COLUMN ONE : Showdown Over East Mojave : Ecologists want to turn it into a national monument under the Park Service. Opponents do not want the miners, ranchers and tourists who live and play there pushed out.

A washboard dirt road cuts through miles of ancient creosote bushes in the picturesque Lanfair Valley before reaching a 60-foot windmill, rustic corrals and piles of cow dung everywhere.

This is the OX Ranch, an irritating eyesore smack in the middle of paradise, say environmentalists who have fought more than a decade for legislation to protect the desert. Even worse than the appearance, they say, is that the 3,500 head of cattle that graze on the East Mojave grasslands harm the threatened desert tortoise and hundreds of plant species.

But to those who make the East Mojave their home, the family-owned OX Ranch (pronounced Oh-Ex) is a vanishing form of desert heritage worth preserving.

“No, I’m not offended by anything you see here,” said historian Dennis G. Casebier, looking at what he playfully calls “meadow muffins” scattered across the OX lot. “I see it as beautiful. This is unadulterated Americana.”

As Congress inches toward enacting the hotly contested California Desert Protection Act, the East Mojave National Scenic Area is shaping up as the battleground that could decide the region’s future.

The desert plan approved by the House in November would protect 7.3 million acres in the southeast corner of the state. The bill proposes to designate 77 wilderness areas, upgrade Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments to national parks and turn the East Mojave into a national monument. This would transfer oversight of the majestic East Mojave, one of the country’s most ecologically diverse areas, from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service.

The plan awaits action by the Senate, which has scheduled an April 4 field hearing on desert protection legislation in Palm Desert. California’s two senators have indicated a willingness to negotiate about every disputed area except one--the East Mojave.

Placing the East Mojave into National Park Service hands “is a must as far as I’m concerned,” said Democrat Alan Cranston, whose Senate bill would convert the area into a national park. He argues that the area’s sensitive terrain is being destroyed by the cattle grazing, excavating and off-road vehicle use that the BLM permits.

Republican John Seymour is equally adamant that Congress should not push out the miners, ranchers and tourists who work and play here. “There is one deal-breaker for me. I’m not giving away national park status on the East Mojave,” he said.

The East Mojave landscape features three desert ecosystems--the Great Basin, the Sonoran Desert and the higher elevations of the Mojave--spread across 1.5 million acres on the Nevada border between Interstates 15 and 40. Visitors are free to explore sand dunes, mountain passes, dry lakes, volcanic spires, Joshua tree forests, giant boulders, lava beds and caverns. There are few, if any, restrictions.

A slice of California history can be found beyond the few isolated roads that crisscross the East Mojave: the Old Mojave Trail traveled by covered wagons, brilliant petroglyphs carved by Indians centuries ago and 2,000-year-old creosote bushes, among the oldest living organisms known. Wildlife is abundant, including desert bighorn sheep, bobcats, eagles and quail. The area has retained much of its natural beauty despite decades of heavy use by mining, railroad and utility companies.

Ironically, environmentalists who yearn to protect the East Mojave from industrial uses by bringing it under the wing of the National Park Service would transform the area into a mecca for park visitors. Locals who want to retain the region’s productivity would keep their hidden treasure generally more isolated from tourism.

The area attracted about 150,000 visitors last year--far fewer than the 2 million tourists who annually trek through Joshua Tree and Death Valley. Only three BLM rangers are assigned full time to the East Mojave--leaving each responsible for an area the size of Orange County.

“People don’t realize the significance of what is out here,” said Norbert Riedy, a senior policy analyst with the Wilderness Society. “Just the word desert suggests a barren, wasteland-type environment. The BLM has not taken advantage of the opportunity to educate the public. This is something the National Park Service is trained to do.”

Gerald E. Hillier, BLM district manager for the California Desert, responds: “I just do not understand how people can continue to make the pitch that this ought to be a national park. This is not a pristine desert. It’s a neat piece of real estate. But is it Yosemite? The Grand Canyon? Yellowstone? No! I really believe the environmentalists are not going to like this area much under Park Service administration.”

