Advertisement

Desert Protection

Share

The Times was on the mark in its editorial (April 18) concerning the status of the California Desert Protection Act.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been truly masterful in moving this landmark bill through the U.S. Senate. The strong, bipartisan Senate vote of 69-29 is testament to her negotiating skills. Most importantly, while meeting the needs of a wide range of desert interests, Sen. Feinstein has produced a bill which maintains a strong sense of integrity.

The bill now moves to the House of Representatives. With so much momentum behind it, there will be an almost irresistible urge to turn it into a Christmas tree bill, one adorned with so many other legislative ornaments that it topples from its own weight. Congress must avoid this urge and send an unadorned bill to the President. Moreover, the House must defeat attempts to further weaken the bill’s protection of California’s incomparable desert landscape--such as in the proposed Mojave National Park.

Advertisement

Our goal should be to enact the California Desert Protection Act by the summer of 1994--the 30th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Doing so would be a rich tribute to this landmark law and to the very idea of wilderness--a concept as uniquely American as the landscape of the Californian desert.

JAY THOMAS WATSON

Regional Director

The Wilderness Society

San Francisco

The Desert Protection Act is a regrettable spenders’ solution to a problem that does not even exist. I spent the Easter weekend at Kelso Dunes in the East Mojave with family and friends and found the dirt-road-accessed area to be quiet, pristine, and with only a few people around. This area, along with Death Valley and Joshua Tree, is now to be turned over to the National Park Service, a Gestapo-like organization that has the attitude that “if visitors have a lousy time they won’t come back which lessens the impact on the land and keeps us from having to do any work!” (By contrast, the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management seem to be professionals who can balance the needs of nature with the needs of man.)

We don’t need paved roads and organized campgrounds with flush toilets and electricity built at taxpayers’ expense in the desert. We don’t need the people pollution and the noise that will follow. “Lady Di” Feinstein has once again done a great disservice to California and the nation. Only former Sen. Alan Cranston, is smiling.

MICHAEL G. McCALLEY

Orange

Advertisement