The California desert, so vast and so close to home, is easy to take for granted. Environmental organizations around the state are concerned that by the time we stop taking the desert for granted, it will be too late.
As a result of that concern, Senator Alan Cranston has introduced the California Desert Protection Bill, something the Sierra Club is calling the "most comprehensive and important piece of legislation affecting California to be introduced this century."
That's saying a lot, but it is said out of concern - concern that urbanization of desert lands is proceeding at a rate never before thought possible, and concern that drivers of off-road vehicles are driving over delicate ecosystems with abandon.
The Cranston bill would establish the East Mojave National Scenic Area as a 1.1-million acre Mojave National Park. It would also expand and redesignate the Death Valley and Joshua Tree National monuments as national parks. And it would designate much of the land owned by the Bureau of Land Management as wilderness area.
The wilderness designation would not halt human activity in the areas. The boundaries exclude existing mining operations and areas with known mineral deposits. Also excluded are existing, heavily used off-road vehicle areas and popular sites used by rockhounds. Hunting is permitted in wilderness areas.
Through the years, the California desert has survived intact. Its climate kept humans away, and the perception developed that this was a vast wasteland. Now that humans have discovered that's not true, and that the desert's robustly magnificent lands are worth exploring, it is also time for us to act to protect the desert against environmental abuses.
