The newsletter of the Desert Protective Council Spring 2014 Number 218

P.O. Box 3635, San Diego, CA 92163-1635 (619) 342-5524 http://www.protectdeserts.org

continued on page 2continued on page 2

Conservation Corner by Terry Weiner

Hello and Happy Spring, I am writing on the day after the Vernal Equi-

nox. Our California deserts have enjoyed less than average rainfall this past winter season. Between November 2013 and March 2014, average rainfall did bless a very narrow band of desert from Beatty, Nevada southward along the border of eastern California, but even in these areas the spring annual wildflower blooms were scant. In these dry years, I personally enjoy the suspenseful hunt for the rare blooming flowers. The lack of extravagant displays reduces the throngs of humans who descend upon the desert like a spring butterfly migration and I do enjoy the added peacefulness.

2014 has brought with it an ongo-ing onslaught of bad ideas for our public lands, and particularly for the desert. The plague of large-scale, remote solar and

A Glimpse into DPC History

In the winter of 1976, DPC President Norwood Hazard wrote the following let-ter to our readers. Although some of the threats to our desert lands have changed since then, new ones have taken their place. Norwood’s message and call to ac-tion still resonate today. We here at Desert Protective Council hope you enjoy the read and find inspiration anew.

What If Nature Gave A Spring And No Bird Sang? “Love me, Love my Home”….

A few years ago the great naturalist writer, Rachel Carson, chronicled the near disappearance of wildlife from extensive areas in the East and Midwest. Silent Spring told the story of the effects of artifi-cial products and by-products, in particu-lar deliberately introduced pesticides, upon the environment.

The Southwest is faced with a similar deterioration of quality of life through an equally effective killer: loss of habitat. Disarming this menace will require a process not unlike the Silent Spring Recovery Effort. The public must educate their representatives as to their will, collect data (enough is on hand in most cases), set priorities, and money put into action.

I remember experiencing Miss Car-son’s Spring. After living in the West and overseas for a number of years I returned one May to participate in an old tradition, the May bird count. This count is a semi-scientific, very competitive effort to count the species of birds within a given area. On the banks of the Mississippi, where vegeta-tion is (or was) lush, and where migrants in transit to near-polar regions pause to

refresh, birders will be in the field from midnight-to-midnight to top 200 species.

The count in question was a shocker! While there were still a great variety of birds to be seen, the numbers of individu-als had diminished dramatically. For some species the change had been in order of magnitude. While the reduction of robins from thousands, and tens of thousands, to mere hundreds could easily be ascribed to poisoning, vast changes had taken place in the availability of habitat.

Suburbia had sprawled. Its neat, grass-trimmed, hedge-shaped, planted-in-flow-ers backyards had replaced the wild rose, hedgerows, the thistle patch where the goldfinch gathered its nesting down, the ragged meadow where, on summer nights, the grasshopper sparrow buzzed to falling stars and wheeling constellations.

The old creek (here we’d call it a river, flowing twenty feet wide for sixty miles, year ‘round) had been replaced with an asphalt wasteland capable of supporting nothing more than lifeless cars. The fishless run-off channeled into a multi-million dollar tin sewer. The nesting ovenbird and lurking veery displaced too – displaced to nowhere!

Gone too were the marshes and the vernal pools, where snipe hunts really worked, all in the name of flood control (The Corps had done its job on The River, now the land must be saved!) If a man’s home is his castle, what is habitat to wildlife — it is survival!

The Southwest has changed — particu-larly if you stumble across photos showing trees, large ones, growing to the base of the San Jacinto Mountains. Or the fact that the trickle called the Santa Ana River once held the world record for number and size of trout to be taken from its waters. Note also that the now nearly useless (in terms of visual obser-vation) Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observato-ries were placed where they are because of the

Photo by James Morehouse

‘clear, stable, interference-free air’. Dinosaurs are not the only things to become extinct because of changing environments!

Evolution, adaptation, and mutation are Nature’s tools to meet or utilize change, but Nature’s time frame is built upon a clock where each minute is an Earth-Sun revolu-tion. Man, at least in limited areas, is exceed-ing the rate of natural processes. Therefore, Man has the responsibility of preserving the environmental health, the preservation of natural communities, habitats, populations, and species in some proportion to their natural occurrence.

From every quarter, the message remains the same. Preserve the habitat. A zoo may save the life of individual animals, even temporar-

ily halt a specie’s extinction, but zoos, as we presently perceive them, are not an answer. Habitat is the answer. Anyone who has the power to save habitat must do so. Anyone who wishes to save habitat must get the power to do so. We all must support those

who represent us, who work for us, in their efforts to care for the world by providing them with our knowledge. Let’s get to work!

