tagged w/ Mojave desert
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Los Angeles Times...
Photo: A federally threatened desert tortoise looks out of its burrow in the Ivanpah Valley in the eastern Mojave Desert. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times
Endangered tortoises delay Mojave Desert solar plant
April 28, 2011 | 12:18 pm
Tortoise allen j. schaben
The Obama administration has halted the building of two-thirds of a massive solar project in San Bernardino's Mojave Desert as a new federal assessment found that more than 600 endangered desert tortoises would die as a result of construction.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management assessment this week disputed the estimate by BrightSource Energy, developer of the 392 MW solar thermal plant, that only 38 of the reptiles would be disturbed by construction at the 5.6-square mile Ivanpah Valley site near Primm, Nev. [corrected: an earlier version of this post said 5.6 acres]
Questions concerning the California tortoises highlight the friction between wilderness conservation and the quest for cleaner power. Many environmentalists contend it would be preferable to subsidize smaller solar arrays on commercial and residential rooftops, or on industrial acreage, than offer government loan guarantees to large complexes on wildlands that require transmission lines to transport the electricity to urban areas.
The federal order suspends construction activity on most of the Ivanpah project until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service redrafts a previous scientific opinion on the effect on the tortoise, which may come as soon as next month. The Oakland-based BrightSource recently received a $1.6-billion federal loan guarantee for the project and intends to raise $250 million more after taking the company public.
In a statement, company spokesman Keely Wachs said the new government projections “are not consistent with the actual numbers of tortoise found on the project site. It appears that the largest concentrations of tortoise are outside the project and in areas that we designed the project to avoid."
The BLM's new assessment estimates that more than 3,000 acres of tortoise habitat would eventually be lost as a result of construction, and more than 160 adult tortoises in the project area will have to be captured and moved, in addition to 600 dying as a result of the project.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will use the new estimates to determine whether finishing the project puts the species in jeopardy. If not, the agency is expected to set new limits on how many animals may be killed, injured or harassed.
Environmentalists wanted the energy complex relocated because they said it will harm tortoises. But BrightSource made design changes intended to alleviate environmental concerns.Los Angeles Times...
Photo: A federally threatened desert tortoise looks out of... more
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8 dead, 12 hurt at California 200: Prerunner truck flies into crowd
By Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
August 15th 2010
An off-road race in California went off the tracks Saturday night, when a truck plowed through a crowd, killing eight people and injuring a dozen others.
The California 200, part of a series held in Soggy Dry Lake near the city of Lucerne Valley in the Mojave Desert, became a nightmare for race fans as dust and darkness masked the tragic accident.
WARNING.....(GRAPHIC CRASH VIDEO) California 200 Off-Road Race Crash: 8 Confirmed Dead, 12 Injured…http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/graphic-video-california-200-off-road-race-crash-8-confirmed-dead-12-injured/
“There was dust everywhere, people screaming, people running,” David Conklin, a photographer covering the event for off-road magazines, told The Associated Press.8 dead, 12 hurt at California 200: Prerunner truck flies into crowd
By Michael... more
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The removal of a cross-shaped veterans’ memorial from the Mojave Desert has angered veterans’ groups and spurred calls for its immediate restoration.
The cross, first constructed at the remote site in 1934 as a memorial to WWI veterans, has been the subject of a nearly decade-long legal fight over the constitutionality of a religious symbol on public lands, and had just two weeks ago been cleared to stand by the US Supreme Court.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the US (VFW) has vowed to catch the people who stole the cross, offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those behind the cross’s removal.
"This was a legal fight that a vandal just made personal to 50 million veterans, military personnel and their families," said VFW National Commander Thomas J. Tradewell, Sr. in a statement. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the US Supreme Court on April 28, overturned an earlier federal court ruling that prohibited Congress from transferring public land around the cross to private owners, thus eliminating any perception of government-endorsement of religion. The court battle had gone on for several years as the memorial had remained covered, first with brown canvas, then with plywood.
[Editor's note: The original version of this story suggested the Supreme Court ruling overturned the First Amendment prohibition on government endorsement of religion. In fact, it reversed a land transfer injunction.]
The high court’s decision was applauded by the Liberty Counsel, an advocacy group representing VFW and other military service organizations and the American Center for Law and Justice. Opponents, including the ACLU, pledged to keep fighting for the removal of the cross.
"To think anyone can rationalize the desecration of a war memorial is sickening, and for them to believe they won't be apprehended is very naïve,” said Mr. Tradewell, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran from Sussex, Wis.
