Plan for Buying Desert Land Falters

A fresh proposal for the federal purchase of nearly half a million acres of old railroad land in the Southern California desert appeared to quickly unravel Thursday, partly because it was contingent on allowing the controversial expansion of the Army’s sprawling desert training center at Ft. Irwin.

The proposal was worked out Wednesday between Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), and was intended to pave the way for the required congressional approval of the purchase. It called for a $10-million federal down payment toward a $30-million federal commitment to purchase Mojave Desert land.

But a nonprofit conservation group that pledged an additional $26 million to complete the purchase--one of the largest of its kind in California history--threatened to pull out Thursday if the federal government did not authorize its entire $30 million this year to wrap up the deal.

Further complicating the issue, the Feinstein-Lewis proposal was contingent on allowing the future expansion of Ft. Irwin, which environmental groups have strenuously opposed because of the harm they say it would do to the endangered desert tortoise. The tortoise’s survival, they say, is critical to the health of other desert wildlife that also use its burrows.

Thursday’s developments are the latest in the duel between tanks and tortoises and efforts by the Clinton administration to purchase 432,000 acres that form a checkerboard across the desert between Needles and Barstow.

The land is owned by Catellus Development Corp., a real estate offspring of the Southern Pacific railroad. It has threatened to sell its massive desert holdings--much of it within the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park--for private residential development if it is not purchased for public use. The cost of the land is about $111 an acre.

Desert preservationists worry that if the Catellus holdings are sold for private desert getaways, it could cripple public recreational access to a huge swath of pristine desert. The land runs roughly 25 miles on each side of an old railroad right of way along historic Route 66.

The federal government gave the land to the railroads more than a century ago to encourage westward expansion. The landscape features cinder cones and lava flows, flowing sand dunes and fields of cactus.

The government wants to provide trails and roads for hunting, camping and other recreational uses and to preserve habitat for the the desert tortoise and bighorn sheep.

Feinstein and the Clinton administration have championed its purchase for public use, but for Lewis--who is chairman of the powerful House subcommittee on military appropriations and whose district includes much of the land at stake--the desert preservation plan has become a bargaining chip in his efforts to overcome environmental opposition to expansion of Ft. Irwin.

The Army, with Lewis’ support, wants to expand its National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, saying it is too cramped to accommodate new technology, faster tanks and battalion-size war games.

It wants control of about 150,000 acres, mostly to the southwest of its current boundaries. It is land that conservationists argue is prime habitat for the desert tortoise.

The notion that the Catellus lands would be purchased contingent on Ft. Irwin expansion riled David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which had pledged its financial support in buying the desert land.

“We’re not going to pledge our private moneys to a deal conditioned on the expansion of Ft. Irwin,” Myers said Thursday. “We do not appreciate congressman Jerry Lewis using our private donation of $26.1 million as a lever to expand Ft. Irwin. This is an abuse of a gift to the American people.”

He said he was still hopeful that the Clinton administration will provide the full $30 million this year. Clinton, however, has threatened to veto the annual Interior Department appropriations bill, partly because it includes measures that would roll back environmental protection and lacks funding for environmental initiatives.

Lewis said Thursday, however, that he thought Clinton would endorse “what is a very reasonable compromise” and said he was not worried that the Wildlands Conservancy might withdraw its financial support.

“The land involved here will remain the same for the next 100 years, no matter who owns it,” he said in an interview. “So there’s no need for the expenditure [of even the $10 million] at all.

“I could care less about private money being contributed if that money is going to buy land that’s not going to be changed in its use anyway,” Lewis said. “Why not use private money for parks that have real needs?”

Feinstein said Thursday that she had hoped to obtain full funding this year to buy the Catellus land, but that in the compromise she struck with Lewis, “I did the best I could do.”

Feinstein expressed confidence that the Ft. Irwin expansion would be resolved, noting that scientists in the Defense and Interior departments are studying proposals to relocate the tortoises safely away from the paths of tanks. Some tortoise experts scoff at the notion that the animals can be relocated.

The agreement, she said, was “a major step forward” in efforts to protect the California desert. She said the land purchase would be “a wonderful gift to the American people on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Desert Protection Act.”

Feinstein previously sought $36 million in federal funding for the desert land purchase, but earlier this year the House voted to provide nothing. The amount of money needed to buy the land was reduced after Catellus lowered its asking price.

The Feinstein-Lewis agreement reached Wednesday--with both politicians and their staffs huddling over a map of the Mojave Desert in a Capitol basement--was seen by both as a way to win bipartisan congressional support.

The proposal will be inserted in the Interior appropriations bill, which must still be approved by the full House and Senate before going to Clinton.

Simon reported from Washington, Gorman from Riverside.