CALIFORNIA DESERT CONSERVATION AREA
Covering more than 25 million acres — about a fourth of
California — the geologically diverse California Desert
Conservation Area includes sand dunes, canyons, dry lakes, 90
mountain ranges, and 65 wilderness areas. This huge expanse
of land is also home to numerous imperiled species, including
the threatened desert tortoise, the endangered Peninsular
bighorn sheep, the cushenberry buckwheat, and many other
rare plants and animals adapted to live in harsh desert
environments. Congress designated the area in 1976, and the
1994 California Desert Protection Act further increased
protection by setting aside as wilderness 3.5 million of its acres,
turning the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments
into national parks and establishing the 1.6-million-acre Mojave
National Preserve.
But the Bureau of Land Management, entrusted with protecting
the conservation area for the sake of wildlife, plants, and
sustainable human enjoyment, continues to support destructive
human activities within its borders, and imperiled species suffer
as planning efforts to protect their habitat are delayed time and
again. For the past decade, the Center has been leading the
fight to hold the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service accountable for their failure to protect
these precious public resources.
In March 2000, the Center, Sierra Club, and Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility stepped in to initiate a revolution
in wildlife and ecosystem protection across the California
Desert Conservation Area, filing suit against the Bureau of Land
Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service on behalf of 24
endangered species that had been hurt by poor land
management. Thanks to a series of sweeping settlement
agreements in 2000 and 2001, millions of acres were protected
from destructive human impacts when the Bureau of Land
Management promised to prohibit mining on 3.4 million acres,
reduce or prohibit livestock grazing on 2 million acres, prohibit
off-road vehicles on more than 550,000 acres, close more than
4,500 miles of roads, and increase wildlife surveying,
monitoring, and conservation plans. The agency also agreed to
protect the Peninsular bighorn sheep and its habitat, close a
sand and gravel mine threatening the arroyo southwestern
toad, require the use of wildlife-safe engine coolant, and make
power lines raptor-proof.
Even before its 2000 lawsuit, the Center took other critical
actions to preserve the area. In 1999, a notice of intent to sue
resulted in the permanent closure of the gigantic Cima Cinder
Mine, which destroyed large portions of desert tortoise critical
habitat and annually stripped away 7,500 tons of cinder from a
cinder cone supposedly protected within the Cinder Cones
National Natural Landmark. In the same year, the Center, the
Sierra Club, and Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility brought about the closure of the Bureau of Land
Management’s 339,553-acre portion of the Lanfair Valley grazing
allotment, which lay within critical habitat for the desert tortoise.
In March 2000, public pressure and a threat to sue led to the
permanent cancellation of livestock grazing on the 276,125-acre
Granite Mountains allotment, which lies within the Bristol
Mountains Wilderness, the Mojave National Preserve, and the
University of California’s Granite Mountains Natural Reserve.
Unfortunately, the California Desert Conservation Area is still far
from immune to destructive human activities, and the Center
has continually had to work to keep them out. Since the
landmark 2001 settlement, we’ve helped protect the area by
protesting destructive mining practices, petitioning for hunting
regulations, blocking the installation of resource-guzzling
artificial water systems, and filing suit to prevent off-road
vehicles from destroying millions of acres of wildlife habitat. In
2003, the Center won an injunction against the Bureau of Land
Management’s policy designating hundreds of miles of so-
called “open wash zones” for off-road vehicles in desert
tortoise habitat in the area. Unfortunately, the agency reopened
these areas very soon after, and in 2006, the Center and allies
again filed suit against the Bureau of Land Management and
Fish and Wildlife Service for allowing excessive and destructive
off-road vehicle use and grazing to continue in critical habitat
for the desert tortoise — habitat required by law to be set aside
for the protection and recovery of the species. In 2007, the
Center and other conservation groups intervened in lawsuits
brought by Inyo County and San Bernardino County claiming
rights-of-way in the Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley
National Park under the antiquated law R.S. 2477. The next
summer, a judge largely tossed out Inyo County’s suit,
dismissing its demand to open routes within park wilderness
areas in Greenwater Valley, Greenwater Canyon, and Last
Chance Canyon .
In January 2008, the Center and our allies won a victory against
the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to build an off-road
vehicle route through Furnace Creek in the White Mountains.
Furnace Creek provides rare, desert riparian habitat that
supports many rare and imperiled species, including the
migrating southwestern willow flycatcher. Keeping this area
closed on Bureau of Land Management lands protects
hundreds of square miles of wilderness in the Inyo National
Forest, including Tres Plumas Flats, from destruction by off-road
vehicle route proliferation.