The cross’s removal leaves veterans’ groups hunting for clues. Looking at the pictures of the site where the cross once was, VFW chief spokesperson Joe Davis says he is amazed at the serious planning and execution that went into the theft. The cutting of the thick, metal pipes in concrete was a serious undertaking, he says.
The eight-foot-high cross had been perched on a wind-swept rock jutting 30 feet above the Mojave National Preserve 76 years ago by a group of World War 1 veterans. Situated in a wide expanse of arid desert, the cross was about 20 feet off a two-lane highway where perhaps 20 cars pass a day.
It later sparked a First Amendment court battle when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the National Park Service in March, 2001, saying the cross violated the First Amendment because it was a “religious fixture” on federal land. A federal judge at first agreed, crushing local veterans who claimed that the cross was a historic monument, not an ecclesiastical object. The judge had ruled that the US Supreme Court’s interpretation of the US Constitution’s “establishment clause” meant “the government may not promote or affiliate itself with any religious doctrine or organization.”
When he first saw photos of the vandalized cross site, Mr. Davis says he was “in shock and disbelief…. How could anyone have the audacity to tear down a war memorial to the dead?”
The $25,000 reward is now being offered through the Liberty Institute, which represented the VFW, American Legion, Military Order of the Purple Heart, and American Ex-Prisoners of War in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case of Salazar v. Buono.
Davis says that the original constructors meant no disrespect to other religions – the cross was used not out of religious necessity, he says, but out of respect to the 53,000 US veterans who died over 18 months of fighting in WWI.
“Three of the highest medals in our armed forces use the cross – the distinguished service cross, the Air Force cross, and the Navy cross – and no one has ever returned one of those,” says Davis. “This memorial meant a lot to those veterans and we cannot apply 21st century rules of political correctness to their world in 1934.”
The National Park Service is now investigating the case.The removal of a cross-shaped veterans’ memorial from the Mojave Desert has... more
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In a very remote part of the Mojave Desert stands a seven-foot-tall cross that was erected in 1934 by a number of World War I veterans to honor the nation’s war dead. There it has stood for 75 years lovingly cared for by volunteers. Only a handful of cars drive by this remote region on any given day.In a very remote part of the Mojave Desert stands a seven-foot-tall cross that was... more
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Ending a bitter feud in the rush to develop solar farms, BrightSource Energy Inc. on Thursday said it had scrapped a controversial plan to build a renewable energy facility in the eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument.
The proposal pitted companies queuing up to replace imported oil and facilitate a national clean-energy economy against environmentalists strongly opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation.
The acrimony even triggered a nasty public squabble between Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, which raised $160 million for Oakland-based BrightSource, and David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which raised $40 million to buy the old railroad lands to protect them from development.
"I commend BrightSource Energy for this action," Feinstein said in a statement. "It's clear that conservation and renewable energy development are not mutually exclusive goals -- there is room enough in the California desert for both."
Of particular concern was BrightSource's proposal to develop a 5,130-acre solar power plant on a portion of the donated lands known as Broadwell Dry Lake, which lies within Sleeping Beauty Valley.
The scenic, near-pristine region near Ludlow is home to a significant herd of bighorn sheep and framed by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west.
Scientists continue to catalog plants and reptiles uniquely adapted to the scorched terrain in what remains a biological frontier.
For example, botanists recently discovered a species of lupine that features showy purple blossoms in the spring.
Biologists are also studying unusually dark lizards that appeared to have genetically adapted to the volcanic terrain.
On Thursday, BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs said, "We have ceased all activity at the Broadwell site. . . . We will not build inside of a national monument."
The company's announcement came as a welcome surprise to environmentalists.
"This creates an open playing field for the monument to be built," Myers said. "It also could herald a sea change in the solar energy industry in that people will better understand that that there are good and bad places to build."
Elden Hughes, former chairman of the Sierra Club's California-Nevada Desert Committee, described the company's announcement as "fantastic news."
"Broadwell is one of the most beautiful vistas in the desert," he said. "I've seen it covered with yellow flowers to the horizon in all directions."
BrightSource's proposal was one of 19 filed with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
BrightSource's project would have relied on hundreds of mirrors known as heliostats to focus the sun's rays on the tops of 200-foot towers, where water boilers would produce high-pressure steam and run electric turbines.
Wachs said BrightSource ceased activity at the Broadwell site "a few months ago." Around the same time, the company began seeking alternative sites for that project "in and outside of the state," he said.
