Here’s the Real ‘People’s Bill’

For more than two years, those who favor exploitation of the California desert under the rubric of “multiple use” have been content to broadly attack the proposed California Desert Protection Act as the environmentalists’ attempt to lock up the desert for themselves. Now, at least, the foes have come forth with their own alternative to the legislation of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica). However, the new proposal sponsored by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) barely provides any new protection for the desert. Even worse, it would do basic violence to the 25-year-old Wilderness Act and would leave vast stretches of the desert vulnerable to the sort of damage and misuse that now makes the present management of the desert region inadequate.

Lewis called his “the people’s bill.” But too often, the people who would be helped are those who have commercial interests in the desert, including mining firms and ranchers. The Lewis bill would not create any new national parks or extend park status to Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments. It would have less than half the acreage of wilderness area, 2.1 million acres compared with 4.4 million in the Cranston-Levine bill. And it even would allow motor vehicle use in selected wilderness areas--something that is a contradiction of the very concept of wilderness.

One of Lewis’ co-sponsors, Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Coronado) said that vehicular access is central to the plan and called the desert the playground of the working people of California. But one of the problems now is that too much of the desert is readily accessible to a minority of people who believe they have some basic right to tear up the fragile land in their off-road vehicles. Lewis and his supporters claim the Cranston-Levine bill would put most of the desert off-limits to vehicles. But more than 400,000 acres would be retained as off-road vehicle play areas along with 30,000 miles of roads and Jeep tracks that often run directly around and between wilderness units. The Bureau of Land Management still would control 4.6 million acres under the multiple-use concept that permits mining, livestock grazing and other commercial activities.

The most promising of mineral areas would not be frozen out under Cranston-Levine. Existing mining operations could continue, even in the wilderness. The Cranston-Levine plan is the true people’s bill, for it would make certain that full splendor and mystery of the desert would be preserved for the enjoyment of all people, now and in future generations.