No Converts on East Mojave Bill : Environment: Sens. Cranston and Seymour say they favor a compromise on desert protection legislation but clash at the hearing. Environmentalists and recreation enthusiasts remain impassioned but far apart.

Sens. Alan Cranston and John Seymour, meeting with more than 1,000 residents and others worried about the future of the open lands around them, clashed Saturday over who holds true title as protector of California’s vast desert region.

Both senators spoke of compromise. But a daylong Senate subcommittee hearing here was marked more by bitterness and catcalls than by concessions as Cranston, a Democrat, and Seymour, a Republican, heard testimony from more than 250 often-impassioned speakers from around the state. Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Ida.) also was on the panel.

“The desert is under siege,” said Don Kimball, a Twin Peaks resident, as off-road riders, ranchers, hunters and others hissed in the audience. “We need the National Park Service to take over this land to protect it.”

At issue is a plan, proposed by Cranston, that would protect 7.3 million acres of desert in the southeast corner of the state. It would ban off-road vehicles, mining, development and other potentially damaging activities on 4.1 million acres. And it would turn the East Mojave into a national monument, transferring its oversight from the U. S. Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service.

A similar measure, sponsored by Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), passed the House four months ago after languishing for five years. But its adoption in the Senate is uncertain, with Seymour leading the opposition and the Bush Administration threatening a veto.

Seymour supports a plan that would protect about 2 million acres of desert, but would withhold national park status from the East Mojave.

At Saturday’s hearing of a Senate Environment and Natural Resources subcommittee, Seymour pledged a willingness to compromise. But he blasted “the environmentalists’ obstinacy over the East Mojave” and said angrily that it is “nonsense” to suggest that he opposes desert protection.

At stake in keeping the desert open, Seymour said, is “the loss of a way of life for the American cowboys, many who have called the East Mojave home for five or six generations.”

Cranston, who accused Seymour of election-year politicking over the desert issue, said his Republican colleague is being “unreasonable.”

But he said he is hopeful that the measure can pass the Senate and become law even if he and Seymour do not reach a compromise. “It’s not easy when the two senators for the state disagree, but it is not impossible.”

Cranston has made the California Desert Protection Act one of his top priorities before he retires in January. “This will be passed, sooner or later, and I’m going to keep right at it when I’m out of the Senate,” he said.

Saturday’s hearing was the eighth by a congressional panel on the issue since 1987. Nearly 1,100 people--most wearing hats, T-shirts or pins to show their allegiances--jammed the Palm Desert High School gymnasium for the start of the hearing, with hundreds more waiting outside, passing out literature and staging impromptu rallies.

“Protect the Desert For the People, not From the People,” declared one huge banner.

Critics of Cranston’s bill outnumbered supporters at the hearing. But the numbers appeared more evenly split among the more than 250 speakers, providing for a rapid volley of arguments at the microphone.

Michael DeChambeau of Sacramento, representing the National Rifle Assn., said that passage of Cranston’s bill would set a national precedent that would endanger the rights of hunters, ranchers and other sporting enthusiasts.

Shirley C. Anderson, a marketing professor at Cal State Northridge, said a study she did on the legislation suggests that the “strangulation of mining” and other desert industries would cost the state 20,000 jobs and $63 million a year in lost taxes.

But environmentalists were equally adamant, urging protection of what Riverside Councilman Ronald Loveriedg described as “a national legacy as unique to California” as its majestic coastlines and towering redwoods.

Even beyond the effect on the aesthetics of the desert, said Catherine Saubel of Banning, development endangers vegetation that she and other American Indians use to treat disease. “That’s our pharmacy out there,” she said.

As contentious as the hearing often became, some stayed out of the fray.

Throughout the day, groups of young children wearing T-shirts that declared “Stop S.21”, the Cranston bill, fraternized with the opposing camp, playing on the lawn with California desert tortoises that some environmentalists brought to the hearing. The tortoises are on the nation’s threatened species list.

“He’s going to bite you!” Dillon Arnett, 9, of Las Vegas warned a playmate as they petted a tortoise.

Cathy Berrett, president of the Westchester Chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club, shook her head as she watched the scene. “Some of these kids have never even seen a tortoise before,” she said. “Their habitat is going away.”