Protecting the Desert

Glidden’s view of the desert is obscured by smog so thick that he has lost touch with reality. He attempts to convey the illusion that the desert is populated by 19th-Century squatters living in shacks next to slag heaps.

The fact is that the vast majority of the 300,000-plus people in the California desert are living in the 20th Century and are against the desert closure bill.

Mining is the largest industry in the desert, and the value of industrial minerals mined in the California desert is greater than any other state. We cannot afford the cost of losing this industry upon which urban and desert dwellers depend every day of their lives.

The so-called beautiful “crown jewels” when viewed in the smog-free air and compared to other mountain ranges become ordinary mountains not worthy of the title jewels but simply rhinestones.

Urban dwellers like Glidden have only viewed the desert on TV, but if they would try to walk across the desert in the summer heat (120-plus degrees) they would be exposed to stark reality. This desert “wilderness” is no place to be without roads.

Perhaps the most important fact Glidden failed to see is that the Bureau of Land Management (a federal agency) already has in place a federally approved multiple-use land management plan, which includes wilderness areas, but which also allows the best land use planning, accommodating urban and desert dwellers as well.

The desert belongs to the people and is now accessible to them. The desert should not be protected from them.

HOWARD BROWN

Apple Valley