Only 2 lambs were seen, with 9 adult ewes and 12 rams. Forty burros were also observed during the survey. Incidentally, on September 15 one group of bighorn (one adult female and three rams) were seen on the south side of Redlands Canyon at 4,000 ft. This is the site of the future Briggs Project open pit leach mine reported on several times in the SAGE.
edited by Ron Jones
| The Bureau of Land Management issued a citation to Interscope Communications, Inc., for violating the provisions of a public lands filming permit in the Desert's Saline Valley. The production company dropped an automobile by parachute from a helicopter which mistakenly landed within the Inyo Mountains wilderness study area. The car was removed by helicopter and a BLM Ranger verified that there was no resource damage or impairment to the wilderness study area. Interscope dropped another car within the boundaries of the drop area, but failed to drain anti-freeze from the vehicle, as stipulated in the provisions of the film permit. The company filmed approximately 10 drops for scenes in an upcoming movie called Terminal Velocity. The scenes films by the production company were of a car falling from an airplane in mid-flight. The production company will appear before a federal magistrate court with a maximum fine of $100,000 and one-year in jail. |
| By Gidget Fuentes Time staff writer YUMA, Ariz. - Up in the sky, Marine aviators hone their dogfighting and aerial assault skills. Down on the ground, however, a wildlife refuge established in 1939 plays host to two endangered species: the Sonoran pronghorn antelope and the lesser long-nosed bat. In the middle is a fight over what amounts to 35 percent of the airspace used to train Marine aviators by the Corps' version of the Navy's "Top Gun" flight school. "Our position is that we fly in the airspace above it. That's not part of the range," said Col. Bill Hansen, air station commander. But environmentalists don't agree. And new legislation now pending in Congress would ban the Corps from flying over the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and from using the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range, which includes part of the refuge. The range, which lies west of Luke Air Force Base, was established in 1941. Air training there is already restricted to no less than 1,500 feet altitude under an agreement between the two military services and the agency, except for corridors that permit flights down to an altitude of 100 feet during the twice-annual Weapons and Tactics instructor course. Aviators fly a maximum of about 16 hours during each WTI course, Hansen said. in the current course, helicopters are restricted to 50 feet minimum altitude and fixed-wing aircraft to 200 feet, he said. |
But those voluntary
limits are not enough for several environmental groups. which are now asking
for a complete ban on flights. They contend that such flights are
"incompatible" with a refuge and "may disturb, harass, injure or kill" the
refuge's wildlife, according to a suit filed by the National Audubon Society
and four other groups in October 1992 in U.S. District Court in Seattle. The
suit includes the 860,000-acre Cabeza Prieta refuge along with several other
sites they contend are threatened by uses that conflict with the purpose of a
refuge, such as cattle grazing. Hansen said Marine Corps studies have shown there is no noticeable negative impact on wildlife in the refuge. "We believe we protect Cabreza Prieta more than we endanger [it]," he said. No ordnance is dropped at the range and there is no training on the ground, he said. Marine officials said pilots receive realistic training that cannot be matched elsewhere. "We won the Gulf war on that range," said Hansen. an A-6 and C-12 pilot, referring to the fixed-wing squadrons that conducted training before heading to the gulf region. Losing the range would be a 's1gni~ieant blow" to Marine aviator training, said Col. Bruce Knutson, commander of the Marine Aviation Training Squad. ron 1 based here. "You could not ... do a ~VTI without the ranges. When you think of the training that we do in Marine aviation, there's no way to do it without the ranges. Period." |