Norwood Hazard – President of DPC

El Paisano, the newsletter of the Desert Protective Council2

wind project proposals continues unabated. In January, the Desert Protective Council submitted comments on the Draft En-vironmental Impact Statement for the proposed Soda Mountains Solar project, located both north and south of Interstate 15 near Baker in San Bernardino County CA. This project is within a mile and a half of our Mojave National Preserve. Despite the fact that Interstate 15 transects this part of the Mojave desert the vast stretch of the Mojave is uncluttered by human infrastruc-ture. The view of mountains and alluvial fans is spectacular in all directions. The Soda Mountains Project would not only ruin the view shed and desert dark skies in and around the Mojave Preserve, but also interfere with wildlife corridors and displace many species. In scraping thou-sands of acres of topsoil and habitat, the air

quality will be severely impaired with the inevitable airborne particles.

DPC attended a public hearing March 27th in Barstow, CA on a proposed large-scale solar development zone on public land in the Silurian Valley. The Silurian Valley is the extraordinarily beautiful, diverse, culturally rich desert valley along highway 127 extending north from In-terstate 15 at Baker CA to Shoshone, past Silver Dry Lake and the Eastern Boundary of Death Valley National Park. Silurian Valley is flanked by the Avawats Moun-tains to the west and spectacular views of Nevada’s Spring Mountains to the East. The economies of Shoshone, Tecopa and Death Valley Junction are dependent on tourists who visit this beautiful area from all over the world.

In 2012, DPC filed suit with Public Employees for Responsibility (PEER) against the CA Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) for letting off-road vehicles run wild in its largest off-road (ORV) park, in violation of state resource protection laws. If successful, our lawsuit would end ORV “open riding” beyond designated trails and require the park to implement strategies to protect the park’s rich biological and archaeological resources at the 85,000-acre Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area in Imperial County. Thus far, DPR has filed two demurrers in response to our complaint. We are awaiting the judge’s decision at our

Superior Court of Sacramento hearing on May 9th.

The State of California and the Bureau of Land Management continue to work on a draft EIR/EIS for the CA Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP). The Desert Protective Council will be engaging in the public process when the draft document is released in June. The premise of DPC’s renewable energy policy is that renewable energy should be produced on rooftops and on abandoned industrial land adjacent to cities where the energy is needed. Only after local distributed generation potential has been fully exploited, do we look to remote lands for renewable energy

Conservation Corner…

from page 1

A Glimpse into DPC History...

from page 1

Soda Mountains, one of the areas in the

proposed array solar field.

Example of ORV (off-road vehicle) damage

caused by “open-riding” beyond designated

trails, in violation of state resource

protection laws.

“ The desert is a place of wildness and possibility, of rock hunting and

tortoise sightings, of flash floods and years when rain never falls. But

perhaps more significantly, this is also a peopled place. It is a land

rife with stories of courage, despair, and resignation, where hopes are

fulfilled and dreams dissolved.”

– Ruth Nolan, DPC member, professor of literature, author,

editor of the desert anthology No Place for a Pilgrim.

http://www.protectdeserts.org 3

This spring, 90 fifth graders from schools in Imperial County got a

hands-on, overnight desert experience at Camp Borrego, Anza-Borrego Founda-tion’s environmental education program in the heart of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. After spending three days and two star-filled nights in the Park, many of the students weren’t ready to leave when the bus pulled up to take them home.

“The kids were literally holding onto our hands saying, “Don’t leave us,” said Camp Borrego Director, Angie Kemsley.

And who could blame them? During their time at camp the students uncovered and identified fossils in the Park’s paleon-tology lab, sat in the shade of a palm oasis, toasted marshmallows over a campfire, slept in yurts (strong tent-like structures that hold up well in the desert’s unpredict-able weather), looked for insects and frogs in a creek, contributed data to a citizen science project used by NASA, and visited a Native American village site. One lucky group of kids also had the magical experi-ence of seeing bighorn sheep during their hike into Borrego Palm Canyon.

Camp Borrego will host 270 fifth grad-ers in total this year and has reached more than 2,800 children throughout its ten years of operation. Students develop mean-ingful connections to our desert environ-ment during their camp experience — con-nections that we hope will foster a deeper appreciation for what they see in their own backyard. The ongoing support of funders like the Desert Protective Council has ensured that fifth graders from Imperial County continue to have the opportunity to explore and discover the wonders of the desert.

