Shift in Land Conservation Tactics Debated

It is being sold as a remarkable emblem of cooperation: After developers and conservationists set aside their differences, President Clinton in coming weeks is expected to create a massive national monument embracing a stretch of mountains and desert.

But behind the rhetoric, the proposal to create the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument may be an emblem of something very different: A fundamental--and dangerous, some claim--shift in the way the federal government protects important pieces of land in the West.

For 50 years, national monuments were created by the dozen for the National Park Service. But since 1996, under President Clinton and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, that has begun to change.

Seven times now--the Santa Rosa proposal would make eight--new national monuments have been put under the control of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that seeks to balance private business interests with conservation and recreation.

Gone are the ranger stations and the friendly brochures. Gone are the well-kept trails and the family-friendly trailer hookups. Most importantly, gone are the bans on hunting, fishing, grazing and, at least in one case, commercial expeditions for oil and gas.

“Now it’s just lines on a map,” said Sonya Diehn, manager of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Tucson office, about 25 miles from Ironwood Forest, one of the new national monuments.

The land agency is not even always willing to enforce its own rules, some complain. At Grand Staircase-Escalante in southern Utah, for example, the agency has failed to crack down on illegal grazing, said Daniel Patterson, a field ecologist with the biodiversity center.

“Recently BLM has shown the lack of will to do the right thing to protect the land even when it is a monument,” he said. “What we’ve seen is, in my mind, is a real pollution of the national monument process.” While presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush didn’t create a single national monument during their 12 combined years in office, Clinton has already created nine of them, most of which have been given to the Bureau of Land Management. Clinton, in fact, has designated more land as national monuments in the continental United States than any other president--a campaign that has come, at times, with great controversy.

His declarations creating national monuments have been derided by property-rights activists as “land grabs,” reckless decrees that could endanger jobs and recreation.

Environmentalists also have been critical of Clinton, particularly for the trend toward management by the land bureau. Their worst fears came true with the first such monument in 1997 when Conoco Inc. received permission to explore for oil and gas in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

A Different Style of Management

Environmentalists say it’s no coincidence that the trend began soon after Republicans had mounted their takeover of Congress. Critics believe the Clinton administration shifted control of new monuments to the less-stringent Bureau of Land Management to appease Republican leaders in Washington.

The administration disputes this, and says the new method of land management is merely an attempt to create comprehensive conservation plans for large parts of the country.

Bureau of Land Management spokesman Rem Hawes doesn’t discount the criticism entirely--but calls it the “glass half-empty” view of the trend.

“The level of intensity of management, it’s not going to be like the Park Service. The intent is that these should be open and enjoyable to the public. Our intent is to conserve them with the resources that they have right now.”

The proposal to overlay the nation’s newest national monument on 272,000 acres south and west of Palm Springs has become the latest battleground for that debate.

More than a year ago, Babbitt first declared the region one of a dozen scenic and significant areas where the administration intended to create national monuments, which traditionally offer a level of service and protection second only to that of national parks. Two national monuments in California, Joshua Tree and Death Valley, were elevated to park status in 1994.

The latest proposed monument includes the magnificent Coachella Valley backdrop behind Palm Springs, ranging from the desert floor to the 10,800-foot peak of Mt. San Jacinto. It is home to popular hiking trails and vistas--and a host of rare animals, including bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, mountain lions and golden eagles.

Balancing Interests

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) sensed the creation of the monument would be a tricky proposition--interlacing sections of the area are owned by the federal government, the state, private landowners and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

So Bono received permission from the Clinton administration to take over the proposal--making it potentially the first national monument administered by the Bureau of Land Management and created by Congress, not a presidential decree.

Adding language that protects everything from private-property rights to the sovereignty of the Agua Caliente band, Bono forged a rare alliance.

“I think people looked at the national monument designation as symbolizing the importance of the resource values in the mountains,” said Bill Havert, executive director of the nonprofit Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy. “But the monument legislation doesn’t try to control private lands or usurp local land-use authority.”

Not everyone is pleased. The proposal, which has passed the House and Senate and awaits only Clinton’s signature, contains some conservation measures. It bans off-road motor-vehicle use, for example, as well as mining operations.

But it does not, critics say, mention the region’s rarest species, the endangered peninsular bighorn sheep. It does not ban grazing, hunting or fishing--provisions that are staples of many national monuments run by the National Park Service. It does not restrict military or commercial planes from flying over the area.

And not only does it not add regulation to private land use, it specifically says the proposal “is not intended to impact upon existing or future growth in the Coachella Valley.”

Local officials and business leaders now see the plan as an economic draw as much as they do a conservation tool.

“The designation of a national monument, economically to the area, potentially is huge,” said Ed Kibbey, executive director of the Building Industry Association Desert Chapter.

Getting Plans in Writing

Ultimately, many environmental activists believe the biggest effect of the proposal will be to draw tourists and add recreation to the area--which could be devastating for some species, especially bighorn sheep. According to the federal government’s own plan for recovery of the species, vehicles, horses, hunters, mountain bikers and hikers can further disrupt the sheep.

Federal officials say it’s much ado about nothing. The bill, they point out, orders the government to develop a more specific land-use plan for the Coachella Valley within three years. More species and environmental protection, such as limits on recreational activities, could come from that process, said Hawes, the Bureau of Land Management spokesman.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency is creating a critical-habitat plan for bighorn sheep that would earmark 875,000 acres from the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains to the Mexican border. And local officials are devising a plan to spell out which areas in the Coachella Valley must be preserved for wildlife and which are open to development.

All told, officials said, the plans will create a web of protection--a blueprint for the future of the Coachella Valley. And it will be done, Hawes said, without “broad, sweeping elimination of activity.”

“We see it as an opportunity,” he said. “The writing is on the wall: We are going to be in the monument business.”