Hodel Ends 3-Day Desert Tour, Sees No Ecological Damage

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel ended a three-day, 800-mile tour of the California desert here Tuesday by proclaiming that he had not noticed significant environmental damage anywhere. That comment was quickly challenged by environmentalists and a federal biologist.

“Much of the area shows no sign at all of human activity,” Hodel said in an interview at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Desert Tortoise Natural Preserve, about 5 miles north of this desert community of 5,200 people.

“There’s a great tendency to exaggerate that (damage)” by people who “support legislation such as Senate Bill 7,” he said.

That bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), would create vast new national parks in the Mojave Desert.

Biologists Rankled

Hodel’s remarks rankled some environmentalists on hand as well as some BLM wildlife biologists.

“You have to know enough about desert lands to know what the impacts are,” said BLM wildlife biologist Kristin H. Berry. “In fact, the desert habitat is deteriorating and being destroyed at a rapid rate by off-road vehicles, development of urban communities, sheep and cattle grazing, among many other things.”

Sierra Club representative Jim Dodson agreed.

“I think he needs to talk to some of the rangers rather than glance out the window of a helicopter,” Dodson said. “I suspect he really didn’t see any damage--but he didn’t look right.”

Hodel’s tour began Sunday at the Big Horn Sheep Institute near Palm Springs. Ferried by military helicopters, Hodel then hopscotched to more than a dozen other sites ranging from the Imperial Sand Dunes north of the Mexican border and the World War II Desert Training Center at Chiriaco Summit to George Air Force Base near Victorville and Blythe.

The tour was arranged by BLM officials to give Hodel a first-hand look at the 25 million acres of land comprising the California Desert Conservation Area created by Congress in 1976.

It was also intended to promote the BLM’s long-term multiple-use plan for the area, which has been criticized by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society for failing to protect fragile desert environments from destructive human activities.

Still, Hodel used every opportunity to praise the BLM’s management of these public lands and to rail against Cranston’s proposed California Desert Protection Act.

Cranston’s proposal would set aside 1.5 million acres of desert lands east of Barstow to create Mojave National Park. It would also preserve 4.5 million acres now controlled by the BLM as wilderness and expand Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments and turn them into national parks.

The bill is pending before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Hodel called the proposal overkill and insisted that “the BLM’s management plan is working.”

Hodel began his day at the Army’s National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, 37 miles north of Barstow. There, commanders from other desert military installations, including the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, George Air Force Base and Edwards Air Force Base, expressed concerns that the bill would curtail expansion plans as well as hamper mock-desert battle operations.

About 3 million acres of the BLM’s desert conservation area are reserved for the military and crisscrossed by designated flight corridors for low-level testing of aircraft and the training of pilots, said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the BLM.

“The military commanders are worried that if Senate Bill 7 passes it will substantially affect their ability to provide training to our desert forces,” Hodel said.

At noon, Hodel was flown to the Desert Tortoise Natural Preserve, where he praised the BLM program to study and protect the docile creatures.

The heat of the noonday sun had driven wild tortoises into their burrows, and BLM officials transported six pet tortoises to the 38-square mile preserve for Hodel to examine.