As we celebrate this decade marker, we remember fondly the camp’s humble begin-nings and excitedly look ahead to many more years of inspiring youth through desert education.

Anza-Borrego Foundation held a fundraising event on March 29, 2014, in Borrego Springs to secure funding to meet the future needs of Camp Borrego into the year 2025. Donations to support camp are welcomed anytime at connect.theabf.org/campdonation.

and in that case, we support the EPA’s Repowering American Lands Strategy, which would direct large-scale energy projects to the nation’s 12 million acres of contaminated lands, abandoned mines, etc, avoiding our public lands.

We are co-plaintiffs with Western Lands Project and Western Watersheds in a lawsuit against the Department of Interior for their Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, which would allow solar development on up to 22 million acres of desert public lands in the southwest. Janine Blaeloch, Founder and Director of Western Lands Project coined the phrase “Wrong from the Start”, which sums up why we are suing the DOI. Our hearing is scheduled for May19th in Federal Court in San Diego.

I have great progress to report on DPC’s exciting collaboration with Backcountry Pictures on the educational desert documentary film project. With the $25,000.00 seed money DPC raised last fall, filmmakers Sally Kaplan and David Vassar are in the thick of crafting the film “treatment” package to bring to foundations and big donors for production funding. Bruce Pavlik, author of The California Deserts, An Ecological Rediscovery and Jim Andre, Director of the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, the University of California, Natural Reserve System, have agreed to be the chief academic advisors on the project. Over the past two weeks, Sally and David have been on a scouting trip in the Mojave and

Sonoran desert in Nevada and California in preparation for bringing the film crews in, when the film package is complete and production funding is in.

–Terry Weinerterryweiner@sbcglobal.net

Camp Borrego Update: The Desert is Our ClassroomBy Briana Puzzo

Students from Ira Harbison Elementary

School in National City get a wonderful

surprise while hiking in Borrego Palm Canyon.

Students get drenched and invigorated at the

waterfall. Photo by Terry Weiner

El Paisano, the newsletter of the Desert Protective Council4

By Pat Flanagan

My headline for the top envionmental threat to the deserts of the Southwest is

INDUSTRIAL SOLAR. But what can I target in this short essay? Recently, while writing comments on the Soda Mountain Solar Project,1 I was struck by the short shrift the project analysis gave to the approximately 200 protected2 migratory bird species travel-ing the Pacific Flyway across our deserts.3 They fared the same in other solar projects I have studied. Maybe we don’t know enough about migratory birds – after all they travel so high up, and at night, and touch down in places we never heard of, and et cetera ...

But we do know, and know a lot. Since 1923 the North American Bird Banding Program4 has operated under the joint ad-ministration of the United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service. More than 64 million birds have been banded with sturdy leg bracelets or wing tags and 3.5 million plus have been recovered. The Salton Sea is a winner with over 40,000 birds banded and recovered elsewhere or banded elsewhere and recovered at the Salton Sea. The records are available as are scholarly analyses. The Redlands Institute Salton Sea Database Project constructed a map that visualizes the distribution of the recoveries and demonstrates that the Salton Sea is a critical stopover and haven for birds across North America.5

The interactive website eBird,6 a project of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithol-ogy, is a comprehensive citizen-based bird observation network with datasets spanning the globe. Any competent bird watcher is encouraged to submit data. Each location is a ‘hotspot’ supported by checklists. The visualizations of the hotspots is displayed on Google maps, while species records, includ-ing time of year and seasonal abundance, are in a spreadsheet format. The proposed Soda Mountain Solar straddles the I-15 between the Soda Mountain Wilderness Study Area (WSA) and the Mojave National Preserve (MNP) within which flows Zzyzx Spring, home of the endangered Mojave tui chub. It is 6 miles west of Baker, home of the tallest thermometer in the world, and the fueling station for speedy east-west interstate traffic and liesurely tourists going either north

to Death Valey or south to the MNP and Joshua Tree National Park.

My first ask of eBird was Zzyzx – a hotspot with 224 species of birds--some resident, some migratory--compiled from 384 reported checklists going back to 1982. Wow! Pulling back I noticed a cluster of three hotspot balloons just to the east. I was shocked (I admit it) to learn that Baker is also a hot stop for 176 species at the Water Treatment Plant (a series of ponds), 118 species at the pocket sized Chet Huffman Park with a lawn, trees, and play equipment, and 107 species behind the old Denny’s that

backs up to the Mojave River. The regional eBird hotspot map I attached to my com-ment letter looks like the Albequerque International Balloon Fiesta. There are 20 locations between Barstow and the Las Vegas area. There are another 18 between Amboy Crater and Ash Meadows NWR. Some think the desert is empty. It is full of recorded habitat pockets offering food, water, shelter, and nesting locations to traveling and resident birds.

