Los Angeles City Council last year. The DWP’s own Web site boasts that the project will reduce the utility’s carbon-dioxide emissions “by more than 210,000 tons each year.”

That obviously thrills clean-energy advocates, who say the DWP has been notoriously sluggish on clean power. “The DWP’s mantra is to build dirty coal plants out of state,” says Rhonda Mills, director of special projects for the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies (CEERT). “They prefer to diminish visibility in national parks in Utah than put any effort into wind or solar. For us this wind farm is a very promising project compared to what we’ve built in the last 30 years.

“But that doesn’t mean you do it at the expense of everything,” Mills cautions. “It means that you do it right, with all the reports in place.”

George agrees. “We don’t object to wind power in general; we just want them to do all the studies.”

Bird enthusiasts have found little comfort in the histories of other California wind farms, such as the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in eastern Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. In addition to killing anywhere from 800 to 1,200 birds of prey a year, including the protected golden eagle, Altamont’s mills also chew up some 3,000 meadowlarks and nearly 400 burrowing owls. The Center for Biological Diversity has filed suit against several companies managing the wind farm alleging unfair business practices (Wind Turbine Prometheus, which will develop Pine Tree with General Electric turbines, is not among them). Even the California Energy Company has recommended retiring the facility’s most lethal turbines.

“Wind turbine owners are not doing enough to mitigate bird and bat mortality,” says K. Shawn Smallwood, an independent ecologist specializing in minimizing bird kills on wind farms who worked on the Pine Tree draft EIR. “What the wind industry is doing right now is denying there’s a problem,” he says. “That’s too bad, because there’s a way to make wind power truly green. They just won’t do it.”

Tensions high in the preserve

Gun incident highlights residents' animosity toward the National Park Service

By KELLY DONOVAN & IAN MORRISON / Staff Writers
Victorville Daily Press

Last month, a local resident was arrested on suspicion of pointing a rifle at two National Park Service rangers in the Mojave National Preserve.

The incident underscores some of the tensions in the preserve, a place where residents steeped in the traditions of the Old West are grappling with the transition to a culture more similar to that of a national park.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, Leo H. Spatziani and another man were approached by the rangers as the men allegedly operated a dredging machine on public land near an area rich in sensitive archeological and cultural resources.

Bobby Parker, the other man with Spatziani, said this week that he and Spatziani were on Parker's 160-acre homestead, working to install a water line, when the rangers came up and asked them to stop.

Parker said he isn't sure why Spatziani reacted the way he did, but he guessed that Spatziani is among the preserve residents who are fed up with the National Park Service after more than 10 years of the agency's presence there.

The Mojave National Preserve's chief ranger, Denny Ziemann, said he thinks residents like Parker — who contends that the Park Service has a vendetta against him — are the vocal minority. Most of the people in the preserve are able to co-exist with the park service peacefully, Ziemann said.

While some residents report having good relations with the park service, there are also some who have complaints.

The birth of a preserve

The Mojave National Preserve, which is east of Barstow, sandwiched between interstates 15 and 40, was born after President Bill Clinton signed the California Desert Protection Act in 1994.

Unlike most national parks, a national preserve allows uses like hunting, grazing and mining within its territory.

And within the Mojave National Preserve, private land holdings are interspersed with federal property. The preserve is sparsely populated with an estimated 200 or less residents who've gotten used to life in the wilderness — many of whom lived in the area for years before the preserve was created.

Some of those people opposed the creation of the preserve.

"It was unwelcome," said Gerald Freeman, who operates a hotel, RV park, store and restaurant in Nipton, on the northern boundary of the preserve. "For the most part the locals were hostile. But a lot of them were squatters on government land ... they were just sort of anti-establishment, like the militias in some of the other states."

Ranching and land ownership

Critics like Parker and Dennis Casebler, a historian who runs the Goffs Schoolhouse, use the harshest possible language to describe how the park service has dealt with the people who live in the 1.6-million-acre preserve. Casebler goes as far as likening the park service to the Gestapo.

