Mecca Living Contitions Questioned
 

Let land swap stand, former owners urge
 

Architecture As An Alternative
 

2 Still Fighting Dump Near Joshua Tree
 

Astroturf Wars — The fight is on to halt a subdivision near Joshua Tree
 

Examples for All of Us to Follow
 

Ruling finally ends proposal for landfill outside of Joshua Tree
 

Environmental efforts honored
 

Figueroa honored for efforts to halt Eagle Mountain landfill

Judge derails mega-dump bordering national park
 

Court deals blow to landfill plans
The judge voids a needed BLM acreage swap. LA County's trash may go elsewhere.

Indian art fits legend, man says
Aztec empire may have roots in Joshua Tree if theory holds

Truckers and tourists speeding between Coachella and Blythe on Interstate 10 won't see a billboard pointing to the cradle of Aztec civilization.

But somewhere between the George S. Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit and the Desert Center plaque marking the birthplace of modern health insurance, Alfredo Acosta Figueroa says the bygone inhabitants of Aztlán left their own imprint on the landscape.

Figueroa credits ancestors of the Aztecs, builders of an indigenous empire that Spanish conquerors in the 16th century said rivaled Venice, with creating a network of rock carvings, intaglios and prehistoric trails roughly from Joshua Tree National Park to the Colorado River.

Archaeologists question the claims that amount to a life's work for Figueroa, 70.

The longtime Chicano activist, miner and descendant of Chemehuevi and Yaqui culture, however, bolsters his theory by cross-referencing local geography with Aztec codices, stories by tribal elders and his interpretation of ancient petroglyphs.

"I know the stories, that is why I can tell you," Figueroa said during a walk to a tableau of 1,000-year-old drawings in the southeast corner of Joshua Tree park.

The petroglyphs in the park are about 50 miles west of the Palo Verde Valley and the Colorado River, a place Figueroa calls "la Cuna de Aztlán."

Bejamin Spillman, The Desert Sun

Alfredo Figueroa, a Blythe man of Chemehuevi and Yaqui descent, says petroglyphs in Joshua Tree National Park are part of a broader network of clues that indicate the lower Colorado River Valley between Laughlin, Nev., and the Gulf of California is "la Cuna de Aztlán," the mythical origin of the ancestors of the Aztec people.

Archaeologists have known about the drawings, as well as hundreds of others in the broader region, for decades.

But so far no one in the scientific community has interpreted the art.

Aztec creation story

Figueroa said he was led to the pictures during an attempt to connect the local landscape with the Aztec creation story, a tale that describes the journey of the Aztec, or Toltec, people from their origin in Aztlán to the site of their civilization in the Valley of Mexico.

The creation story, told in drawings or codices, describes the creation of the Nahua people, linguistic ancestors of the Aztecs.

It describes the sun setting into a "V" formation on the Atzlán horizon.

"I saw the sun set in that V," said Figueroa, describing how he watched the sunset during the summer solstice about seven years ago.

Later, he followed the direction of the sun to the horizon and found petroglyphs depicting the event from the creation story and in the codices.

"I was just overjoyed," Figueroa said. "Everything that I had thought, it came true."

By making connections between the Southern California desert and the Aztecs, Figueroa is creating a confluence of indigenous philosophy, Chicano heritage and environmental awareness.

"I think Alfredo's work can help bridge that distance that people of color feel for the land," said Robert Gonzales Vasquez, director of the Inland Mexican Heritage program and a supporter of Figueroa's research. "It is important to know our history," he said. "As Americans we have a historical memory of about 30 seconds."

'Cultural Crossroads'

Vasquez, 40, a resident of Redlands, is behind a presentation program called "I-10 & Aztlán: A Cultural Crossroads" that examines in part the impact of the Interstate 10 freeway on the Anglo, Mexican American and tribal communities it crosses.

It juxtaposes the freeway with the Colorado River, an earlier corridor for trading goods and ideas.

Gonzales said that by identifying Aztlán on a map, Figueroa is providing a boost to the Chicano cultural movement that celebrates the indigenous roots of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

"This isn't just one old guy in the desert who has been looking at the mountains too long," Gonzales said. "You are talking about identity politics."

Critics say Figueroa's claims placing the long-sought location of Aztlán near modern-day Blythe is a stretch based on the archaeological record.

