| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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| Habitats Desert Storm II
Fifty years ago expanding a desert military base by a few hundred thousand acres would have been easy. But feelings about the desert (and the military) have changed a lot since then, and today an effort to expand Fort Irwin National Training Center, in the Mojave, has become a major headache for the Army and the Interior Department and a rallying point for desert activists, from gun-rights fanatics to ORVers, hunters, mining lobbyists, scientists, hikers, rock hounds, and wilderness advocates. Despite the Army's claim that our national security may be at stake if the base doesn't expand, none of these groups wants to cede a huge public and natural asset to war games unless it is convinced it is necessary. For the past five years, the Army has cast an acquisitive eye on an area about the size of Connecticut called the Silurian Valley, which lies to the east of Fort Irwin's current boundaries. "This is some of the most beautiful terrain in the California desert," says Mike Aarons, the southern natural resource consultant for the California Association of Four-Wheel-Drive Clubs. Norbert Riedy, the California conservation director of the Wilderness Society, concurs, calling the Avawatz, Soda, and Kingston mountains--all in the proposed expansionarea--"rugged, mostly pristine, and extraordinarily beautiful." In July the Wilderness Society included this area on their list of the ten most important and endangered wild lands in North America. "Important," says Reidy, "because of all the quality wilderness there. Endangered, because of the Army's plans." In a recent series of public hearings on the expansion, the Bureau of Land Management(BLM), the agency now overseeing most of the land that would be transferred and the one charged with making an environmental impact statement on the transfer, was barraged by objections. Four-wheel-drivers have several favorite recreation areas and routes through this area and won't give up access to it without a major fight, they say. Riedy and other environmentalists point to the five Wilderness Study Areas in the expansion zone and to habitats of unusual beauty and remoteness hosting desert bighorn sheep, gila monsters, chuckwallas, and kit foxes, as well as some endangered desert tortoises. The miners claim that between the recent expansion of national parks in the desert and the establishment of reserves and wilderness areas, they have already been excluded from too much exploitable public land. And scientists investigating the plants and animals of these little-studied areas are loathe to curtail their research. In a move that appears to have surprised even the Army, Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi seems to be making an end run around this strange-bedfellows opposition by resurrecting a modified version of the Army's original plan to expand southward into the Coyote Basin area instead of east. This plan was junked five years ago when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) said it would jeopardize a key population of desert tortoise, which was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1990. But in May, Garamendi announced that his agency was trying to buy $100 million worth of land owned by Catellus Development Corporation. This land, explained Garamendi, could be used to mitigate for harm done to the tortoise through a southern expansion of Fort Irwin. Why has Interior suddenly become interested in the southern option again, despite the Army's current preference for the east and the USFWS's own jeopardy opinion on a southern expansion? One interpretation is that the feds are repaying Catellus for not obstructing the Desert Protection Act, a 1994 law that formed the Mojave National Preserve, which now surrounds the Catellus property, reducing its developability. Flush with recent successes brokering land swaps to protect natural resources both in Humboldt County's Headwaters Forest and in Yellowstone National Park, Garamendi may be trying to seize a chance to help Catellus, sidestep the growing opposition to an eastern expansion by going south, and use land purchased from Catellus to mitigate for desert tortoise habitat damage caused by southward expansion. Win, win, win. Right? Probably not. For one thing, no amount of political pressure can change the scientific fact that the tortoise is in danger of extinction and that its situation worsens year by year. And, at least so far, the Endangered Species Act has held up well once the USFWS has made its findings clear, as in this case. To expand the base south, USFWS would have to either reverse its 1992 draft jeopardy opinion or somehow show that the addition of the Catellus land would compensate for the destruction of the heart of the desert tortoise's critical habitat. Neither seems likely. Furthermore, political opposition to a southern expansion is completely untested. It may be as great as, or even greater than, opposition to its eastern alternative. Catellus might have reasons to favor a southern expansion, but other interests from the strange-bedfellows opposition have as