Desert Preserve’s Funds May Be a Mirage : Environment: Foes of new East Mojave park try to starve it of money for visitor facilities and staff.

If preservationists thought the battle for the California desert ended last year when Congress approved creation of the 1.4-million acre East Mojave National Preserve, they were wrong.

What Congress can give, Congress can take away. And with a new Republican majority in Washington, longtime opponents of the desert preserve are hoping to starve it of funds needed to operate. Already, they have had some success.

At the behest of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who fought the preserve’s creation, the House Appropriations Committee has blocked the transfer of more than $300,000 that National Park Service officials say is desperately needed to build facilities for visitors and to augment the skeleton staff now busily gearing up to manage the sprawling new preserve.

Lewis also derailed a plan, developed jointly by the departments of Defense and Interior, to protect natural resources common to the preserve and adjoining desert lands belonging to several military bases.

In a recent interview with The Times, Lewis described the biodiversity plan “as an attempt by the environmental community to lock up even more of the desert” and prevent the expansion of nearby Ft. Irwin Army Base.

In Sacramento, where Republicans may be on the verge of winning a majority in the state Assembly, Assemblyman Keith Oldberg (R-Victorville) has introduced a resolution calling for Congress and the President to repeal the California Desert Protection Act. Besides establishing the preserve, the act expanded nearby Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and bestowed wilderness status on 3.5 million acres of desert.

“We believe that the effects on local business and private land use were ignored or discounted by the sponsors of the legislation,” said Oldberg’s chief aide, Lance Hastings. Oldberg’s district includes most of the region encompassed by the act.

For supporters of the desert preserve, it amounts to a guerrilla campaign to undermine the new preserve before it gets up to full operation.

“Make no mistake of it, efforts are being made to obstruct the implementation of East Mojave,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who led the fight to establish the preserve.

The Park Service began overseeing the East Mojave in January, working from makeshift office space and out of borrowed government vehicles. Park officials say that the loss of the $300,000, amounting to 50% of the preserve’s interim budget, has hurt.

“You can call it a park or a preserve or whatever you want,” said chief ranger Bill Blake, “but it isn’t and won’t be until we have a budget that allows us to protect the resources and serve the public. We’re not really able to do that right now.”

With no more than two park rangers on duty at one time, East Mojave’s Supt. Marvin Jensen must watch over a territory slightly larger than the state of Delaware.

In a recent communique to park service headquarters in Washington, Jensen’s office described some of the challenges.

“In the short life of this park, over $500,000 in illegal drugs have been seized,” the communique stated. “Two meth operating labs have been taken down. . . . Rangers have discovered four very remote illegal operating airstrips. . . . Scores of weapons (24 in one case alone) have been confiscated. . . . Poaching of wildlife is common.”

Because there is no park maintenance staff, the preserve patrol staff is also responsible for garbage collection, vehicle maintenance and restroom cleaning.

The East Mojave preserve encompasses more than a million acres of crinkled mountains, rippling sand dunes, dry lake beds and creosote scrub that were protected as part of the most expansive wilderness bill in the Lower 48 states.

Lewis, who represents the region and owns land inside the new preserve, for years has championed the cause of landowners, miners, ranchers, hunters and four-wheel driving enthusiasts. They complained that park status would close roads, restrict development and abridge property rights in order to create a man-made wilderness on land used for profit and pleasure with minimal government interference for 100 years.

Explaining his stance against funding the preserve, Lewis said the Park Service has been behaving like a bully since the agency moved into the East Mojave in January.

“They’ve been acting like they own all the land out there,” Lewis said, “hassling people in their vehicles and putting up no trespassing signs all over the place.”

The Desert Protection Act conferred wilderness status on about 50% of the preserve, in effect closing at least 100 miles of roads and Jeep trails and barring motorized vehicles on nearly 700,000 acres. Critics say that 5,000 miles of dirt roads and Jeep trails have been closed because of wilderness expansion in the preserve, Death Valley and Joshua Tree.

Lewis said that the newly designated wilderness might affect land that he and members of his family own inside the preserve. He said the family holdings amount to 200 acres and a cabin. Forty acres belong to him, he said. Lewis said he had no idea whether the 200 acres is surrounded by newly declared wilderness.

“Access is by a very old road,” Lewis said. “I don’t know whether it runs through wilderness. It wouldn’t surprise me if the only way to get to the property now is by helicopter.”

But the preserve’s superintendent said Lewis and other property owners have not been denied access to their land.

“People who have private lands within wilderness have the right to access that property by the same means they have historically accessed it,” Jensen said. But land owners’ ability to improve access roads, develop their property or change its character would be subject to Park Service approval, he said.

Compromise between public and private interests was at the heart of the legislation creating the preserve, which passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton.

Loosely referred to as a park, East Mojave is technically a preserve because it allows sport hunting, an activity prohibited in national parks. The legislation also left intact 9,000 mining claims, permits to graze 3,500 cattle and hundreds of deeds to private property.

No park in the country, said Park Service officials, has sought to accommodate so many private and commercial uses.

Jensen conceded that the Park Service has made at least one public relations blunder. After posting signs banning commercial vehicles, residents complained that they were being cut off from food, water, propane and other vital supplies that are routinely delivered by commercial trucks.

The signs were changed to ban commercial traffic attempting to pass through the park.

Meanwhile, geologists at Caltech and USC say that wilderness travel restrictions have made it impractical to continue valuable field studies in Death Valley and the East Mojave Preserve.

“It [the region] is among the most intensively studied geological laboratories in the world,” said Caltech geologist Brian Wernicke, describing the East Mojave as “the birthplace of a recent revolution in biological thinking about how the Earth’s continental crust rifts open to form ocean basins.”

In the past, scientists such as Wernicke depended on helicopters to ferry in the water they needed to survive for lengthy sojourns in the desert. But now that much of the area has been designated wilderness, helicopters are banned.

“Our only alternative is packing the water in by mule,” Wernicke said. He is not sure whether mules can negotiate the steep, rocky approaches to some of the study sites. But even if they can, he said, the cost would be greater than the grants that pay for the fieldwork.

Ironically, one of the stated purposes of the Wilderness Act is to promote scientific use.

The fledgling preserve has nonetheless won its share of supporters in nearby communities.

“Things are all right, so far,” said Rob Blair, whose family has been grazing cattle in the East Mojave since the 1880s. “We’re getting along fine with them [Park Service personnel]. They’re nice people.”

Officials of San Bernardino County, where the preserve is located, as well as several business owners in Barstow and Baker have appealed to Lewis to stop working against the preserve now that it is a reality.

“I believe the park will help business,” said Baker restaurant owner Steve Carter. “We’re already seeing about a 15% increase in motel occupancy, and it’s all because of the park.”

Perched on the northern edge of the preserve, between Barstow and the Nevada state line, Baker is well situated to serve visitors to both the East Mojave and Death Valley National Park to the north.

“The problem,” said Carter, “is the Park Service doesn’t have any money to put in a visitor center. So, a lot of travelers are frustrated. Instead of a ranger, they’ll bump into someone who’ll tell them there is nothing to see out there or that the federal government has closed the roads.”

The Park Service plans to ask Congress for $2.7 million to operate the East Mojave Preserve in the coming year. Congress will look to Lewis for guidance on the request. Lewis said he has not decided what his recommendation will be.

“I’m sure going to look at it very closely,” Lewis said. “What I’ve seen so far leads me to think the funds might be better used at Yellowstone or Yosemite.”