Environmentalists, backed by influential California Democrats, argue that the only way to save the East Mojave for future generations is to phase out potentially destructive uses before the spillover effect of rampant urban growth from Las Vegas and Los Angeles spreads here. They favor similar measures authored by Cranston in the Senate and Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) in the House that would eventually eliminate mining operations, cattle grazing and off-road vehicles.

Local residents, backed by the Bush Administration and the four Republican House members who represent the desert area, contend that the House bill would limit public access to the rugged East Mojave while forcing layoffs of miners, ranchers and others who earn a living off the land. They support a substitute bill offered by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) that would create 62 wilderness areas covering 2.3 million acres statewide and leave the East Mojave unchanged.

No one appreciates the diversity of the East Mojave more than Elden Hughes, a 60-year-old Whittier resident and chairman of the Sierra Club’s Desert Committee, or Dennis Casebier, 57, a desert historian who lives in the East Mojave town of Goffs, population 25.

But when it comes to the future of the East Mojave, no two men could disagree more.

Hughes caught his first glimpse of the California desert during a family outing in 1938 as a boy of 7. He has not stopped going since; rarely a month goes by without a visit, and he spends about 100 days a year in the desert.

The self-proclaimed “token greenie” on the BLM Desert District Advisory Council, Hughes has testified before Congress on behalf of desert protection legislation. He has taken both California senators on tours of the desert in his faded red 1969 Chevrolet Blazer. At home, he and his wife raise 30 adopted desert tortoises.

A sort of desert Santa Claus with his silver beard, potbelly and jovial laugh, Hughes describes the East Mojave as “one damned paradise after the other.”

A favorite passion is searching for ancient Indian pictographs and petroglyphs--the locations of which are shared in confidence among a close network of friends. During a recent visit, Hughes’ eyes lit up when he spotted a snake, a scorpion and sheep etched on rocks. “Oh, look! The eye of the snake. I’ve never seen that little snake before. That is neat.”

The excited look flashing across Hughes’ face quickly turns glum when he discovers graffiti next to the petroglyph. Minutes later, the peaceful quiet of the desert is shattered by gunshots in the distance.

The BLM currently allows shooting and hunting in designated areas throughout the East Mojave, while both practices are strictly prohibited in national parks. Under a last-minute amendment added to the House bill by Rep. Ron Marlenee (R-Mont.), however, hunting would be permitted in the East Mojave even if it is managed by the Park Service.

“We want this to be a park and we don’t want hunting here,” Hughes said. “A lot of tortoises die from bullets. I have seen Joshua trees shot off, so tortoises must be a challenging target. There are places to go to hunt and shoot. A national scenic area is not one of them. You need some places where people feel safe.”

Hughes pointed to a red-tailed hawk above the mountains that is scouring the desert for quail and rabbits. “We have natural hunters here,” he said. “I feel safe around that kind of hunting.”

The battle over the East Mojave, Hughes said, boils down to a difference in philosophy. He believes that the BLM, by allowing the annual Barstow-to-Las Vegas motorcycle race to carve up the East Mojave for years, demonstrated an insensitivity that the Park Service would not tolerate.

“You have two visions colliding head on,” he said, pounding his right fist into his left palm for emphasis. “Should you use it? Should you protect it? Under the BLM, using it means using it up. The Park Service would provide for enjoying it now while protecting it forever.”

The mere suggestion that the East Mojave should be regulated like a national park makes Dennis Casebier livid.

“They’ve already got two national parks (proposed in the desert bill) in the Mojave Desert. How many more do they need?” asked Casebier, his normally mild-mannered voice rising in anger. “I don’t like national parks because you don’t have the freedom to enjoy the area.”