They say Figueroa's political bent colored his research, and they question one of his primary archaeologist backers.

"What I see him doing is coming up with a theory and trying to fit the archeological data to that. It happens all the time," said Daniel McCarthy, a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist who has identified, cataloged and researched Southern California rock drawings for more than three decades.

McCarthy acknowledged that some of the rock art Figueroa cites in his arguments was probably drawn about 1,000 years ago, around 200 years before Toltec people are said to have arrived from the north in the valley that is now home to Mexico City.

But McCarthy also said modern tribal people, like the Mojave and the Quechan, along the lower Colorado River are part of an entirely different linguistic group than the Aztecs.

And the geographic expanse between the local desert and the Valley of Mexico, about 1,400 miles by air, has been traversed by countless people during the past millennium.

Varying accounts

The northern half of Mexico and southwestern United States are also home to many, many mountains, rivers, valleys and rock formations that could be matched up with Aztec art and history, he said.

"You can see whatever you want to see, like looking at clouds," McCarthy said.

Varying accounts place Aztlán in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah and also in northern Mexico.

Still others refer to Aztlán only in the mythical sense.

It is often described as a state of mind for Chicano people who embrace their indigenous backgrounds.

Ken Hedges, former curator and "rock art specialist" at San Diego's Museum of Man, said Figueroa's take on the region's petroglyphs and topography isn't supported by academic research.

"He has got this interpretation of the landscape," Hedges said, describing research Figueroa has compiled into a presentation and a book. "They don't fit with what anthropologists and archeologists can find out in the area."

Academicians don't always appreciate the legitimacy of indigenous oral history and artistic accounts, say Figueroa's backers.

Matt Leivas Sr., a Chemehuevi man who is working to revive the Salt Songs of his ancestors, said he thinks Figueroa's work has merit.

Leivas said accepting Figueroa's connections requires patience and an open-minded stance to indigenous philosophy.

"It seems a little bit far-fetched at times," Leivas said. "But if you really sit down and put it together, it does begin to make sense."

'Sacred' landscape

Larry and Donna Charpied, jojoba growers and environmental activists in Desert Center, were with Figueroa when he first identified the Joshua Tree park drawings.

The couple, who are leading a fight against a proposed dump for Los Angeles trash, say the connection is one more reason to protect a landscape they believe is sacred.

Larry Charpied said he thinks the mysterious messages on the rocks provide needed insight into long-suppressed native philosophy.

"This is telling us the history of the human race so that future generations like us can see and learn from it," Charpied said.

Sam Cobb, a project coordinator for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was moved enough by Figueroa's story to support funding to protect some of the sites.

Cobb, who works in Coachella, said he is working on a memorandum of understanding with the Yuma, Ariz., office of the Bureau of Land Management to find funds.

Cobb said the first level of funding would be used to better protect giant intaglios near Blythe from destruction by off-roaders and others.

"We just like the nature of it," said Cobb. "It promotes community. It is more than just you and me."

There for the viewing

Cobb said if the funding ever comes through, it would be the first community development project of its kind that he's been involved with.

"They are there for the whole country to see," he said of the intaglios, large figures depicting people and animals that are visible from the sky. "We are going to be encouraging people to go see them."

At the Joshua Tree park site, Figueroa, who has nine children and 26 grandchildren, jumps among references to his childhood in Blythe, stories from an activist background that includes everything from farmworker organizing to police beatings and fights against nuclear power, almost as quickly as he bounds among the rock drawings.

In addition to activist roots, Figueroa's ties to the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation date back six generations, and miners in his family have prospected in the desert since the La Paz gold rush in 1862.

He knows there are many people who doubt the connection he's drawn between the Southern California desert and the Aztec civilization.

But he's confident the connection is there.

"I have walked all of these mountains," Figueroa said. "I am not a cockroach from the library. I am a hillbilly. I lived in the caves."

Desert warriors fight to halt landfill

They oppose a planned landfill.

12:45 AM PDT on Friday, April 22, 2005

By JENNIFER BOWLES / The Press-Enterprise

Earth Day

When: Today

What it does: Marks the anniversary of the modern environmental movement.

First Earth Day: Occurred in 1970, proposed by then-Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson as a nationwide grass-roots demonstration on behalf of the environment to force the issue onto the national agenda.

In the remote reaches of Riverside County, environmental activists from across the Inland region gathered on a crisp, sunny morning inside a shed on an organic jojoba farm.

