Split Allegiances

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has two major points of rebuttal to a congressional study that faults the bureau’s efforts to protect wildlife in the Mojave Desert: a lack of money and the agency’s mandate from Congress to administer the public lands for a multiplicity of uses, not just wildlife protection. The first defense is understandable, given the fiscal neglect of federal natural resources in recent years. The second is a key to the problem and a dilemma Congress must consider carefully as it debates legislation to transfer the administration of major portions of the desert to the National Park Service.

The Bureau of Land Management, a branch of the Department of the Interior, is not just a wildlife agency, but also manages the public lands for recreation, mining, livestock grazing, protection of cultural resources, oil exploration and many other activities. These are not only diverse pursuits; they often are inherently conflicting, such as when miners claim lands that also are prized for their natural beauty, or when ranchers want to graze the habitat of the threatened desert tortoise. Even the term recreation is so broad that it can range from motorcyclists roaring across the landscape to a wilderness backpacker silently watching a desert sunset.

In arguing that its wildlife management record is not as bad as the General Accounting Office would make it appear, the agency says it must make trade-offs and address other uses. This is precisely the problem with multiple-use resource agencies. The agency sees itself as fairly balancing competing demands. But usually the balance tips in favor of those economic and exploitative activities that generate profits and that enjoy strong voting and lobbying constituencies.

The frontier tradition is to conquer the land and put it to use. Failure to do so was to be wasteful and lazy. But this is a new age. Fifteen million Californians live within half a day’s drive of the desert, an important part of the nation’s natural heritage. Today, there is inestimable value in putting much of the desert to no use at all, so that Californians and all Americans can go there, sweep an arm from horizon to horizon and tell their children: “All this is just the way the first explorers saw it, and just the way it will be for your children and your grandchildren.”

Without such protection, the desert will be split into ever-smaller wedges to feed an endless line of multiple uses. With such protection, there will be a whole desert that is far richer than the sum of its parts.