You don’t have to be a birder to enjoy eBird. Just knowing all those birds are busy about their business makes your travels

The Pacific Flyway, Who Knew?

hotspot map I attached to my comment letter looks like the Albequerque International Balloon Fiesta. Their are 20 locations between Barstow and the Las Vegas area. There are another 18 between Amboy Crater and Ash Meadows NWR. Some think the desert is empty. It is full of recorded habitat pockets offering food, water, shelter, and nesting locations to traveling and residents birds.

You don’t have to be a birder to enjoy eBird. Just knowing all those birds are busy about their business makes your travels richer. Check it out – you might become addicted. You might take up bird watching. You might suggest to birder friends that they post their lists. If they already do, take them to dinner. And whenever possible bring this resource and website to the attention of state and federal agencies charged with protecting the safe passage and seasonal refuges of migratory birds. They don’t seem to know about it.

Table 1 eBird - Birding hotspots along the I-15 corridor from Barstow to Las Vegas area

# Location Species/Counts # Location Species/Counts 1 Barstow WTP 115/44 11 Baker- behind Denny’s 107/82 2 Barstow Ponds 124/108 12 MNP – Pachalka Spring 50/9 3 Daggett Evap. Ponds 117/197 13 MNP – Clark Mt. 109/43 4 Mineola Rd. 17/1 14 Primm Valley Golf Course 121/26 5 Newberry Springs vicinity 103/32 15 Boulder City 22/1 6 Fort Cady Riparian Reserve 53/7 16 Sunset Park 200/205 7 Afton Canyon 78/18 17 Flamingo Wash 75/6 8 Zzyzx 224/384 18 Wetlands Park 195/161 9 Baker WTP 176/230 19 Henderson Bird Viewing 251/551 10 Baker -Chet Huffman Park 118/155 20 Red Rock Canyon NC Area 148/173 Table 2 eBird - Birding hotspots along the 29 Palms to Shoshone Scenic Byway area # Location Species/Counts # Location Species/Counts

21 MNP – Kelso Dunes 9/13 30 Tecopa WTP 54/20 22 MNP – Kelso depot 115/86 31 Tecopa 83/12 23 Mojave National Preserve 176/82 32 Kingston Mountains 40/2 24 Salt Creek Hills 61/23 33 Smith Spring 24/18 25 DV – Saratoga Springs 67/13 34 Crystal Spring 100/91 26 China Ranch Date Farm 161/132 35 Beck Spring 63/24 27 Amargosa Canyon 121/18 36 Horse Thief Spring 139/135 28 Shoshone Village 141/99 37 Death Valley Junction 75/32 29 Shoshone – Tecopa Area 72/5 38 Ash Meadows NWR 185/372

http://www.protectdeserts.org 5

Trains of Discovery

A thoroughly revised and expanded successor to Alfred Runte’s Trains

of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks, the new edition now includes protected landscapes and historical sites east of the Mississippi made possible or influenced by railroads: the Hudson River Valley; Delaware Water Gap; Harpers Ferry; Indiana Dunes; Gettysburg; Steamtown; and Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia National Parks. Illustrated with paintings, posters, photo-graphs, and artifacts from major libraries and public archives, as well as America’s railroads and the author’s private collec-tion, this book is a sight to behold as well as a wonderful, nostalgic armchair read. Reviews

A splendidly produced book featuring beautiful cover art and rich period imagery promoting the railroads’ relationship with the environment. The book’s high production values, engaging and accessible narrative, and timeliness-considering the current national debate over increased energy costs-makes this fascinating study essential for environmental historians, students, and the general public. — Allies of the Earth

Alfred Runte brilliantly demonstrates why he is considered one of America’s preeminent environmental historians. Not only does National Parks sing with inspira-tion but it is the most trustworthy synthesis scholars have on the American preservation movement. Everybody should read this mar-velous study. Highly recommended! — Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilder-ness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America

Books by Alfred Runte

richer. Check it out – you might become addicted. You might take up bird watch-ing. You might suggest to birder friends that they post their lists. If they already do, take them to dinner. And whenever possible bring this resource and website to the attention of state and federal agencies charged with protecting the safe passage and seasonal refuges of migratory birds. They don’t seem to know about it.

