Underground and Aboveground Storage Tanks - includes inventorying underground tanks, removing, repairing, or replacing leaking tanks and remediating sites.
Environmental Public Involvement - includes informing and involving the public in environmental decision-making by providing information and involving the public through workshops, presentations, community interviews and public meetings.
Environmental Research and Development - China Lake scientists are researching new technologies that minimize the use of hazardous materials and that are innovative technologies to more effectively cleanup hazardous waste sites.
Cultural Resources - Station lends include Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons, listed on the Register of National Historic Landmarks. These sites include the largest and most spectacular display of petroglyphs in the country. Tours are conducted on-Station in cooperation with the Maturango Museum located in Ridgecrest.
Natural Resource Management - Includes working on wildlife, vegetation and grazing management, including our cooperative work with the Bureau of Land Management on the Wild Horse and Burro Program. Since 1981, over 10,000 wild horses and burros have been rounded up from Station lands and put up for public adoption through the BLM's adoption program.
Endangered Species Management - There are four endangered or threatened wildlife species on-Station, including the federally-endangered Mojave tui chub, the federally-threatened Desert Tortoise and Inyo Brown Towhee, and the state-threatened Mojave Ground Squirrel. This year, we developed and began to implement a Station-wide Desert Tortoise Management Plan which was reviewed and approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The environmental work at the Station is carried out in close coordination with environmental regulatory agencies, such as the state and county departments of environmental health, water quality control boards, air pollution control districts and fish and wildlife agencies. The work is also coordinated closely with adjoining land managers, such as the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, the Army at Ft. Irwin National Training Center and the Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base.
To continue conducting our military mission effectively while acting as a responsible manager for our desert environment is an ongoing challenge that NAWS China Lake is working to meet. Although we've accomplished a lot these past several years to improve the environmental quality at China Lake, there is still much more work to do. We plan to continue in the course we've set to keep complying with environmental regulations, remediating and cleaning up past waste sites, preventing pollution and conserving our resources.
This article overviews the many functions and activities of the environmental program at China Lake. Each function could be a story in itself, as is typical of the environmental work currently underway at many military installations. For more information about any aspect of the environmental program at China Lake, please feel free to contact the Public Affairs Office, Environmental Public Involvement, Code C08032, Naval Air Weapons Station, 1 Administration Circle, China Lake, CA. 93555-6001, or call (619) 939-3511 or 927-1523.
| Debbie told me there were between 10-40 Bighorns on the So. Range & Eagle Crags & 10-20 in the Argus. Tortoise populations ranged between 0-50/sq. mile in 370 transects totaling between 2000 & 4500 animals--Ed. | by Debbie Smith |  |