The seed press and oil bottles were hard to spot in what really served as a war room of sorts, stacked with boxes containing thousands of pages documenting a 17-year battle against a proposed landfill near Joshua Tree National Park.

Farmer Donna Charpied has argued against seasoned lawyers to save a little-seen patch of desert at the center of controversy. On this morning, she and her husband, Larry, have invited members of the Sierra Club and other groups to get a close look at what they've spent much of their time protecting all these years.

Donna Charpied told them how she sees it.

"Our county is at a precipice,"

A nearby abandoned mine, she said, is slated to become one of the nation's largest landfills, taking in garbage from Los Angeles County for at least the next 90 years in canyons within a few miles of the park's most-pristine wilderness.

Or, if her vision comes true, the mine's boarded-up town would evolve into an educational center where visiting students would learn about astronomy, geology and other natural resources in the area.

"And when the students leave, the land will still be the same -- or we can be LA's toilet," Charpied said. Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures decided in 1988 to turn its former iron ore pits into a landfill capable of taking in 20,000 tons of garbage a day by train. Since then, the company and its subsidiary, Mine Reclamation Corp., have received all the necessary federal, state and county permits.

Los Angeles County agreed to buy the landfill for $41 million nearly five years ago but won't take ownership until lawsuits filed by Charpied and others are resolved.

"We don't want to turn over any money until we know that's certain," said Don Nellor, an assistant head at the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County. The site's fate will be known soon enough. U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin said he will issue rulings before he moves from Riverside this fall.

Desert Protectors

Donna and Larry Charpied, who live in a trailer on their 10-acre farm, have become the eyes and ears of a scrub-covered valley between Indio and Blythe, hugged by mountains that glimmer with waterfalls after a good rain.

When not tending to their jojoba bushes, the Charpieds drive along back roads looking for environmental hazards and hike into the rugged canyons where the landfill would be built. In courtroom battles, Donna has pleaded her own case and won key arguments against seasoned lawyers.

"If it weren't for Donna, the dump would already be there," said Penny Newman, executive director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice in Glen Avon.

Amanda Lucidon / The
Press-Enterprise

"This is one of the cleanest parts in Riverside County and it needs to be defended," says Donna Charpied, of Desert Center, a long-time opponent of a proposed landfill.

"It has been her perseverance, her stubbornness and her commitment to her community despite all odds that has kept the battle going," Newman said.

The Charpieds believe the trash from the landfill will lure ravens and other predators of the threatened desert tortoise that are struggling to survive in the valley, and change the makeup of the national park by having trash-hauling trains pass within hearing distance of its southern border.

Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson said precautionary measures will prevent environmental damage. While he disagrees with the Charpieds, he said he respects the couple for sticking to their convictions.

"Both of the Charpieds are truly committed to the cause, they believe in what they're doing," Wilson said. Riverside County last approved the dump in 1997. Once operating, the county will get tipping fees up to $5 for each ton of garbage hauled across the county line and $1 per ton to buy wildlife habitat as part of the Coachella Valley's growth plan, Wilson said.

Becoming Active

Charpied, who grew up in Pittsburgh, got her first taste of activism as a teen-ager by pressing for pollution controls at steel mills. She spent four days in jail in 1979 after protesting a nuclear power plant on California's central coast.

She and her husband moved to Riverside County to learn about jojoba, which grows wild in the desert, so they could begin their farm. It didn't take long for them to get involved in the landfill debate.

"This is one of the cleanest parts in Riverside County and it needs to be defended," Charpied said. "Just as a human being I can't sit back and not do anything."

Charpied remembers when the first Earth Day, which is today, occurred in 1970 to galvanize a national environmental movement.

"I thought to myself 'there is something incredibly wrong here to set aside a day to celebrate the Earth and protect her,' " Charpied said. With humor and passion these days, she and her husband conduct tours of the landfill area, calling them "The Great Terrain Robbery Tour" and "The Trash Train to Disaster."

During an outing last month, they drove other activists by the railroad line that will haul the trash, revealing tracks so badly twisted they look more like a roller coaster. Charpied showed them how the trains will pass close to a school, and how tortoises threatened with extinction can get stuck on the tracks.

They drove by culverts below the tracks that dropped 20 feet on one side, giving any tortoise that happens to wonder in a potentially deadly fall.