Casebier was introduced to the desert in 1954, when he was assigned to the new Marine Corps base at Twentynine Palms. Between 1960 and 1990, he worked as a physicist for the Navy while researching the history of the Mojave Desert in his spare time. He has testified against the legislation, owned land in the East Mojave for 28 years and published 20 historical books on the desert.

Two of his books feature guides for four-wheel-drive enthusiasts to retrace the trail of Indians along the historic Mojave Road. As chairman of Friends of the Mojave Road, Casebier spent years researching, tracing and restoring the abandoned route. In 1980, he began escorting caravans of several vehicles on two-day trips along the 130-mile trail, narrating a rolling lecture over CB radio on the way.

For Casebier, the outings shattered the “myth” he had heard about four-wheelers tearing up the desert.

“I found they carried out more trash than they brought in. That surprised me. I had believed this line that everyone who drives a four-wheel-drive vehicle shoots guns, makes trash and drives helter-skelter across the desert off the roads. That flat ain’t true.”

He says that increasingly popular four-wheel touring does no damage to the East Mojave landscape and should be allowed to continue without government interference.

A lean, professorial-looking man who seems as if he should be smoking a pipe instead of wearing his Australian-made Akubra snowy river hat, Casebier considers the East Mojave a viable region of productivity. “It’s productive. Parks aren’t productive,” he said. He argues that the beauty of the area is shaped by a century of heavy use by humans. These “marks of man,” as Casebier calls the railroads, mines and cattle ranches, are everywhere and should not be obliterated by Congress, he said.

Casebier, like Hughes, foresees the East Mojave headed down one path under the BLM and another under the Park Service.

The BLM is no longer the “rubber-stamp” agency of years past, he said. Instead, experience and expertise make the agency best suited to protect the East Mojave’s value of productivity while allowing people to fully explore its vast terrain. He fears that the Park Service, on the other hand, would begin charging visitor fees and restrict access to many remote locations, including his beloved historic trails and sites.

“They’ll snuff it out, sanitize it and bring in foreigners,” he warned.

Casebier is upset that the desert bill was crafted on Capitol Hill by urban environmentalists--he calls them “do-gooders” and “flatlanders”--without considering the needs of local residents.

“They come from below from towns that are totally out of control with crime and poverty and they are going to come out here and fix the desert. Well, don’t you think maybe they ought to fix their own place first? Don’t fix this. It ain’t broken.”

Next: How the California Desert Protection Act would affect the mining industry.

A Desert Dispute

As Congress inches closer toward enacting the hotly contested California Desert Protection Act, the East Mojave National Scenic Area is shaping up as a crucial battleground. Environmentalists want to shift oversight of the majestic East Mojave, one of the country’s most ecologically diverse areas, from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service.

Two Ways to Protect the Desert

Following is a comparison of two desert protection bills that have been introduced in the 102nd Congress:

Bill: HR 2929

Author: Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica)

Title: California Desert Protection Act

Status: Passed House in November; awaits Senate approval and President’s signature

Scope: California desert only

Wilderness: Designates 77 areas covering 4.2 million acres under Bureau of Land Management

Park additions: Transfers 3.1 million acres from BLM to National Park Service, creating two new national parks from existing Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments, and converting East Mojave National Scenic Area into a national monument

Grazing: Permits grazing to continue in wilderness areas subject to regulations. Mojave and Death Valley grazing is allowed to continue under Park Service management until July 1, 2016

Mining: Allows only current mining to continue in the East Mojave while protecting existing valid claims elsewhere

Bill: HR 3066

Author: Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands)

Title: California Public Lands Wilderness Act

Status: Defeated by House in November; some provisions supported by Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.)

Scope: Desert and other land in California

Wilderness: Designates 62 areas covering 2.3 million acres under BLM

Park additions: Transfers 108,600 acres from BLM to Park Service adding to Death Valley National Monument and Joshua Tree National Monument

Grazing: No provisions

Mining: Permits current and expanded mining in much of the East Mojave while protecting existing valid claims elsewhere

SOURCE: Bureau of Land Management, congressional staff research