Notes: 1http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/barstow/renewableenergy/soda_mountain.html

2All migratory birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 with Canada and, under later conventions, with Mexico, Japan, and Russia.

3http://birding.about.com/od/birdingbasics/ss/North-America-Migration-Flyways.htm 4http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/

5http://www.spatial.redlands.edu/salton/Downloads/Docs/SSBooklet_final.pdf

6www.ebird.org

The Pacific Flyway…

from page 4

National Parks

In this highly acclaimed history of the national parks, Alfred Runte takes

us from Yosemite and Yellowstone to Alaska on a journey of discovery of the American land. Also a prominent adviser and on-camera personality in the Ken Burns documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Runte reminds us what it means to have national parks in a country equally committed to economic achievement. In this fourth edition, there are many new photographs and some old favorites—including an eight-page color portfolio. The text has been revisited in its entirety and a majority of the chapters extensively revised. The book concludes with a hard-hitting assessment about the future, noting that civilization is the problem parks solve. If the park idea

America started is to survive, the world must continue to embrace it, too. Reviews

Having had a role in the beginnings of this important book, it is an honor to cel-ebrate its fourth edition. Al Runte reminds us how dramatically the valuation of na-tional parks has changed in little more than a century. Read it and you will learn why national parks can be considered a distinc-tively American idea, indeed a contribution of our nation to world civilization. — Roderick Frazier Nash, author of Wil-derness and the American Mind

Alfred Runte gives a comprehensive dis-cussion of America’s parks. National Parks is a choice and solidly recommended addition to natural history collections. — Midwest Book Review

El Paisano, the newsletter of the Desert Protective Council6

By Terry Weiner

In 1976, in recognition of the California desert’s special values, and the intensive

use pressures associated with its proximity to the population centers of southern Cali-fornia and the need for long-term compre-hensive planning for managing the area to meet growing public demands, while conserving its special places, Congress created the California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA).

In 1994, Congress further protected desert resources by enacting the California Desert Conservation Act (CDPA), the largest piece of conservation legislation passed to date for the continental U.S. The CDPA created 69 new BLM wilderness areas and greatly expanded desert park units.

Over the next several years Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt continued to work with the President, Congress, and local communities to designate additional areas through legislation or presidential procla-mation, with one important change. Instead of transferring these special places to anoth-er agency, the BLM was to retain steward-ship over the designated areas and be given the chance to demonstrate its capability to manage, in concert with the public, the stunning landscapes of the West.

The concept of a special BLM system of lands with a dominant conservation mission began to take shape, culminating in a Secretarial Order signed in 2000. In that Order, Secretary Babbitt created the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) within BLM to include lands, riv-ers, and trails designated by acts of Con-gress or presidential proclamations under authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act. These special landscapes were to be managed to

ensure their conservation and protection and if needed, restored for the long-term benefit of surrounding communities.

In 2009, Congress passed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 (Pub-lic Law 111-11) to permanently establish the NLCS “…to conserve, protect and restore nationally significant landscapes that have outstanding cultural, ecological, and sci-entific values for the benefit of current and future generations.”

In 2011 the Bureau of Land Management released a 15-Year Strategy to guide management efforts within National Con-servation Lands. A relatively short section of the act, one that did not receive much attention when initially enacted, states that the National Conservation Lands are to include “public lands within the CDCA administered by the Bureau of Land Management for conservation purposes”. Additions to the National Conservation Lands as well as their specific boundaries are normally determined by Congress or by Presidential Proclamation.

However, the language in P. L. 111-11 allows for the BLM and public to identify the specific lands to be managed for conservation purposes within CDCA and include them as part of the National Conservation Lands.

During the same time frame, the State of California decided to target the California deserts as a source of renewable energy to meet Governor Schwarzenegger’s Renew-able Energy Portfolio Standard of 33% renewable energy in CA by 2020. Thus was hatched the multi-agency process called the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP).

The Federal Omnibus Public Lands Bill of 2009 mandated that the BLM identify lands to be managed for conservation pur-posed with the CA Desert Conservation Area, but in DPC’s reading of the bill, it did not mandate that the BLM amend the CDCA plan within the context of the State planning process, but Secretary of the Interior Salazar decided that the BLM would participate in helping the state move forward with developing renewable energy projects in the desert by embarking upon a major CDCA plan amendment process.

California’s and the other engaged agen-cies’ interpretation (spin) of the DRECP is that it is a planning process that “will help provide effective protection and conserva-tion of desert ecosystems while allowing for the appropriate development of renewable energy projects.”