"I didn't realize it was that bad," said Terry Wold, a Sierra Club member in Riverside, after the tour.

Nellor, of Los Angeles County, said the railway will be improved and drainage protections installed once and if the project gets underway.

Charpied hopes she can sell the idea of turning the abandoned town into an academic facility. Architects in Redlands are drawing blueprints, she said.

"To develop that into a world-class educational center would be a big plus for us," Charpied said, noting that jobs would be created for residents who recently lost their main employer, a private prison.

Despite what she said are financial offers to give up the landfill fight, Charpied said it won't happen.

But once it's over, all those boxed-up papers in her shed will be put to good use.

"I'll put them all in an industrial shredder and use it for packing orders," she said, adding her infectious laugh.

Reach Jennifer Bowles at 951-368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com

Photos by
H. Gross/NPCA & NPS

By Steve Brown
Photos by H. Gross/NPCA & NPS

It’s been 10 years since Senator Diane Feinstein saw the first piece of legislation she penned passed by Congress after being kept in committees for seven years. Senator Alan Cranston had created an earlier version of a bill that became the foundation for Feinstein’s California Desert Protection Act, passed On October 31, 1994.
The act still stands as a major landmark in attempts at preserving the stunning vistas and diverse life of the state’s deserts. It changed Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments to national parks, created the Mojave National Preserve and established numerous federal wilderness areas. The act protects 6.37 million acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
As celebrations take place across the desert marking the 10th year anniversary of the passage of the act, how do those involved in conservation efforts view the act 10 years down the road? Has it been a panacea that assures the continued survival of California’s desert lands and the threatened and endangered plants and animals dependent upon its fragile ecosystem? Or has the act’s weaknesses and omissions become more obvious — and serious?
If such a thing is possible, it may be that the act, a bold and ambitious move to protect our desert lands, has been an unqualified qualified success that has engendered additional victories for conservation beyond what was foreseeable a decade ago.
“It has done many amazing things,” said George Barnes. Barnes is the Sierra Club’s chair of the club’s California/Nevada off-road vehicle task force and the Death Valley task force of the California/Nevada Desert Committee. “But it has a long way to go. There have been numerous individual success stories from our perspective, with the expansion of the National Park Service units clearly front and center.”
Barnes noted there are challenges that continue to rise, challenging the ongoing success of the act, including the severe under-funding of the management agencies overseeing the implementation of the act, the BLM and NPS, that hampers their ability to properly execute their mission under the act. The issue of a lack of funding for these agencies is one echoed by many of Barnes’ colleagues, and is a concern for those within them as well.

