Jack Thompson, Wildlands Conservancy
Today is a day to celebrate! President Obama has declared three vast new national monuments in the California desert: Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow, and Castle Mountains. As I relish this victory, my thoughts whirl around the places, faces, and events that have marked great successes during my 45 years as a Sierra Club desert activist.
Standing at the podium at Wildlands Conservancy’s gorgeous Whitewater Preserve this past November, Senator Feinstein was the same gracious and vibrant leader that she was in 1993 as a junior U.S. senator when I first met with her in Los Angeles on the California Desert Protection Act, more popularly called “the Desert Bill.” At that meeting were the great leaders of the Desert Bill: Jim Dodson, Judy Anderson, and Vicky Hoover of the Sierra Club, and Nobby Reidy of Wilderness Society. But most of all, there was Elden Hughes.
Elden and Patty Hughes with President Clinton at the signing of the Desert Bill, 1994. Photo: White House Staff.
If the Sierra Club was the undisputed leader in protecting the California desert, Elden was its pied piper. Taking activists on trips to all 69 proposed wilderness areas in the Desert Bill, entrancing the press with his golden sound bites, and charming legislators from L.A. to D.C. with his desert tortoises, Elden was an irrepressible force on the side of the desert.
That is why, in the late 1990s, I consulted with Elden first, before suggesting a new national monument for the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains. Would the Sierra Club support a national monument? Elden said yes, go for it. So I contacted Ed Hastey, then-director of the California Bureau of Land Management, and the rest is history. Ed reached out to local communities and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who reached out to Representative Mary Bono, who reached across the aisle to Senator Feinstein, and together we protected yet another great piece of the desert with a bipartisan unanimous vote of both houses of Congress.
Now, thinking about the new national monuments, many of us remember that the first Desert Bill came about because the BLM had failed to recognize the major wilderness-quality desert areas and to properly care for what is now the Mojave Preserve. But what about these new national monuments? What drove them?
The current saga started in the mid 1990s when SF Pacific Properties put its vast holdings throughout the California desert up for sale and development. Developing these lands would have severely harmed their biological and aesthetic integrity, as well as recreational access for more than 4 million acres of public lands. This was because of the checkerboard configuration of the parcels, which stemmed from land grants to the railroads in the 1800s. But an agile new force in the desert, the Wildlands Conservancy, took on the problem, and eventually, under the leadership of David Myers, got an option to buy the most sensitive of these properties -- almost a thousand square miles of land.
Myers and the Wildlands Conservancy then raised $30 million in private monies and teamed up with Elden Hughes and Senator Feinstein to procure another $15 million in federal Land and Water Conservation Funds to complete the acquisition and to propose what was then called the Mother Road National Monument (later morphed to “Mojave Trails”). In the early 2000s, the Sierra Club was the first major organization to endorse this new national monument, and things seemed to be going swimmingly -- until the solar (and wind) “gold rush” happened in the California desert.
Marble Mountains Overlook, Mojave Trails National Monument. Photo: Jack Thompson/ Wildlands Conservancy.
You see, the thousand square miles of acquired land had been transferred to federal agencies to consolidate public land and access across the desert, with assurances of preservation in perpetuity by the President and the Secretary of the Interior. But during the 2008-2010 feeding frenzy to get billions in federal stimulus dollars that were being handed out for renewable energy, BLM had allowed over a million acres of public land in the desert to be plastered willy-nilly with solar and wind applications. There was little to no regard for the incredibly sensitive and irreplaceable resources of these lands. The Mojave Trails region had its share of abysmally sited projects, with such iconic places as Sleeping Beauty Valley proposed to be filled with solar mirrors and power towers. Swift action was needed, and Senator Feinstein rose to the occasion once again.
The senator met with constituents, including Sierra Club leaders, and in 2011 she proposed legislation including a Mojave Trails National Monument to preserve not only the lands she had recently helped acquire but also to preserve the integrity of the many intervening Wilderness Areas that had been created in her first Desert Bill. Responding to strong community support, the senator also proposed a remarkable Sand to Snow National Monument at the same time.
Whitewater River, Sand to Snow National Monument. Photo: Jack Thompson/ Wildlands Conservancy.
Over time it became obvious that legislation for the national monuments would languish forever in a regressive Congress, so last year Senator Feinstein called on President Obama to use his powers under the Antiquities Act to get the job done. Taking action today, as have many presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to George W. Bush have done, President Obama made history, in this case by preserving some of the most iconic places in the California desert. All Sierra Clubbers should give ourselves a pat on the back for the pivotal role that the Sierra Club has played in desert protection through the years, and also be sure to thank President Obama for his bold action today.
Joan and husband Rob