Red Lodge Clearinghouse

In a Sept. 15 Federal Register notice, the Department of Navy asked that lands that are part of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County be used for expanded military exercises. The request was made using the 1958 Engle Act, which places on the secretary of the Interior the responsibility to process Department of Defense applications for national defense withdrawals in times of war or national emergency.

"The purpose of the proposed legislative withdrawal is to withdraw and reserve the lands for use as a military training range, involving live-fire exercises, necessary for national security," the Federal Register notice reads.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, slammed the proposal. "The legacy of 1 million years of evolutionary history should not fall victim to one failed president's failed oil 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 toward extinction."

According to Defenders of Wildlife, the number of desert tortoises has decreased by 90 percent since the 1950s, which is around the same time the Department of Defense determined that the sparsely populated, wide-open expanses of the Mojave Desert would be ideal for bases and training activities.

Further assaults to the desert tortoise came from increased urban development in its habitat, which spans the Mojave and Sonoran deserts of Southern California, Nevada and Utah. Also, certain fatal diseases, most notably a respiratory disease, and predation, poaching and off-highway vehicles have also hurt the desert tortoise population.

Due to the population decline, the desert tortoise was listed as a threatened species under the federal and state endangered species laws. Last month, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a new desert tortoise recovery plan that some critics claimed was weaker than previous plans (Land Letter, Aug. 7).

Monday's request involves a plan to relocate desert tortoises, an issue that has sparked controversy in other similar situations. Over the summer, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit over a program under which federal scientists moved 770 tortoises to make way for the expansion of military exercises at the Fort Irwin Army base in California, just north of Twentynine Palms.

Anderson said the Fort Irwin plan "took a big chunk out of the West Mojave Recovery Unit," which the Fish and Wildlife Service identified in its recovery plan and which includes significant critical habitat areas. The new proposal also includes the West Mojave Recovery Unit, and Anderson said, "We don't want it inundated."

Though the bighorn sheep subspecies that could be affected by the land transfer is not a listed species, their population numbers have fallen, and conservation groups remain concerned about protecting their movement corridors.

The notice also said, "The USMC analyzed alternative sites in three regions of the United States (i.e., Middle Atlantic Coast -- North Carolina and Virginia; Gulf of Mexico -- Florida and Louisiana; and Southwest -- California and Arizona). The USMC concluded that expanding the USMC's MCAGCC, located in Twentynine Palms, California, was the only reasonable and feasible option."

But Anderson blasted the proposal, saying, "National security doesn't require seizing and bombing public lands and threatened species habitat. 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."

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