“At the level we think as professional managers we should be managing to, the business plan done in 2001 points out we’re $2.6 million short, from an operating budget of $4 million to $6.2 million,” said Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent Curt Sauer. “We have the support of Congress, but it’s a balancing act and a matter of priorities… We’re Band-Aiding it together… We are holding this operation with 13 to 15 vacant positions… We could employ another 13 people here over and above the 13 positions that are vacant. Easily.”
Un-funded pay raises and other personnel costs along with Homeland Security costs stretch Joshua Tree’s operating budget thin. Leaving positions dark is a creative move that allows money that would have been used for salaries to cover these costs. It may provide a quick fix for now, but over the long run, national parks, and those who visit them, suffer.
“The California Desert Protection Act has been great for the desert parks, but we have to provide them with the funding needed to ensure national park staff can adequately manage them to ensure their resources remain unimpaired for future generations,” said Howard Gross, a field representative for the National Parks Conservation Association based in Joshua Tree. “Their budgets have remained flat since Fiscal Year 2001, but at the same time we’ve had inflation, cost of living increases and un-funded mandates. Their ability to do their jobs is quickly eroding.”
Still, Sauer is optimistic about the possibilities of what can be done at the park. With about a quarter of a million acres added to the park through the act, and 25 percent more visitors since the transition from national monument to national park, he sees reasons to be positive. He said he remains convinced that if the park had the funds to implement its programs properly, many local residents would jump at the chance to help work to restore Joshua Tree.
“But what I see as the most impactive to Joshua Tree National Park is the local citizens’ pride of ownership,” Sauer noted. “The people that live here still refer to Joshua Tree as “the monument,” but are well aware that it’s a national park that deserves to be preserved. I think our four-day celebration (for the park’s 10th anniversary) demonstrates how wide the support is – chambers of commerce, city governments, groups from the innkeepers to other businesses are all actively planning these celebratory events. The other thing that really impresses me are the people who work at this park. They are committed. I’ve been trying to get them to slow down and celebrate a little bit, but they want to get on to the next project.”
Elden Hughes, the chair of the Sierra Club’s California/Nevada Desert Committee, was the voice of the California Desert Protection Act during and after its battle to become law. Hughes intimately knows the lands preserved by the act. He also knows the stunning successes of the act, and its shortcomings.
“It certainly is only partially implemented,” Hughes said of the act. “Yes, they’ve done Herculean efforts marking the boundaries of the wilderness areas, but there is still trespassing. The BLM are experts on making routes [into wilderness areas] disappear, which helps people stay on the intended route. The main problem has been funding for the BLM and NPS. Under neither the Clinton or Bush administrations have they been adequately funded, though it has been a lot worse lately. But that’s the main problem: funding, so the laws can be implemented and enforced. It’s no manner of failure, it’s just not what it could be.”
The fact that the act even passed in Congress is “amazing,” according to Hughes. And the implementation of it, however imperfect, has had some very positive side effects, he noted.
“The railroads got the point where they wanted to sell their lands in the desert,” Hughes explained. “In Arizona, they sold to developers who cut them up into 40-acre ranchos, almost certainly wiping out wildlife and closing the dirt roads we love. In California, because of the act, The Wildlands Conservancy, over about three years, purchased about 650,000 acres [for preservation]. It creates a wildlife corridor from Joshua Tree to Death Valley 100 miles wide. This is amazing. The biggest success of the act is trying to keep the desert we all love in the form we all love.”
Hughes added there were items left out of the legislation that became the act. Potential wilderness areas were omitted because of the possible expansion of Fort Irwin. That expansion has been resolved since, and Hughes said those wilderness areas should now move forward. Other areas have also had issues preventing them from becoming wilderness a decade ago resolved, leaving them candidates for wilderness designation now.
“It’s failed to be fully implemented, but it will happen,” Hughes said. “I’m not disappointed.”
As for implementation of the act?
“That’s ongoing,” he explained. “Should we be celebrating? You bet.”

What’s left out?
On the southern border of Joshua Tree National Park stands the scarred hills that are reminders of the Kaiser iron mining operation at Eagle Mountain. The lands surrounding the mine are the site of an enormous planned landfill that could accept up to 20,000 tons daily of Los Angeles County and local garbage by rail and truck, for up to 117 years. The potential for a variety of serious environmental problems stemming from the Eagle Mountain dump, from groundwater, air, light and noise pollution, to desert tortoise predation by an increase of ravens caused by plentiful pickings at the dump, have been a cause worth fighting for by Donna and Larry Charpied, organic jojoba growers who live nearby. They have fought the dump for 17 years.
“The California Desert Protection Act really needed to take it a step further,” Donna Charpied observed. “It really should have included that 29,000 acres of land that was originally part of the [Joshua Tree National] Monument.”
Charpied noted that opposition to the dump that has prevented it from becoming operational has prevented 85,000 tons of air pollution over the 17-year span, along with 21 gallons of “garbage juice” per acre per day that would likely leak through flaws in the dump’s lining materials.
The Charpieds, who have often used their own funds to carry on the battle to return the mining lands to the national park, as a pair of 1950s-era laws indicate should happen after the conclusion of mining activity, are now assisted in their “Give It Back” campaign by grants from the Ben & Jerry Foundation, Common Cause and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. The National Parks Conservation Association is also battling to stop the dump.
Whether the dump ever becomes operational remains up in the air. The Charpieds have met a number of times with Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer’s offices and are optimistic the land in question may revert, rightfully and legally so, they say, back to the national park for preservation.

