Wilderness Status Urged for Only Part of State Desert

President Bush proposed Friday that Congress extend wilderness designation to 2.1 million acres of the California desert, less than half the amount sought by congressional Democrats and conservation groups for protection from off-road vehicles, mining and other uses.

The Bush plan asks Congress to approve the longstanding proposal of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as contained in the California Desert Plan adopted by the bureau in 1980. The plan originally was lauded by conservation groups, but they now denounce it as inadequate to provide the protection the desert needs from increasing use and population pressures.

An additional 4.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in California that had been set aside by Congress for consideration as wilderness would be returned to multiple-use management “consistent with existing environmental land-management regulations,” the White House said in a statement. Those areas are being administered as wilderness pending Congress’ resolution of the controversy.

Bush’s action sets the stage for a fight in both houses of Congress over competing plans for protection and management of vast stretches of the California desert, a 25-million-acre area covering the southeastern quarter of the state.

Since the late 1980s, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) has supported a plan drafted by the Sierra Club and other groups that would set aside 4.4 million acres of bureau land in wilderness areas and create a new 1.5-million-acre East Mojave National Park. The Bush plan released Friday deals only with proposed wilderness designation. However, the Administration has opposed the creation of the new desert park.

Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), House sponsor of the Cranston plan, welcomed the White House announcement because it “can only hasten the speed with which Congress acts on my legislation.”

But Levine called the Bush plan “too little, too late.”

“It’s clear that Californians want far more protection of the magnificent 25-million-acre desert than a meager 2 million acres . . . . For the Administration to react with such a meager proposal is an insult to those who have worked so hard to achieve meaningful protection,” Levine said.

Steve Goldstein, an aide to Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., defended the President’s proposal by noting that it was “exactly what was in the plan 11 years ago. At that time, the environmental groups were very supportive . . . . There are some environmental elites who would like to lock up every piece of land in the state.”

He noted that the other 4.8 million acres still will be protected. But they will be subject to various sorts of commercial use and development.