Obama designates 3 new national monuments in California desert

WASHINGTON — President Obama invoked the 1906 Antiquities Act on Thursday to designate three new national monuments in the California desert, protecting 1.8 million acres of Mojave Desert lands, including the longest remaining undeveloped section of historic Route 66.

The White House said the designations demonstrate “the administration’s strong commitment to aggressive action to protect the environment for future generations.”

By sheer acreage alone, the designations, combined with her 9.4 million-acre Desert Protection Act of 1994, ensure Feinstein’s legacy as one of California’s great conservationists.

Much of the land that became protected Thursday was under threat of massive solar and wind development in 2008 and 2009, instigated in part by Obama’s push to site renewable energy on public lands to tackle climate change.

Fueled by roughly $50 billion in stimulus money, solar developments were proposed along the Route 66 corridor, a stunning vista of pristine desert lands that most travelers today view from Interstate 40 as they travel between Barstow and Needles (San Bernardino County).

Bulldozing those soils to make way for solar panels or wind towers releases the carbon, scientists say, erasing any advantage of locating renewable energy plants there.

The designations are “the pinnacle of a 15-year effort to preserve the heart of the Mojave Desert,” said David Myers, head of the Wildlands Conservancy, which bought 1,000 square miles of former railroad lands now in the Mojave Trails monument for $45 million in 1999, cleaned the property of a century of trash and gave it back to the federal government, only to see the government open the property for industrial development.

Feinstein turned to Obama after failing for six years to move a broader desert conservation bill through Congress because of Republican opposition to restrictions on public lands.

Nonetheless, GOP lawmakers, led by Rep. Paul Cook, the San Bernardino Republican who represents the affected district, has proposed legislation that would create the same three national monuments.

If so, the additional Feinstein protections for off-road vehicle use — a necessity for many desert travelers — and additions to the national parks and new wilderness may fall by the wayside.

Feinstein’s first Desert Protection Act passed the Senate by a single vote in 1994, but eventually was widely embraced as tourism replaced mining and cattle grazing as the linchpin of the desert economy.