The Desert Protective Council strongly disagrees with at least two of the major assumptions upon which the DRECP is based: 1-that areas of our beautiful Califor-nia deserts must to be sacrificed in order to meet our CA renewable energy goals; 2- that we cannot meet our renewable energy goals without “doing it all”.

As with the Federal Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (The Solar PEIS), DPC believes that unless the Draft DRECP EIR/EIS includes an alterna-tive analyzing potential production of re-newable energy and distributed generation in the already-built cities where the energy is needed, the DRECP EIS will fail to meet the requirements of NEPA.

DPC believes state and federal agen-cies must heed the advice of the DRECP Independent Science Advisors: “Desert spe-cies and ecological communities are already severely stressed by human changes to the landscape, including urbanization, roads, transmission lines, invasive species, and dis-turbances by recreational, military, mining, and other activities. Additional stress from large-scale energy developments, in concert with a changing climate, portends further ecological degradation and the potential for species extinctions… “We…strongly advo-cate using “no regrets” strategies in the near term—such as siting developments in already disturbed areas—as more refined analyses become available to guide more difficult decisions.”

What DPC is doing and we need your help!

1)We are engaging with the CA Desert District BLM and the Desert Advisory Council to ensure that adequate public hearings with ample advance notice will be scheduled in cities and in the communities which would be impacted by large-scale renewable energy projects and that there are plenty of articles and Op-Ed pieces in major papers explaining this plan.

2)We will keep you posted via email blasts, social media and our web site when the Draft Plan is released, so that all DPC members will have ample notice to provide input during the public comment period, and encourage your desert-loving friends and relatives to do so, as well.

DRECP website: http://www.drecp.org/

Update On BLM’s National Conservation Land Strategy

Granite Mountains, Mojave National

Preserve. Photo by Terry Weiner

http://www.protectdeserts.org 7

By Tom Budlong

Owens Valley, CA. Under the shadow of Mt. Whitney and the Sierra Nevada

Mountains, from Owens Lake in the south and north to the little town of Indepen-dence (pop. 600, no stoplights), the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) owns 25,000 acres of undeveloped open-space high desert. DWP acquired it in the early 1900s to send water to Los Angeles. Now it wants to use these 40 square miles to send Inyo’s solar energy to Los Angeles.

With the support of the Inyo County (pop. 18,000) Board of Supervisors (BOS), Inyo’s Planning Department has classed Owens Valley as a Renewable Energy De-velopment Area. It’s an invitation to cover all 25,000 acres, most of Owens Valley, with solar panels.

Unsurprisingly, local support is feeble – no – hostile, to this industrialization. Letters to the Editor in the Inyo Register, the valley’s historic newspaper, are almost universally opposed. The Owens Valley Committee is campaigning to kill the idea, as is the Manzanar National Historic Site at the isolated WWII internment camp for over 10,000 Americans of Japanese de-scent. Manzanar wants visitors to feel the same isolation that the people experienced at the camp.

The BOS’s passivity is puzzling. A test example is a planned conversion (a draft EIR has been published), in perpetuity, of 1200 acres near Manzanar. Here, Inyo will incur costs, in perpetuity, of normal gov-ernment responsibilities associated with developed property. But DWP will

contribute no property, sales or use taxes. Instead DWP will up-front grant Inyo $4.5 million, and provide a $2 million loan for economic development.

Industrializing Owens Valley would wound the world-wide allure of these ir-replaceable open spaces, the basis of Inyo’s economy. Inyo’s citizens know this. At a March Planning Commission meeting, 97% of the speakers opposed the idea.

The BOS could refuse to cower to DWP’s ambition. Senator Feinstein would respect the supervisors. Popular support is tissue-paper thin – put the solar panels down in Los Angeles on all those bare rooftops, they say.

The new Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti, was elected partially to control DWP. Garcetti quickly replaced the Presi-dent of the DWP Commissioners with Mel Levine, an old politico who understands the environment. Inyo County citizens would applaud, support and respect him. Instead, the BOS trembles under DWP’s awesome power. The BOS is willing to roll over and lose Inyo’s world-renowned scenic resource. Can the BOS not lead opposition, given the overwhelming public distaste?

To add emphasis, solarizing Owens Val-ley is a mere warm-up. Under Inyo’s Re-newable Energy General Plan Amendment the Inyo County will invite development of 620,000 acres in places like Panamint Valley, Centennial Flat, Laws, Death Valley Junction, Deep Springs Valley and Fish Lake Valley.

