ADOPT-A-DESERT - Sierra club wins a court battle - Brief Article

Sierra, July, 2001 by Elisa Freeling

After 20 years of battles with the Bureau of Land Management and offroad vehicle groups, the Sierra Club and other organizations settled a law-suit in January to protect 24 species of endangered plants and animals on 11 million acres of the California Desert Conservation Area, which stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to Death Valley and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The BLM admitted that since the land was designated in 1976, it had done nothing to protect this imperiled wildlife. Under the agreement, the agency will close 49,000 acres of the Algodones Dunes, the largest dune ecosystem in North America, to preserve the only U.S. home of Peirson's milk vetch. (Previously, 77 percent of the dunes were being managed strictly for intensive off-road vehicle use; now less than half will be open for such recreation.) The BLM will also hire five "sheep ambassadors" to educate hikers in the San Jacinto Mountains on the needs of peninsular bighorn sheep during lambing season. And the agency must consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about protecting the fragile desert ecosystem. "It's a hell of a victory," says Elden Hughes, chair of the Sierra Club's California/Nevada desert committee. "It's forcing the BLM to take action."

An indefatigable defender of the desert, Hughes is now holding the BLM to its promises. In March he encouraged the Club and its allies to file a contempt motion against the agency, which had done little to comply with the January agreement. No cattle or sheep had been removed from the habitat of the threatened desert tortoise, even though the livestock eat spring plants the tortoises need and trample their burrows. "I don't know that I love the desert more than I love the ocean or the mountains," Hughes says, "the desert just needs more friends."

* To spotlight Sierra Club activism in your area, contact Elisa Freeling at Sierra, 85 Second Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105-3441; e-mail elisa.freeling@ sierraclub.org; fax (415) 977-5794.