singing sand dunes
in California, near the town of Kelso. The dunes turned out to be more moaners
than singers: As I traversed their flanks, I stimulated a sound like that of a
ship straining its moorings-the groan of shifting air spaces among the
particles of sand. The dunes were filled with purple wildflowers, black
magnetite, lizard tracks, and cow manure (grazing isn't restricted there). I
began to contemplate eternity in the sands and sun-drenched quiet, but was
distracted by an Air Force bomber that came gliding down the valley like an
airborne alligator.
I returned to the car and drove through Kelso-a tiny
community whose circa-1923 railroad depot has been suggested as a visitors'
center for the proposed Mojave National Park-and into the Providence Mountains,
described by a naturalist friend as a biotic wonderland, "a factory of life." I
turned off the main road as sunset approached, and followed a dirt track that
led through a labyrinth of scrub before petering out altogether. I was
considering conquering nature through the magic of four-wheel drive when I
glimpsed a road sign and realized I'd driven in a circle-the main road was
about 90 feet away. I set up camp, took a hike, and the next morning made short
work of the scrub before reaching the road and going on my way. My tracks
weren't the first ones in the area nor would they be the last-90 feet is less
than a third of the BLM's legal I distance for off-road camping.
The
BLM is the federal government's largest land manager, controlling some 60
percent of the nation's public territory. Until recently, however, nobody
besides miners and ranchers has been much interested in the land that the BLM
manages. The agency has historically been the well-known pet of these
interests, and has customarily conceded almost anything requested of it. The
Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which broadened the BLM's
environmental mission and gave it power (in the form of rangers) to enforce the
law, was intended to change all that. But Reagan and Watt gutted the agency's
budget within one year of gaining office in 1980, leaving 140 people, for
example, to oversee the California desert lands that had previously been
managed by a staff of 450. In 1985, Congress gave the BLM only one fourth of
the funds it had requested to administer its Desert Plan. There are now 22 BLM
rangers patrolling 19,000 square miles of the California desert - roughly one
for every half-million acres the agency oversees.
Philippe Cohen had told me
that the local BLM people "care a lot about the East Mojave. The agency's
history of resource management is pretty bleak, but that's starting to change.
Because of the park proposal, for example, they're hiring more rangers for this
area. It's one of the few places the BLM has that somebody else wants-and now
that environmentalists and the public are recognizing it. |
I think the BLM sees
the area as a place to vindicate itself."
After my night in the Providence
Mountains, I drove to Needles, the town on the Arizona border from which the
BLM oversees the East Mojave National Scenic Area. There I met the district's
chief ranger. Blaine Heald, who took me on his rounds. Heald was a slight, fit
guy with sandy hair, and had a bumper sticker on his Dodge Ram Charger that
read: CLEAN UP YOUR ACT OR GET OUT OF THE DESERT. Like most of Needles's
citizens, he was opposed to the Cranston bill. "But I don't agree with Needles
people's reasons for opposing it," Heald said, driving west on I-40. "They're
strictly for use. They don't think regulation is necessary because they don't
think anything's wrong. But they don't see the changes that are taking place.
Three or four years ago our campgrounds weren't full even on Easter."
We
left the highway and headed north into the desert, lurching along the old
Mojave Road, an ancient Indian trail that served as a major emigration corridor
for settlers in the 18O0s. Army outposts along this route were situated one
day's travel apart. and before long we reached the remains of Fort Piute,
beside beautiful, perennial Piute Creek. Next to the stream were Indian
petroglyphs. some of which had been defaced (as have about one third of those
known to exist in the California desert). Heald said that the BLM had removed
non-native tamarisk trees from the creek, increasing its water flow. What he
didn't tell me was that the spring feeding the creek was endangered by a
proposed gold mine 12 miles to the northwest-a prospect that the BLM was on the
verge of approving without an environmental-impact report, despite the fact
that the mine would create a pit 2,200 feet across and 600 feet deep. Cyanide
has recently stimulated a new gold rush in the West, where the poison is used
to leach the gold from heaps of ore. Unfortunately, such mines serve as a
magnet for migrating birds, which like to bathe and preen in the pools and
sprinklers-in August of 1986. 900 ducks, pelicans, and great horned owls were
killed at the ponds of a cyanide mine in central Nevada.
We visited one such
operation when a passing motorist told Heald that a miner had just been rude.
Heald wasted no time getting to Rattlesnake Mine, which lay in the middle of a
flat tract of desert. Past the pits, hoses, and excavated banks, we saw a woman
asleep beside a house trailer. Nearby, a bearded, middle-aged man stood next to
a pickup with Minnesota plates. Heald got out to talk with the man, who
admitted he'd kicked the tourists out. Heald informed him that it was public
land, that the people had had a right to be there.
"This isnt public land."
the miner protested.
"It isn't?" said Heald. "Who owns it?"
The man
shrugged. "George." he said. |
Heald shook his head
with dismay. "No," he said. "It belongs to the people of the United States. You
have a right to take the minerals out-that's all. If they're messing with your
operations or equipment, you can tell them not to. But they can use the roads
here. If they want to fall in a cyanide pit, that's their business."
As we
drove away. Heald said: "There's nothing that irks me like when they say they
own it. One of my favorite pastimes is pulling out NO TRESPASSING signs. The
miners here dislike and distrust us just as much as the Sierra Club does. We'd
all be hypocrites if we condemned mining, but right now there's no balance. We
try, but we cannot legally weigh scenic value over the mining interest.
"It
isn't the BLM that allows mining," he insisted. "Congress allows mining.
Personally, I think it would do more good to change the mining laws than to
establish a national park."
Heald referred to the infamous Mining Law of
1872-still the law of the land-which gives anyone who files a claim and drives
four stakes into the ground the right to remove minerals from it. The East
Mojave has been intensively prospected for more than a century, and few
resources for commercial development are thought to remain. But the area still
contains some 10,000 claims, all of which can be legally mined, provided the
work doesn't harm endangered species or cause "undue or unnecessary
degradation."
Short of a change in this law. any region's best defense is to
be designated a national park. Prospecting has been prohibited in national
parks since 1976.
Heald went on to patrol the scenic areas two major
campgrounds. Hole-in-the-Wall, built by the BLM beside a spectacular volcanic
mesa (formerly a first-rate birding area), was filling up fast. Mid Hills, nine
miles away, contained no vacant sites, despite having a broken well. (Heald
explained that the BLM had to solicit bids for the repair and contract the job
out-a typically time-consuming tangle of red tape. The crowds at both
campgrounds dispelled the notion that the East Mojave has yet to be discovered.
Farther north, Heald looked through his binoculars at the brands on some
cattle, determining that their owner was grazing more cows than he was allowed
to on BLM land. Heald seemed delighted to file this particular trespass notice,
and mentioned in passing that the rancher, a Cima cowman named Bob Ausmuss, had
once tried to build a waterline through an Indian cultural site.
The next
day I visited Ausmuss at his general store, which constitutes the entire town
of Cima. He was a gaunt, articulate man of 61 wearing a sweatshirt and a
baseball cap.
"You know how many cows the BLM allows me on that 640 acres?"
Ausmuss asked when I told him about the citation. |