The Board of Supervisors is showing some concern. On March 18, instead of the scheduled consideration of the Planning Department’s draft plan, it held a ‘work-shop’. In their meeting room in Indepen-dence, Inyo County, it listened to over 40 citizens speaking out, three minutes apiece, each applauded by the 100-plus that came in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. Each speaker told the Supervi-sors that rural Inyo would not sell its soul to the devil of solar industrialization. That it would not kill the goose that is the life-blood of Inyo County. That it knows only a tiny fraction – of those 620,000 acres – are appropriate. And that Los Angeles rooftops

could well supply, several times over, any power from Owens Valley.

The board listened in silence. Did it hear? Did it understand the risk to Inyo’s tourist economy? Did the Board under-

stand the repercussions of divesting the county of its invaluable, irreplaceable open space? Did it know that all three alterna-tives from their Planning Department included solarizing Owens Valley? We will find out on April 1, when the BOS will consider the Planning Department draft.

To play it safe, schedule your trip now to see a pastoral view from Mt. Whitney. And hope that Los Angeles will clothe its rooftops instead.

Me? I’m a YIMBY. “Yes– In My Back Yard”, solar on the roof on my home in Los Angeles.

View from Mt. Whitney in Jeopardy. Solar all over Inyo.

Owens Valley area targeted for solar

development, owned by City of Los Angeles,

Department of Water and Power. Source:

Feb 26, 2014 Inyo County Staff Report,

available at http://inyoplanning.org/

projects/REGPA.htm

Owens Valley.

Photo Courtesy of Basin & Range Watch

El Paisano, the newsletter of the Desert Protective Council8

The Crissal Thrasher is one of the most secretive and elusive of desert birds. A

gray-brown rather large, long tailed song-bird, with an extremely downward curved bill, Toxostoma Crissale is always a note-worthy sighting. Most desert birders have certainly seen one, but getting great looks, photos, and recordings of this year round resident can prove much more challenging.

I have had the pleasure of studying, video recording and searching for nests of Crissal Thrashers, among other songbirds in Shoshone and Tecopa, California during the breeding season for the past five years. During this time I’ve been able to learn many of their habits, behaviors, songs and

calls. They are mimics, and like the entire family of Thrashers including Mocking-birds and Catbirds, they imitate other birds’ songs and calls, as well as many other sounds. To really get a close look at a Cris-sal Thrasher, and certainly to find its nest, one must enter their dense, shady micro-habitat and be still, silent, and patient.

In Shoshone and Tecopa, the Crissal Thrasher clearly prefers thickets of Honey Mesquite, and Screwbean Mesquite, which appear impenetrable. The less determined birder can sometimes get lucky by quietly stalking them by ear during the mating season, when the male rises to a high perch for the “long song”. I have observed a male singing from such a perch for as long as twenty minutes. The singing begins in late December, and increases as breeding sea-son approaches. Only males sing. Females make a short two note call sounding like

“chewy chewy” or “dirty birdy”. I have found nests in Shoshone as early

as mid February. Both male and female share in building the large nest of stout sticks, placed strategically in the deepest, darkest, portion of a thicket. Close observa-tion revealed that only the female puts the final touches to the nest by lining it with soft grasses, or mosses. Crissal Thrasher is the only Thrasher to lay beautiful sky blue eggs. Usually there are two eggs, sometimes three. Both parents share in incubation, and the eggs hatch in about 14 days. Because of their secretive nature, and choice of habitat, little is known about the breeding behavior. The tiny hatchlings are reportedly fed by regurgitation for the first 4 days, (Wheelock 1903), then insects. They grow rapidly and in about twelve days will

leave the nest. The parents will care for the young after they fledge for several weeks.

Shoshone Wetlands has marked trails for birding, and over twelve pairs of Crissal Thrashers are year round residents here. Be patient, quiet, and a good listener, and you’ll be rewarded with a spectacular look, and maybe even an early morning serenade.

Bio: Since 2009, Leonard Warren has been a

field biologist, nest searching for songbirds from Point Blue Conservation Sciences, (formerly Point Reyes Bird Observatory) on the Original Songbird Project. See his video Amidst Crissal Thrashers on You Tube at Superbirdman88.

Crissal Thrasher

Celebrate DPC’s 60th Anniversary! The little-known story behind our origin:

I bet most of you do not know the origin of the Desert Protective Council. We share

part of our history on our History page of our DPC website, but here is the back-ground on how that first formative meeting came to take place on October 23, 1954.

