At Wilderness, we're working to pass Senator Dianne Feinstein’s California Desert Protection Act to preserve the Mohave Desert’s spectacular wildlands.
The Wilderness Society is part of a coalition of community, conservation and business groups working to pass Senator Dianne Feinstein’s California Desert Protection Act.
The government approved the Lucerne Valley Solar site in the California desert in October 2010. If constructed, the project will produce 45 megawatts of solar energy.
Legislation Will Preserve California Desert and Accommodate Renewable Energy
WASHINGTON, D.C.– The Wilderness Society is pressing for Congressional support of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s California Desert Protection Act of 2010 which will be considered at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
LOS ANGELES — Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced legislation today to preserve the spectacular heritage of the California desert by creating two new National Monuments and expanding Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks and the Mojave National Preserve. The bill would establish new wilderness areas in Death Valley National Park and on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service. Finally, the legislation would also establish a permitting process for all renewable energy projects on BLM land.
Gazing across the California desert, one is rewarded by a startling beauty found nowhere else on earth.
It is a rare landscape, painted in ever-changing hues from soft lilac to fiery crimson, its palette shifting as the sun tracks across the ancient lakebeds, volcanic fields and rugged peaks.
It’s also a refuge where springs, waterfalls and year-round rivers support oases brimming with life.
Surviving the 140-degree heat of the Mojave Desert requires a mean set of survival skills that the desert tortoise holds second to none. But while the tortoise can live without water for a year or more, the loss of habitat has caused its numbers to decline by 90 percent since the 1980s. Today, the desert tortoise is listed as a threatened species.
Our focus at The Wilderness Society is preserving spectacular lands like the California Desert and our national forests, but the critical decisions that determine their future sometimes take place inside the rarified realm of a federal courtroom.
