Law Signed Creating Desert National Monument

President Clinton signed a law Tuesday creating a national monument out of a breathtaking stretch of mountains near Palm Springs, ending a saga that required extensive negotiation among Native Americans, developers and preservationists.

The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument will encompass 272,000 acres. From the desert floor to the 10,800-foot peak of Mt. San Jacinto, it is a popular recreation center and home to rare animals including bighorn sheep and golden eagles.

The designation bans mining and off-road vehicle use and requires the government to develop a blueprint for managing the land.

It becomes the eighth national monument created since 1996 under Clinton and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and placed under the administrative hand of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. That is a new method of protecting land in the West, because for 50 years the National Park Service had been the steward of national monuments.

Although some environmentalists applaud the creation of so many monuments, they are concerned that the bureau is not strict enough to protect natural resources and animals. Unlike the Park Service, for example, the Bureau of Land Management does not typically ban grazing, hunting or fishing.

But Rusty Payne, spokesman for bill sponsor Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), said the bill “set a great precedent for future land management decisions” with the first monument administered by the bureau and created by Congress, not presidential decree. That was necessary, Payne said, to satisfy everyone in the area, from developers to private landowners to preservationists.

“Everybody--Democrat, Republican, House, Senate--agrees that this is the way government should work,” he said. “The significant thing is how many people had a hand in this legislation.”