Casebler started to take action and wrote a letter Feb. 24 to U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis,R-Redlands, that contains a litany of complaints about the park service.

Among other things, Casebler and Parker accuse the Mojave National Preserve of trying to eradicate the ranching and mining industries there — a charge the agency denies.

Ziemann said he doesn't think the park service has ever rejected a mining application in the preserve. He also said the Park Service doesn't pressure ranchers to leave, although the retirement of all the grazing allotments in the preserve is part of its General Management Plan, a blueprint for its future.

"We're not going to force these ranchers out," he said. "Nobody will ever be forced to sell their land."

Three major ranching families sold their properties to the National Park Foundation in recent years and moved out of the area, retiring their grazing allotments. Because the government cannot directly acquire land, the foundation buys it and then donates it to the park service.

Rob Blair, who is a fourth-generation member of the last remaining large ranch in the preserve, said he knows the park service wants the Blair Ranch grazing allotments to be retired. However, he said the park service and the National Park Foundation haven't tried to force him, because any sales need to be with willing sellers.

However, Blair said he knows some people feel intimidated.

"People say, 'They're going to take our land if we don't sell to them,' " Blair said. "People are scared for their homes, some of them."

One longtime resident of the area, Mike Daughtery of Baker, blames the park service for driving out the ranchers with grazing regulations.

However, he also said the ranchers might not have had other opportunities to sell their holdings for cash had the National Park Service and National Park Foundation not been interested in the land.

"There's no simple answers to this stuff," Daughtery said.

The federal government can forcibly acquire land through eminent domain proceedings, arguing that it is in the public's best interest, but Ziemann said the Mojave National Preserve would not do that.

"The claim that we're harassing these people or running them out is not true," Ziemann said.

One recent land dispute that has sparked public interest and continues to infuriate Parker and Casebler is a dispute involving longtime preserve resident Connie Connelly, who Casebler calls "a genuine desert character."

Parker and Casebler said they are upset that the park service has forced Connelly to leave the simple home she's lived in for years in a remote part of the preserve.

Ziemann said that Connelly was living on park service property without a valid lease — essentially squatting. Also, he said the park service had to spend about $60,000 several years ago to clean up waste generated at the site.

To help Connelly, Ziemann said the park service offered to buy her a new home anywhere she wanted. In the end, she agreed to move to Wyoming, and is scheduled to move this month, he said.

Response to "Water Fight in the Mojave"

Attention:
Letters to the Los Angeles Times editor
For the Record editor

Julie Cart's story, "Water Fight in the Mojave," in Friday's California section is a classic example of how The Times only gets half the story and only half right. It is filled with incorrect and mis-information reported without a lick of attribution.

The first mistake is the assumption that the "needs of game animals" are somehow at odds with the needs of "federally protected wildlife," and that hunters' interests are somehow different than other conservationists. It seems to me that hunters are interested in diverse healthy wildlife populations and show that by funding massive programs around the world that benefit all wildlife, not just hunted species. Good management of resources and wild systems benefits all wildlife in that system.

Then we come to the first error of fact: "...man-made water holes draw predators that prey on the threatened California desert tortoise." There has never been a single definitive study that shows this is true, and obviously no one who wanted to be quoted saying this was the case. There has been speculation by some biologists this happens, but that speculation is without any correlative science, and certainly without definitive work. In fact, most of the science would tend to suggest that additional water sources would tend to distribute predators at more places, lessening the likelihood that a tortoise would be potential prey.