In a column called The Pack Rats Nest in the autumn 1963 issue of DPC’s El Paisano, President Harry C. James told the story of starting an outdoor organization for boys in 1913-14, called the Trailfinders. Several times per year, Trailfinders sponsored a Conservation Forum to which many adult alumni and representatives of other outdoor organizations came to talk about “the many matters connected with preser-vation of our outdoor heritage.” It was at one of these meetings, at the Lolomi Lodge in the San Jacinto Mountains, California that folks suggested the need for some sort of conservation group, whose primary interest would be the desert regions of the Southwest.

A small committee of five took on the responsibility of qualifying this need, and to figure out how best to get such a group

By Len Warren

Adult Crissal Thrashers.

Photos by Greg Lavaty

http://www.protectdeserts.org 9

Desert Protective Council New and Renewal Membership Form

Enclosed is my remittance of $_______ New Membership Gift Membership Renewal

Name_________________________________________Address_______________________________________City, State, Zip________________________________Phone_________________________________________Email_________________________________________Please make checks payable to: DPCMail to P.O. Box 3635, San Diego, CA 92163-1635Dues and all donations are tax-deductible.

MEMBERSHIP LEVELS (please check) Life $300.00 one time Sustaining Membership $50.00 annually Regular Membership $25.00 annually Joint Membership $35.00 annually Senior/Student/Retired $15.00 annually Additional Gift of $_________

Desert Protective Council

Website: http://protectdeserts.org Twitter: @protectdeserts Facebook: facebook.com/ DesertProtectiveCouncilJanet Anderson, PresidentPauline Jimenez, SecretaryLarry Klaasen, TreasurerTerry Weiner

Imperial Projects & Conservation terryweiner@sbcglobal.net (619) 342-5524

Indy Quillen Communications Coordinator indy@dpcinc.org

For donations of $50.00 or more, we will send you a copy of California Desert Miracle by Frank Wheat.

started. The committee members included Randall Henderson of Palm Desert, with Harry James as Chairman. They invited people they knew were interested in deserts to meet together at a picnic supper. Randall Henderson selected a spot for the supper at the entrance to Deep Canyon “back of Palm Desert.” They had decided that if 20 or so showed up it would demonstrate sufficient interest to warrant an attempt to establish an organization. More than 100 people gathered around that historic campfire on October 23 1954. They were off to a good start! Over the years, the files of the Desert Protective Council reflect our successes and failures. During the past six decades, some of the problems DPC tackled in the early years, such as protect-ing Joshua Tree National Monument from uranium prospecting, have been solved, but some have not and alas, new threats to the desert have arisen that were probably not conceived of in the 1950s.

On the first page of this issue of El Paisano, in honor of our 60th anniversary, we feature a 1976 President’s Column

reflecting on the changes we needed to make to our attitude toward nature and our habits if we wanted to preserve our deserts for future generations. Sadly, since the founding of our Desert Protective Council, the challenges to desert preservation have increased in number and complexity and DPC’s mission to educate children and adults, and speak up for the importance and fragility of the desert has never been more urgent.

In upcoming issues of El Paisano, and on our web site and social media, we plan to elucidate more of DPC’s history and highlight some of Desert Protective Coun-cil’s collaborations and successes.

Over the next few years, we hope to raise funds to hire a historian/writer to put together a history of the Desert Protective Council, its founders, our Advisory Panel,

and some of our illustrious past and pres-ent members. This will be no small task. We have copies of our quarterly El Paisano newsletters dating back to 1955, and 22 boxes of other DPC files archived in the San Diego State University Desert History archives. If you personally have stories about the DPC to share, we want to record them as well!

The Desert Protective Council would also like to organize a 60th Anniversary Party but we need your help to make this happen! If you would like to participate in the plan-ning committee for this event, please contact:

Janet Anderson, Board President janetaanderson@gmail.com or Terry Weiner, Staff Coordinator terryweiner@sbcglobal.net.

continued – Celebrate DPC’s 60th Anniversary!

If you would like to receive our newsletter electronically, rather than in the mail, please send an e-mail message stat-ing “subscribe electronically” to: indy@dpcinc.org.

Desert Protective CouncilSince 1954protectdeserts.org

P.O. Box 3635San Diego, CA92163-1635

The newsletter of the Desert Protective Council

El Paisano #218 Spring 2014

Inside:

3 Camp Boreggo Update

4 The Pacific Flyway 7 Owens Valley

8 Crissal Thrasher

8 DPC’s 60th Anniversary

Ibex Dunes by James Moorehouse