Floods | By Birgitta Jansen | “I’ve never in my life been so scared,” said Isabelle Woodward as she told the tale of Sunday evening, October 18, 2015. On that night a major storm was flooding Grapevine Canyon in the park’s north end. Isabelle, a park guide at Scotty’s Castle, and her husband Mike […]
Moving Forward with Protection | by Laura Cunningham | Desert lovers applauded the declaration on February 12 of three new national monuments in the California Desert. Using the Antiquities Act, the President issued proclamations creating the monuments after more than a decade of legislative work by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as well as tireless […]
Air, Water, Health, And Habitat Are At Stake | By Kim Delfino | Fourteen years ago, the California State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) and California Legislature decided to approve the largest agriculture-to-urban transfer of water in the country. At its peak, the water transfer would move more than 367,000 acre-feet of Colorado […]
In this issue: • Death Valley’s Wettest October On Record • The Clock Is Ticking At The Salton Sea • Birding The Salton Sea • Three New National Monuments In The CA Desert • Lane Mountain Milk-Vetch, Part 2 • National Lands Conservation System Designations In The DRECP • The Vulcan Mine • Anza-Borrego Aims […]
Oak Flat is an Old Story | By Roger Featherstone | The Apache Leap Escarpment towers above the mining town of Superior, Arizona, an hour east of Phoenix. This site is sacred to Native Americans and lies on the western edge of the Oak Flat Plateau. An ecological and recreational haven, this larger area is under […]
By Connie Rutherford | In April 1985, botanist Mark Bagley and his field crew were picking their way across the bajadas of Area B, on the Army’s Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC) north of Barstow when they stumbled upon a plant species that hadn’t been seen in 44 years: it was the enigmatic Lane […]
Mining, Environment, and Politics | By Steve Martin | For years, my family has visited Grand View Point, where, in the 1880s, stagecoach passengers first glimpsed the Grand Canyon. At this forgotten and quiet spot, we stand at the rim and hold our breath. Six feet ahead, the ground drops 5,000 feet into a […]
In this issue: • Uranium Mining Puts Grand Canyon At Risk • Oak Flat: Mining, Environment And Politics • A New Generation Of Desert Advocates • “Internship Or Vacation”: Beyond The Classroom • A Rare Opportunity: Three Proposed Desert Monuments • James Wilson Remembered • Lane Mountain Milk-vetch: Back From The Brink, Or Not? • […]
By Tom Budlong | In managing the public lands, the Secretary shall, by regulation or otherwise, take any action necessary to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation of the lands. This excerpt has become almost famous, even acquiring a common acronym, “UUD.” It’s from the 1976 Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) that, after […]
By Ruth Nolan | There are stories of the Mojave Desert in books, and there are stories of the Mojave Desert’s indigenous people and their long history in this fabled and cherished geography, embedded in the Mojave Desert’s stunning rock spires, sacred caverns, mysterious canyons, and the long, slow, wide-mouthed alluvial fans spilling from these […]