Then the next paragraph has the next glaring error of fact: "...reverse a long-standing water policy in the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve." There is no policy. It is not stated in the Mojave's management plan. It is not in NEPA or even CEQA. In fact, by agreeing to the permanent capping of wells with the National Park Service Foundation, and moving ahead with those plans, the National Park Service violated its own management plan for the Preserve and NEPA. Both the plan and NEPA require that the NPS evaluate the impacts the removal of water -- in this case over 125 cattle watering sources -- would have on the preserve's wildlife BEFORE the water was removed. The NPS did NOT do that. It did no baseline surveys on wildlife populations around this man-made water and completed no study on impacts water removal would have, good or bad. There was only speculation that it would be a good thing. The NPS was in violation of the law and its own policy when it encouraged the removal of the cattle watering sources in the first place. This has probably led to a dramatic decline in dozens and dozens of different wildlife species, not just hunted species, on the preserve. But it was only the hunter-conservation groups like Safari Club who were concerned about this and immediately filed a protest. If the Times had bothered to ask Center for Biological Diversity lawyers about this, they would have told the papers' reporters that the NPS was in violation for allowing the removal of the wells, pipelines, and stock tanks in the first place before meeting the requirements of NEPA and its own management plan. Safari Club was trying to get the preserve staff to restore only 12 wells out of 125 water sources removed, and trying to do this quickly without a lawsuit to cut wildlife losses.

The next error in fact is about the claim by the 57 scientists who contend that because of groundwater pumping 90 percent of the preserves springs and seeps had been diminished on the preserve. There is no scientific documentation this is true. Only speculation by these 57 scientists. It is just as likely, if we can speculate, that groundwater pumping for human developments in Needles and Newberry Springs, drought, or global warming was the cause for any historic change, and not the modest pumping that supplied cattle (and wildlife) with water. In fact, it is speculative there has been a 90 percent change at all. This is NOT documented by science, it is their seat-of-the-pants belief. Show me the science.

These same scientists bemoan the added water as a huge detriment to wildlife. There are thousands of scientists in all of the Western states who will tell you the opposite, that water added in deserts is a huge boon to all wildlife. They have good science and examples to back up their beliefs, however, not speculation. One of the best examples of how added water has benefited wildlife is -- ironically -- on the Mojave National Preserve. The work was done before it was preserve, of course. The Old Dad Peak/Kelso Mountains complex on the far Western edge of the preserve historically held only a few wandering bighorn sheep. Never more than a dozen according to surveys done through the middle part of the last century. The Department of Fish and Game, working with the Bureau of Land Management, and one of those onerous hunter-conservation groups, the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, put in several man-made water sources. They did this, by the way, before hunting of bighorn sheep was allowed in the state. Today, it is the largest herd of desert bighorns in the state, numbering over 200 animals. This once threatened species (just like the desert tortoise) was brought back by the addition of water. By hunters before there was hunting for sheep. Amazing, huh?.

Now come the big factual errors in the story:

1) There is no direct evidence that capping any wells has rejuvenated the preserves natural water sites. This is speculation. And the statement is made without attribution in the story. We could speculate that the wetter seasons this year and last year are responsible for any increase in spring flow over the short term, too. And in fact, that has far more credibility.

2) There is no evidence of a deer herd increase. The NPS did no population surveys before the water was removed and none after the water was removed. They were supposed to do this before removing the 125 water sources, but they didn't. The "increase" is interpolated from the Department of Fish and Game's deer harvest figures over the past several hunting seasons. Survey hunters and they will all tell you they are seeing fewer deer in fewer places, but that they have become more successful because the deer have fewer places to water. Like any smart predator, hunters are focusing their efforts around those remaining water sources and killing more deer.

3) Of the 133 small game guzzlers and six big game guzzlers, over 3/4s are out of desert tortoise habitat. Of the 1/4 that are in desert tortoise habitat, tortoise remains have been found in 1/3 of those. That is a far smaller number than quoted in the LA Times story, which makes them all sound like death traps. Also, the implication that because remains are found in a guzzler that the guzzler is somehow the reason for the tortoises death is, at best, speculative. Correlation is not causation. Department of Fish and Game research, actual science, suggests very few of the tortoises in guzzlers died as a result of the guzzler. Just as DFG research suggests that tortoise shells found with bullet holes were almost never killed by those bullets. The shells were shot postmortem, long after the tortoises were dead. But there are "scientists" that continue to insist that shooting is a major cause of tortoise deaths. This is a lie.