What was left undone
If there is one example of what was left undone after the passage of the California Desert Protection Act, it is the endangered desert tortoise. The tortoise, the official state reptile, has been declining throughout the past decade, with no real sign of turnaround.
“At best it [the CDPA] has had a neutral impact on the tortoise,” said Mike Connor, executive director of the Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee. “On the good side, it’s protected some habitat, but only a small amount. Under the CDPA, a lot of areas were designated as wilderness, but unfortunately that wilderness tends to be mountain tops — not good tortoise habitat.”
Tortoises prefer to live in the broad desert valleys, which puts them in direct competition with people who find them attractive. Housing, off-road vehicle recreation and highways all take their toll on the tortoise.
Connor supports the construction of tortoise fencing along the roadways that cross the Mojave National Preserve and serve as the back roads for Californians on their way to Las Vegas. The 18-inch fencing would prevent unnecessary tortoise deaths, as well as cutting back on general highway road kill. This in itself has a beneficial effect on the tortoise population as less road kill provides less food for the raven population. Ravens prey on the tortoise young. Less of them means less tortoise predation.
Off-road vehicle users are also fighting for access to the same lands the tortoise calls home. Some governmental ecological plans to help the tortoise recover have been waiting for implementation for years, while the tortoise continues to vanish.
“Heavy vehicle use means no tortoises,” Connor explained. “One problem is tortoises tend to be attracted to roads. You get [water]runoff on the side of the road so there are weeds growing there. The tortoises know about that and come to the road. When we propose reducing route density or closing routes, we get the off-road vehicle people up in arms. The auto industry is pretty big. The tortoise has its lobby, but it’s pretty limited.
“If you have a species listed under the Endangered Species Act, the whole point of listing it is not to have scientists stand there and watch as it goes extinct, but to work to recover it so you can take it off the list,” he added. “That’s what we want — the species to recover. It’s not going to recover unless we take some of these basic steps.”

The science of it
Desert ecologist Daniel Patterson works for the Center for Biological Diversity, a science and law-based environmental organization known for its aggressive attempts to get government agencies to enforce conservation-oriented laws. Patterson said he sees the main problem with implementation of the act as poor management and lack of funds to properly fulfill its mission.
“The biggest challenge to me is just poor on-the-ground management, largely from the BLM,” Patterson explained. “They have a lack of adequate staffing and funding dedicated toward natural resource protection projects and an overemphasis on recreation like off-road vehicles that are very damaging and resource intensive to try to manage. The BLM could really use a slap in the face wake-up call to pay attention that it [the desert] is a conservation area. The California desert was designated by Congress as a conservation area in 1976 — long before the CDPA ever passed. The BLM still, I don’t think, has come close to living up to that conservation mandate.”
Patterson ranks poorly managed off-road vehicle use and urban sprawl as two of the biggest threats to the desert’s ecological well-being.
“You’ve got 20 million people in Southern California living very close to these conservation lands in the California desert, and you can’t ignore Las Vegas with millions of people living there,” he noted. “You’ve got a fragile landscape that is in high demand and should be accessible to the public, but accessible doesn’t mean you can drive on every square inch of it.”
The plight of the tortoise and other species also worries Patterson.
“The desert tortoise is really in a steep, steep decline,” he explained. “There are big parts now of the California desert where the tortoise has largely been extirpated and lost in huge areas of its range… Especially in the Coachella Valley area, the flat-tailed horned lizard still has not been granted protection under the Endangered Species Act despite its severe decline in many areas.”
So, why hasn’t the lizard been listed under the ESA?
“It’s just pure blatant politics,” Patterson said. “The Secretary of the Interior doesn’t want to list any species under the ESA because when they get listed that’s when the actually get protected. Absent a listing, endangered species, all they get is lip service… It’s a real problem, so we end up having to go to court and getting court orders for them to do their job… We’ve got these government-sponsored criminals really, who are consistently violating the law. It’s the same people doing it over and over again… We need to find a way to hold these bureaucrats responsible.”
With all the threats to the desert remaining, Patterson said he remains hopeful.
“I have to be,” he noted. “If I didn’t feel like we’d have a chance of protecting the ecosystems of the Southwest deserts or recovering the desert tortoise, I’d be wasting my time. It’s a hard job to have some days… Long term, the desert’s going to be there. There are always going to be pretty big areas of the desert that are undevelopable. Whether or not we’ve got the same web of life, the same wildlife out there, that’s the real question.
“The California Desert Protection Act? I’d call it a big success. The main people pushing the bill and got it made into law didn’t think the act was going to be the be-all, end-all of efforts to protect the California desert. I don’t think they think that now.
“It has very much helped to change the landscape socially and politically in the California desert, but 10 years is really not a lot of time to see the big shifts the CDPA has helped to start make happen,” Patterson concluded. “I think the next 10 years could even say more about what the real effect of the act has been.”