"That's the best thing I've heard in months," said Gary Thomas, project coordinator for the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep.Ending a bitter feud in the rush to develop solar farms, BrightSource Energy Inc. on... more
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I usually agree with RFK Jr. on environmental matters, but regarding this I think there are other places where this solar project could go as well without harming the biodiversity of the land and endangering any other species there. I do have to wonder at times just how much profit is even weighing into certain decisions made on the part of some who are such true environmentalists who now seem to be backing the almighty dollar. There is for sure a need for solar in this country, but there is plenty of land and I truly do not understand why even when we so desperately need this that people have to get caught up in political battles. We can have the energy we need while preserving biodiversity.I usually agree with RFK Jr. on environmental matters, but regarding this I think... more
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The Bureau of Land Management has issued a Notice of Proposed Legislative Withdrawal to enable the eventual transfer of 365,906 acres of fragile public land in the Mojave Desert to the U.S. Marine Corps for bombing, tank training and other live fire exercises.
The lands identified by the Marine Corps for its Air Ground Combat Center training grounds near Twentynine Palms include habitat critical for survival of the threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) and desert bighorn sheep. The Marine Corps says it needs the expansion for national security.
National security doesn't require seizing and bombing public lands and threatened species habitat, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. The public needs more explanation on the need for the proposed expansion under which deserts and wildlife that are already in decline will fall victim to tank treads, heavy artillery and other destructive military activity.
Today's proposal is the latest in a string of threats to the tortoise. Having survived more than a million years in California's deserts, desert tortoise numbers are now crashing, particularly in the West Mojave, where much of the expansion would occur. The population decline is due to numerous factors, including disease, habitat degradation, crushing by vehicles, military and suburban development, and predators. Because of its dwindling numbers, the desert tortoise, California's official state reptile, is now protected under both federal and state endangered species acts. The expansion could also lead to additional disastrous tortoise relocations. Nearly 2,000 tortoises are already being experimentally relocated for the expansion of Fort Irwin, an Army post about 25 miles north of the Marine Corps base. That effort so far has resulted in unexpectedly high tortoise mortality rates.
In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a new draft recovery plan that would weaken protections for the tortoise. The plan provides only vague descriptions of recovery actions actions that are not derived from the best available science. Recently, population genetics studies have identified the desert tortoise in the western portion of the Mojave Desert as distinctly different from its relatives to the northern, eastern, and southern portions. This finding sheds new light on why increased conservation and relocation success are more important than ever for the Fort Irwin effort.
The legacy of one million years of evolutionary history should not fall victim to our president's failed war, Anderson said. Endangered species remain the Bush administration's very lowest priority and in its final days, the administration appears to have set its sights on speeding the desert tortoise towards extinction.
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They say they need this space as it is a national security issue? Hasn't their war killed enough?The Bureau of Land Management has issued a Notice of Proposed Legislative Withdrawal... more
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New film exposes a fake Iraq in the Mojave Desert where real solders practice killing fake terrorists. That means the movie is a real documentary on a fictional reality — kinda like The Hills but with more killing.New film exposes a fake Iraq in the Mojave Desert where real solders practice killing... more
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devo64
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added this
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3 years ago
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Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in Southern California with solar, wind and geothermal power plants, setting up a classic clash over land use with environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts.
They have submitted at least 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all of the territory, in recent years and especially since 2007. The interest is so hot that even if many of the projects fall through, the remaining ones would change the look of the arid landscape.
California, particularly the southern half, is the epicenter of the nation's push for renewable energy. While some of the bureau's parcels in the state already contain wind and geothermal facilities, the agency hasn't approved any solar project here or elsewhere.
Last week, leaders for the bureau called a timeout in accepting new applications for solar developments, the most active category of renewable-energy proposals. They want to assess the environmental, social and economic impacts of such activity in the Southwest, starting with public meetings this month.
Despite state and local demands to increase production of renewable power and growing concern about fossil fuels' influence on global warming, the agency “did not anticipate the level of interest that was shown in 2007 and in the first part of 2008. The applications started coming in fast and furious,” said Linda Resseguie, manager of the solar review process in Washington, D.C.
Although many of the bureau's properties may look barren, they generate interest from environmental and recreation groups. Off-roaders are fighting to keep their open space in spots such as Imperial County's Truckhaven, while conservationists are vying to preserve relatively pristine stretches of desert by encouraging renewable-energy projects for existing homes and businesses.
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I don't see why land can't be reserved for both.
Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in... more
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