4) There is no scientific evidence that water sources attract more ravens, increasing desert tortoise deaths. None. In fact, other scientists speculate that the more water sources you have, the less impacts predators have on wildlife. The problem is that there are about 100 times more ravens now than there were just 25 years ago. That is attributed to desert communities that provide food (garbage) in great quantities. Ravens also eat baby tortoises, and 100 times more eat 100 times more babies. You do the math. A lot of scientists believe ravens are the crux of the tortoise decline. Bulldozing all desert communities from Barstow to Yucca Valley to Lancaster would probably alleviate the raven increase.

Most of the 21-page complaint talks about the supposed impacts of man-made water on desert tortoises. The reality is that all 12 of the wells proposed for retrofitting are above the elevations inhabited by tortoises on the preserve. Isn't this whole argument is moot? Why didn't the Times reporter, ask this question?

The NPS staff could indeed suggest that it needs to remove all of the cattle water and the guzzlers on the preserve because this is "unnatural manipulation" of the habitat -- and that is not their charge. But the staff IS required by law and their own preserve policy to document the impacts water removal would have on the preserve's existing wildlife resources. They did not do that -- and that was ILLEGAL.

Conversely, the NPS is ALSO required to protect and enhance the cultural heritage on the preserve. Cattle ranching and guzzlers have been a huge part of the preserve for 100 years or more, and the historic windmills and cattle troughs are wonderful symbols of that history. The fact that they also help wildlife is a bonus. Yet, the NPS wants to rip them all out. Couldn't the NPS recognize the wildlife benefits and direct visitors to these cultural heritage sites to see desert wildlife? The small game guzzlers are ideal places to watch wildlife in the spring and summer, when there is no hunting on the preserve, and many of us believe the guzzlers should be preserved for their historic AND wildlife values. The NPS staff has never considered that a valid argument.

The impact removing 125-plus water sources has had on preserve wildlife is profound. The cultural loss is significant. It is more than quail and deer and hunters that have suffered.

Instead of portraying Paul Hoffman as another of the Bush-administration bad guy who's trying to destroy American's wildlife heritage, the reality the LA Times couldn't or refused to see is that Hoffman is trying to compensate for a NPS staff that hates the fact that hunting is allowed in the Mojave Preserve and was willing to violate the law and destroy wildlife to try to make the preserve less appealing to hunters. Hoffman was trying to avert a Safari Club lawsuit and protect desert wildlife. And he's the villain?

I realize this is far too long for you to run as a letter, but I hope you will at least research and correct the factual errors.

Sincerely,

Jim Matthews
San Bernardino, Calif.

Water Fight in the Mojave

U.S. Sides With Hunters, Who Clash With Naturalists on Well Issue

By Julie Cart, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A quarrel over waterholes in the Mojave is pitting hunters against naturalists, the needs of game animals against those of federally protected wildlife, and is resurrecting decade-old differences over the purpose of a national preserve.

Until recently, the dispute has been limited to mule deer and bighorn sheep hunters who favor the creation of more desert water sources and conservationists who argue that man-made waterholes draw predators that prey on the threatened California desert tortoise.

Now, a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of the Interior has intervened on behalf of hunters and demanded the uncapping of 12 plugged wells, an action that would reverse a long-standing water policy in the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve. That, in turn, prompted a lawsuit this week by two environmental groups that say the order is illegal.

Ever since the preserve was created 11 years ago, the National Park Service, which manages it, has been working to buy out a handful of cattle ranches scattered through the preserve and cap wells that supplied water to livestock. Some of the buyout agreements, which were financed by the nonprofit National Park Foundation, called for the permanent capping of all ranch wells.

Earlier this year, Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Paul Hoffman, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, ordered the Park Service to allow the California Department of Fish and Game to reopen ranch wells and convert them to wildlife watering sites, known as guzzlers.

Hoffman issued the order over the written objections of Mojave Preserve Supt. Mary Martin.

The issue of man-made water supplies is especially important to hunters of mule deer, bighorn sheep, rabbits and quail. When the preserve was created in 1994, Congress directed that hunting be allowed.

