House OKs Bill Protecting Vast Desert Acreage

After weeks of partisan wrangling, the House on Wednesday passed a sweeping land-protection bill, creating two national parks and dozens of wilderness areas in the ecologically fragile and archeologically rich California desert.

The House voted 298 to 128 to approve the landmark legislation after Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) took the extraordinary step of asking for a time limit on debate over several remaining Republican amendments. Once that procedural point was won, opponents, led by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), ran out of tactical maneuvers.

“The House has done the people of California a great favor and given the people of the country a great gift,” said an ebullient Miller after the vote, which sends the bill to a conference committee to resolve differences with the Senate version.

Nearly 8 million acres of land would be preserved under the legislation, which environmental groups and congressional supporters have labored for years to achieve.

Under the House bill, Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments would become national parks and have their lands expanded. And millions of acres of desert territory would be off-limits to mining and motorized recreation.

But enthusiasm over House passage was tempered by the loss of national park status for the East Mojave National Scenic Area--once the centerpiece of the original House bill.

This setback, combined with several other Republican-sponsored amendments, promises to complicate the bill’s future in conference committee with the Senate, which approved a bill designating the East Mojave lands as a national park.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who navigated the bill through the Senate, said, “I’m confident that it will become law.”

Feinstein regards passage of a California Desert Protection Act--its official name--as a crucial goal of her term and she hopes to be able to tout the legislative accomplishment in her battle with millionaire challenger Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Santa Barbara), who voted against the bill.

He joined all California Republicans save one--Rep. Steve Horn of Long Beach--in opposing the bill. All of the state’s Democrats voted for the bill except Rep. Robert T. Matsui of Sacramento, who did not vote.

Proponents of the Mojave National Park designation fear that the provision may be lost during the reconciliation process. Neither Miller nor Feinstein would make a prediction on the outcome.

“I prefer the Senate bill,” Feinstein said, “and we’ll try to get the strongest possible bill. But we need to get it to the President.”

Supporters hope a largely intact desert bill will be ready for Clinton’s signature before Congress adjourns in October.

The desert bill would become the largest land conservation law since the 1980 Alaska Lands Act, which protected 103 million acres from development, and environmental groups were jubilant after the House vote Wednesday.

“It is a sunrise for desert protection and a sunset for desert abuse,” said Elden Hughes, a longtime Sierra Club leader from Whittier.

“We have come out of the House in very good shape, and the bill has a lot of momentum behind it,” said Jay Watson, California/Nevada regional director for the Wilderness Society.

But the bill had a more difficult legislative birth than anticipated. For years it met certain death in the Senate. But Feinstein took high-profile command of the bill last year and agreed to numerous modifications and compromises with various interest groups. The upper chamber passed its version of the bill in mid-April on a 69-29 vote.

Miller predicted that similar House action would be swift.

But several Southern California Republicans conducted a parliamentary war of attrition and were able to slow the bill to a desert-tortoise crawl.

Although final passage in the House was never in doubt, Lewis and his comrades--Reps. Al McCandless of La Quinta, Duncan Hunter of El Cajon, Bill Thomas of Bakersfield and Howard P. (Buck) McKeon of Santa Clarita--were able to frustrate the bill’s backers through a series of time-consuming roll call votes on non-controversial amendments.

Their biggest victory was downgrading the proposed 1.5-million-acre Mojave National Park to “preserve” status, thus allowing hunting, fishing and trapping to continue there.

Environmentalists criticized the Republicans’ delaying tactics. But Lewis blamed Miller for rushing the bill to the floor without an adequate airing of opponents’ views.

“It (was) irritating to have our views and needs, and those of our constituents, belittled and disregarded in order to pacify the always ravenous environmental community,” Lewis said.

The bill passed Wednesday was introduced in January, 1993, by Rep. Richard H. Lehman (D-North Fork). The House passed a similar bill in 1991, but it died in the Senate.

Passage by both houses has been like the Holy Grail for environmental groups, who consider the vast stretches of arid California landscape a threatened national treasure.

It was strongly opposed by Gov. Pete Wilson and a coalition of miners, ranchers, hunters and off-road vehicle enthusiasts.

The California desert--25 million acres, most tucked in the state’s arid southeast corner--contains 90 mountain ranges, more than 100,000 archeological sites, waterfalls, wetlands and 760 species of wildlife, including the endangered desert tortoise.

The crown jewel of the legislation was to have been the upgrading of the East Mojave National Scenic Area to national park status.

But Rep. Larry LaRocco (D-Idaho) offered an amendment--backed by the National Rifle Assn.--to designate the East Mojave area as a national preserve and expressly allow hunting there.

A similar hunting amendment passed the House in 1991, and Miller anticipated trouble this time around. House members, having already approved the Brady Bill and a ban on semiautomatic weapons, were unwilling to send a third rebuke to the politically potent NRA, Miller said.

Opponents argued that the LaRocco plan would lead to poaching and put visitors in danger. But the hunting amendment passed by more than 50 votes.

Environmentalists also hoped to phase out livestock grazing in the East Mojave and Death Valley areas by barring renewal of existing grazing contracts. That amendment too was defeated. The House bill now allows grazing in perpetuity.

The desert legislation was first introduced in 1986 by Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, but was held up for six years in disputes with the state’s successive Republican senators, first Wilson and then John Seymour. With the election in 1992 of Democrats Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, chances of Senate passage were greatly enhanced.

Some Republicans remain highly critical of the desert bill because it would add land to a National Park system that is cutting back visitor center hours, unable to provide adequate housing for rangers and scheduled to lose 3,700 positions over the next five years.

Lewis and others think environmental zealots and elitists who do not live in the desert want to protect it, ignoring the needs of those who live there to continue development and maintain the economy.

Protecting the Desert

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved landmark legislation that would protect 7.96-million acres of California desert. A similar bill has been approved by the Senate; next a conference committee must work out the differences.

The biggest roadblock is the status of the East Mojave Scenic Area. The Senate bill would elevate the area to a national park--off limits to hunting; the House version would make the East Mojave a national preserve and allow hunting to continue.