BLM
Failed
to Protect
Desert Life,
Report Says
By
MARK A. STEIN,
Times Staff Writer
Despite promises to do
so, the federal Bureau of Land Management has failed to devote enough money or
staff to protect Mojave Desert wildlife from humans, the General Accounting
Office said in a report to be made public today.
Congressional advocates of
a Mojave National Park immediately seized on the report to renew their effort
to give part of the Southern California desert to the preservationist National
Park Service, while at the same time locking up in wilderness preserves much of
what the BLM would keep.
"This report bears witness to the BLM's failure and
to the urgent need for the Mojave National Park," said Rep. Mel Levine (D Santa
Monica) after seeing an advance copy of the analysis sought by Sen. Alan
Cranston (D Calif.).
"The verdict is in." Levine said. "Now, the Longer
Congress delays, the more we lose."
Rebuttal to the report's conclusions
could not be obtained over the weekend from the BLM or from off-road vehicle
owners' groups or others who represent recreationists, miners and other desert
users. |
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Response Not
Included
A BLM response was not included in the report.
Nonetheless, the GAO was as detailed in its criticism as it was harsh.
The
report noted, for example. that eight years after the start of a comprehensive
planning program, nearly half of the BLM's wildlife preservation plans for the
heavily used desert are uncompleted and 35 of 57 required habitat management
plans remain to be developed.
Such plans are very important, the GAO said,
because the delicate, slow-to-heal desert Lands are within half a day's drive
of 15 million people who use the Mojave for recreation, housing, military |
maneuvers, mining and
telephone, gas and electrical transmission lines.
Even when plans have been
completed, the GAO added, the recommended actions are often not pursued.
A
review of 22 wildlife-related plans found that 46% of their "goals, objectives
and action items" had not been started as of March; another 21% were only
partially completed. Only one-third were finished.
Indeed, the congressional
watchdog agency observed that the BLM has done so little work that it does not
even have enough |
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useful information in
the form of wildlife inventory to determine precisely how poorly a job it has
done.
However, the GAO warned that what little information is available
indicates serious, perhaps irreversible, problems.
Desert tortoises, for
one, have fallen in number by 50% since 1979, and some biologists believe he
species will become extinct in some parts of the desert.
"BLM has,
nonetheless, opposed California's efforts to give [the tortoise] greater
protection by listing it as a threatened species under the state's own
endangered species program." the GAO report stated.
In a series of articles
on BLM mismanagement that The Times printed earlier this year, bureau officials
in California said they had attempted to delay the California listing in order
to give their own federal agency more time to come up with a
tortoise-protection plan. |
Despite such apparent
interest in wildlife, GAO alleged that BLM designated large sections of both
the Johnson and Stoddard valleys as "free play" areas for off-road vehicles,
even though scientists believe the designated areas are important tortoise
habitats.
Compounding all these problems is a severe and chronic lack of the
staffing and funding needed to do the job assigned by Congress.
For example.
the GAO said that in fiscal year 1988, which ended last September,
congressional economists estimated that BLM required $23 million to properly
manage the desert; President Reagan requested far less than that, so the BLM's
desert district wound up with about $13 million.
Of that amount, the GAO
study said, most was spent On trying to accommodate miners, motorcycle riders
and other so-called consumptive users, rather than on trying to repair past
damage, prevent new damage or plan for the long-term use of the area. |
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