However, in 2002 a group of 57 biologists, hydrologists and archeologists from around the country sent a letter to Hoffman asking for the removal of all guzzlers in the preserve.

The group said removal of artificial water sources was consistent with the principles of "conservation biology and park policy and law," and with Park Service management policies that prohibit "artificial manipulation of habitat to increase numbers of a harvested species above its natural range in population levels."

In addition, the scientists wrote that because of decades of groundwater pumping, 90% of the preserve's natural springs and seeps had been adversely affected.

This week, the Center for Biological Diversity and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued to prevent the first four wells from being uncapped and converted to water sites for wildlife. The lawsuit alleges that new guzzlers would be illegal, that well retrofitting requires environmental analysis, and that the watering devices have been shown to be harmful to other wildlife.

Hugh Vickery, an Interior Department spokesman, would not comment on ongoing litigation. Martin would not comment either.

Park Service hydrologists contend that the 30 or so ranch wells, some of which had been in operation for 100 years, siphoned water from a desert aquifer and compromised natural springs and seeps elsewhere in the Mojave.

Capping the wells, they say, has rejuvenated the preserve's natural water sites, and removing cattle from the desert has promoted regrowth of native plants. Park Service officials say both outcomes have helped sustain wildlife, including deer and sheep.

Park Service biologists say there is no need for more water sources, pointing out that one population of mule deer has increased slightly every year since the ranch wells were shut down.

Separate from the ranch wells, the Mojave Preserve maintains about 133 guzzler water stations for small game and six for large game. Some are designed to trap rainfall and surface water into cisterns, and others pump groundwater into concrete-lined depressions.

Conservationists and biologists say guzzlers attract ravens that prey on the desert tortoise. Preserve officials say tortoise remains have been found in nearly one-third of the preserve's guzzlers. Scientists surmise that tortoises either fall in and drown or are left in the water by predators.

Safari Club International, a hunting organization, and other groups have been pushing to reopen several wells. They met with Hoffman, Martin and representatives of the state Department of Fish and Game last August in Ontario.

Soon after the meeting, Fish and Game presented a plan to reopen 12 wells over three years. Martin balked, and a few months later Hoffman ordered her to allow Fish and Game to proceed with its plan.

State Fish and Game managers argue that wildlife in the preserve has become accustomed to the man-made water sources and that taking any water away would harm animals and ultimately reduce herd size.

"Our wildlife biologists who work out in the desert believe the water enhancement projects are necessary," said Mike Haynie, a deputy regional manager for the department.

The project will cost about $40,000, according to the state agency. Its proposal says volunteers will build and maintain the pumps, pipelines and submerged tanks that support the guzzlers.

"It's common sense," said Pat Murch, a resident of Needles who said he has hunted in the Mojave all his life. "Our concern is that all of a sudden you go turn [wells] off and that's going to affect the wildlife. We are simply asking the Park Service to use common sense.

"Under an agreement with the Department of Fish and Game, local hunting groups provide volunteers to maintain the water devices. However, a survey conducted by preserve staff last year found more than half of the guzzlers in a state of disrepair and 15% no longer functioning.

Ken Schwartz, a spokesman for Safari Club International, said that because roads are prohibited in much of the preserve, volunteers have difficulty getting to some guzzlers. But, according to the preserve's survey, 93% of the guzzlers are within one mile of a road.

Groups file suit to stop well project

by Jim Matthews
San Bernardino Sun

This is utterly baffling. Two highly respected environmental groups apparently have been duped into filing a lawsuit to stop the restoration and conversion of four water wells in the Mojave National Preserve to wildlife drinkers.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) announced the lawsuit Tuesday. The 21-page complaint and the press release, however, are riddled with factual errors.

John Buse, the lead attorney on the lawsuit in CDBs Chicago office, said "the desert tortoise is certainly the largest concern we had' in filing the lawsuit. The complaint argues that restoring the four wells would endanger desert tortoises and violates both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the preserve's own management plan.