many reasons to hate expansion to the south as much as to the east. Though the southern area may be less spectacular desert than the east, as much recreation and mining go on there, and environmentalists feel just as strongly about preserving it as they do about preserving the east. In addition to the endangered desert tortoise's critical habitat the southern expansion area also holds two of the remaining three populations of the Lane Mountain milk vetch. The regional branch of the USFWS has sent their report on the status of this "candidate species" to Washington. If it is listed, the plant could pair up with the tortoise as passive guardians of the south. Going south would also probably be a lot more costly than going east. One hundred million dollars is not easy to raise from Congress in these days of budget squeeze, and that would presumably only purchase the Catellus land, not pay for the tortoise mitigation that would have to occur there. The southern expansion would also bring maneuvers very close to Interstate Highway 15, where dust stirred up by tanks and other training vehicles could cause a major visibility problem for civilian drivers. Furthermore, according to a study co-sponsored by the Sierra Club, Fort Irwin is already the state's largest generator of particulate-matter air pollution.Congressman Jerry Lewis--famous for his opposition to the Desert Protection Act and for using his position as Chair of the Appropriations Committee in his failed attempt to reduce funding for the Mojave National Preserve to one dollar in 1995--has made it clear to BLM and USFWS that he favors southern expansion and has reportedly told them to "Just find a way." The Catellus deal may be Interior's way of trying to do so. With the government's debate raging over whether to go south or east, a third option often goes unmentioned: no expansion. This summer's public hearings following release of the BLM's Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the expansion saw more than a thousand citizens testify against the proposal. A majority of these, says Mike Dekeryel, BLM project manager for the Fort Irwin expansion proposal, questioned the military rationale for increasing the size of Fort Irwin at all. The Army needs to expand for two primary reasons, says Fort Irwin's commander, Brigadier General William S. Wallace. First, new technologies have lengthened the firing range of tanks and cannons beyond testability within Fort Irwin's current boundaries. But second, and more importantly, the Gulf War taught the Army that the brigade--and not the smaller battalion--is the best-proportioned combat unit for modern desert warfare. A brigade includes two 58-tank battalions and as many as seven rear-echelon logistical, artillery, and infantry battalions. Conducting warfare exercises with this many troops requires a lot of space, says Army spokesperson Major Archie Davis. There is enough room within the existing boundaries for the mock combat maneuvers themselves, he says, but not for realistically placed logistics and staging areas. "History has born out that armies fight the way they train. We've got to train in realistic situations," Davis says. One alternative popular among expansion opponents would be for Fort Irwin to share some of China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station's 1,700 square miles, which border Fort Irwin to the west. Never famous for their cooperation, the Army and the Navy have both rejected this proposal, according to Davis. For one thing, there is a mountain range between Fort Irwin and China Lake. "It would cost a million dollars round trip per brigade to just cross the mountains," he says. Furthermore, live weapons tests are conducted 28 days out of the month at China Lake. The Army's quest for realistic combat training apparently has its limits. Elden Hughes, chairman of the Sierra Club's California Desert Committee, doesn't think either of the Army's reasons are sufficient to destroy huge tracts of desert habitat. Weapons will continue to shoot farther and farther, he says. If base size has to keep up with shooting range, all of California will eventually be a military base. "So far," says Hughes, "the Army has not shown us any compelling reason for expanding Fort Irwin. After all, we no longer have Russia as a potential tank-war enemy. Who does the Army think we're going to meet in the desert in brigade-sized forces?" Martinez Congressman George Miller agrees: "At a time when other federal agencies are spending millions of dollars to protect ecologically sensitive desert lands, we should not spend millions which could contribute to the significant degradation of a vast amount of pristine desert land," he wrote in an appeal to Defense Secretary William Cohen. Ultimately, Congress will have to decide in the months to come whether Fort Irwin expands east, south, or not at all. By the time it does, its members should be well aware that Californians cherish their desert habitats and the creatures that occupy them and will be unwilling to see them pulverized without a very good reason. Gordy Slack is Associate Editor of California Wild. |
Fall 1997
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