The problem is simply this: First, the four wells are situated at elevations well above desert tortoise habitat. Tortoises never have been documented in the area around the four wells. That is why these locations were chosen by the hunter-conservation groups that fought to have them restored.

Second, the National Park Service, specifically park superintendent Mary Martin, violated NEPA and the preserve's management guidelines by directing the private land owners who were forced off the preserve to remove the wells. The preserve's management plan said that the staff was required to document any impacts on the area's wildlife before the wells could be removed. Martin illegally avoided this requirement by saying that the private owners wanted to remove their private windmills and stock tanks.

Buse and local CDB attorney Brendan Cummings admitted that the National Park Service violated NEPA and its own management plan when it allowed the wells to be removed, and CDB is contending it is now violating the same rules again by trying to restore them.

Why didn't CDB file a lawsuit when the NPS removed over 125 cattle water sources the first time around? My call is they were duped. Or it is about anti-hunting bias.

The PEER press release riles against Paul Hoffman as a Bush Administration bad guy who went over the preserve staff's head to allow the well restoration, saying it was Hoffman who was forcing the park service to violate the law.

Interestingly, the PEER mouthpiece on this issue is Paul Buono, a former deputy superintendent at the preserve, who is part of a small clique of park service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees who are resentful the Mojave was not made into a national park, where hunting is banned, instead of a national preserve, where hunting is allowed.

The anti-hunting bias is pervasive within this small group, and they also form the core of a tiny minority of scientists who believe that wildlife drinkers are detrimental to wildlife, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One of the most dramatic examples of how the addition of water into a desert ecosystem can benefit wildlife is on the Mojave National Preserve.

Before the area was a preserve, the Department of Fish and Game (DFG), Bureau of Land Management, and Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep did surveys on Old Dad Peak. At most it had a dozen sheep. The problem? There were no permanent water sources. The DFG added big-game drinkers, and now that herd numbers more than 200 animals.

Hoffman is no villain. He's the hero in this episode; a hero who was trying to avert a lawsuit from the hunter-conservation community over the illegal NPS' removal of 125 cattle water sources.

It's pathetic that CBD and PEER were conned into filing this lawsuit, a lawsuit that is about anti-hunting bias and not science or environmental law.

Jim Matthews is a freelance writer.

Lawsuit aims to halt guzzlers

Environmentalist groups upset about artificial water sources in Mojave National Preserve

By KELLY DONOVAN/Staff Writer
Victorville Daily Press

BARSTOW — Two environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the National Park Service, aiming to stop the expansion of artificial water sources in the Mojave National Preserve east of Barstow.

In the lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility ask that the National Park Service stop working on plans to convert four former ranchers' well systems into guzzlers — man-made watering holes for wildlife.

The lawsuit contends that the conversion plans should be subject to review under the National Environmental Quality Act.

PEER and the center argue that guzzlers are problematic for desert tortoises, which are listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. For example, guzzlers can attract tortoise predators such as ravens, according to the suit.

The question of whether to convert the wells in the preserve surfaced in recent years as the National Park Foundation bought the grazing allotments of ranchers there. The ranchers moved out of the area — leaving behind their well systems.

Documents show that the Mojave National Preserve staff had concerns about artificial watering sources in the preserve, but nevertheless authorized the conversion of the former ranch wells into guzzlers for mule deer.

Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin wrote about artificial water sources in a June 17, 2002, memo to Paul Hoffman, the Interior Department's deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

Among her remarks in the six-page memo, which the groups provided to the media, was that the preserve staff had "identified the need to return human-disturbed areas to their former natural conditions," which "might entail ... the removal of existing small and large wildlife guzzlers."

She also wrote that while "hunters had the impression that enhancing wildlife populations by artificial watering sources would be a simple change in philosophy," that would be "contrary to our mission, policies and legal foundation."

However, she authorized the conversion of the former ranchers' wells into guzzlers in a Jan. 31 letter to the California Department of Fish and Game.

PEER board member Frank Buono and Center for Biological Diversity Desert Ecologist Daniel Patterson said they believe Martin received orders — probably from Hoffman — to have the guzzlers installed. Buono retired in 1997 as the preserve's No. 2 official.

Patterson points to a July 30, 2002, e-mail from Hoffman to a hunting advocate in which he said that he was "still working ... to determine what we can or cannot do in the way of maintaining at least some of the water developments" in the preserve.

"I think the Mojave National Preserve staff there in Barstow had it right when they said we don't really need these additional guzzlers," Patterson said. "We don't need this kind of political meddling."

Guzzlers for game are widely viewed as a benefit for hunters, but Patterson said the center is not opposed to hunting in the preserve, and he is a hunter himself.

"I think hunting would be better if you maintain a natural ecosystem," he said.

Hugh Vickery, an Interior Department spokesman, and Ben Porritt, a Justice Department spokesman, both said Tuesday that they couldn't comment on the litigation.

The Mojave National Preserve encompasses more than 1.5 million acres east of Barstow, sandwiched between Interstate 40 and Interstate 15. The preserve staff's office is in Barstow.

ARTIFICIAL WATERING THREATENS MOJAVE WILDLIFE

Political Appointees at Interior Vetoed Park Objections; Lawsuit Filed

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility News Release (www.peer.org)
For Immediate Release: March 1, 2005
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

Washington, DC — A top political appointee of the Bush Administration has overruled the National Park Service and ordered it to allow the installation of artificial water systems in California’s Mojave National Preserve. Contending that the artificial water sources are illegal and will harm the native wildlife, Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Biological Diversity today filed suit to stop the plan.

Paul Hoffman, a former Dick Cheney aide serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, intervened to quash Park Service objections about adding more artificial water sources (called “guzzlers”). Hoffman, who has no biological training and spent the ten years prior to his appointment by President Bush at the Cody Wyoming Chamber of Commerce, contends guzzlers enhance “coyote and varmint hunting” on the Preserve, according to one of his emails.

The Mojave National Preserve covers more than 3 million acres of desert and is home to more than 2,500 native species of which approximately 100 are considered imperiled. For example, the desert tortoise, the flagship species of the Mojave Preserve, is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Wildlife experts contend expansion of artificial watering in the Preserve hurts native flora and fauna by –

• Drying up natural springs and wetlands upon which native plants and animals depend;

• Drawing concentrations of ravens and other animals that prey especially on young tortoises. One survey found dead or dying desert tortoises at 30% of the current guzzlers. Another study found a ten fold increase in ravens congregating around guzzlers; and

• Sustaining non-native species like burros. There is even a concern about the watering systems helping to spread Africanized honeybees.

“Nearly a century ago, Congress charged the National Park Service with conserving the wildlife of the parks. Now, the Bush Administration is eroding the long history and tradition of protecting park wildlife and of preserving healthy ecosystems,” stated PEER Board member Frank Buono, who served as deputy superintendent at Mojave NP, pointing to a letter signed by 57 scientists specializing in desert ecology who oppose the guzzlers. “Paul Hoffman is setting wildlife policy on the basis of good-ole-boy ignorance.”

On January 31, 2005, the Mojave superintendent under orders from Hoffman granted permission for the installation of four guzzlers with eight more still under consideration. The lawsuit from PEER and the Center contends that the artificial water systems violate laws and policies governing the Park Service. The guzzler approval also flouts advice from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition, the water sources run counter to the management plan that the NPS adopted, after four years of public involvement and thousands of public comments, for the Preserve in 2002. In making the move in January, the Park Service made no effort to revise its plan or notify the public.

“There are already many natural waters and guzzlers on the Mojave National Preserve, which is a natural area, not a game farm," said Daniel R. Patterson, Desert Ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hoffman's illegal political push for unneeded guzzlers would harm native desert wildlife, and violate an agreement Interior made to keep these wells capped.”

Read the June 17, 2002 memo from the Mojave National Preserve superintendent to Hoffman outlining objections to the guzzlers

View Paul Hoffman emails to Jim Matthews of Outdoor News Service, a leading guzzler proponent