Mojave Administrative History

The Political Battle Over the CDPA

While BLM was struggling to create a management plan that was both compatible with its multiple-use mission and satisfactory to users across the spectrum, Cranston's California Desert Protection Act became enmeshed in national politics. The California Desert Protection Act's fate, from its introduction through its final passage in 1994, was tied closely to the maneuvering of U.S. Senators, congressional representatives, and lobbying forces for national organizations. As with any park bill, the CDPA had advocates and detractors, and their relative political power and adroit management of the issue played a major role in the final version on the bill.

The pro-CDPA groups, unified under the California Desert Protection League umbrella, took most of their strategies and techniques from the Sierra Club. Founded in 1892 by John Muir and other well-known conservationists, the Sierra Club long cultivated close ties with policymakers. In the early 1980s, environmental organizations benefited enormously from public backlash against the anti-environment policies of the Reagan administration. The Sierra Club nearly doubled its membership between 1980 and 1983 and became the most powerful pro-environment organization in the United States, with extensive lobbying experience, close ties to many congressional representatives, and considerable legislative acumen. [91] Prodded by its powerful urban Southern California membership, the national leadership of the Sierra Club committed in 1984 to a comprehensive desert bill, opening a host of resources for those Californians leading the fight. The Sierra Club wrote the text of Cranston's CDPA bill, drew the maps showing the new parks and wilderness areas, and collected photos and narrative descriptions of every location included in the bill. The Sierra Club relied on information created by BLM planners in the course of creating the original Desert Plan, but the organization's political savvy transformed that work to advocate the passage of the CDPA. [92]

Cranston was the California Desert Protection Act's senatorial author and chief advocate in that body. Cranston had a genuine love of the desert - one of his earlier desert bills became the section of FLPMA that called for creation of the Desert Plan. In 1987, he took a series of trips to the desert to raise public awareness of the area and the bill before Congress and was fond of describing his earlier desert hikes. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Cranston's bill did not progress in the Senate because of Pete Wilson, the Republican who held California's other Senate seat. Through 1987 and 1988, Wilson was carefully noncommittal about the CDPA, hoping to earn part of the pro-environment vote in his 1988 reelection campaign. The Sierra Club endorsed his opponent Leo T. McCarthy, who was strongly in favor of the CDPA, and Wilson's neutrality turned to hostility toward the CDPA until he resigned his Senate seat and became governor of California in 1990. [93]

The push for the California Desert Protection Act began in earnest in January 1987, when Cranston reintroduced his 1986 bill as the new session of Congress began. Known as S.7, Cranston's bill was also introduced by California Representative Mel Levine in the House as HR 371. Unlike its senatorial predecessor, which was introduced late in the session and was never acted upon, S.7 received several days of testimony, both pro and con, during hearings on the bill. Of greater importance to the eventual success of the CDPA was the media attention S.7 received in California. The California Desert Protection League worked to get endorsements of the bill, but S.7 never advanced to a vote because of Wilson's opposition. [94]

Undaunted, Cranston reintroduced the bill in January 1989 as S.11, and Representative Levine's identical House version, HR 780, was introduced a week later. [95] Some minor adjustments were made by Cranston and Levine to appease specific opponents, a pattern that continued throughout the legislative history of the California Desert Protection Act. By the time S.11 was introduced, members of the California Desert Protection League had gathered large numbers of endorsements from counties, cities, and organizations throughout California. The eight largest cities in the state endorsed the idea, as did most of the urban counties of Northern and Southern California. Opponents of the bill, including California State BLM Director Ed Hastey, worked to gain endorsements of their position as well, and received the support of rural governments and local desert populations in their fight against the act.

The opposition to the California Desert Protection Act can broadly be categorized as a loose coalition of issue-specific opponents combined with a core of anti-Park Service, anti-government ideologues. Pro-mining, pro-OHV, pro-grazing, and pro-hunting groups, along with utility and communications companies, all believed that their primary issue would receive less regulation and fewer restrictions under BLM management than under NPS control. Additionally, some citizens disliked increased government regulation in any form, and opposed a park in the Mojave. While they identified with and worked with the single-issue advocates, the broadly anti-park forces were often locals, who believed that the eastern Mojave did not qualify as a park and that the Park Service would ruin their way of life if the area changed to a different government agency. Anti-park feelings were intensified by the fact that most pro-park forces did not live in the area; locals saw the CDPA as an example of outsiders and politicians who did not know the desert telling them what to do. This attitude was a legacy of the "Sagebrush Rebellion," the states rights movement that briefly flourished in the West between 1979-1982, and the so-called "Wise Use" movement that echoed it a decade later. The Sagebrush Rebellion and its later incarnations derived their power from a widespread fear that environmental regulations conflicted with economic activity. Concern for the environment has been labeled a "full-stomach" phenomenon, most prominent when times are good economically. In the prosperous days of the 1960s, it seemed as though there was more than enough to go around, but after the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 started the American economy into a long downward slide, workers and politicians alike worried that newly enacted environmental laws would cost jobs and stunt America's growth. Politically, most of those who subscribed to the tenets of the Sagebrush Rebellion gravitated toward the Republican Party. Most of the staunch political opponents of the CDPA, such as Senator Malcolm Wallop of Idaho and Representative Jerry Lewis of California, traced their political philosophy to the Sagebrush Rebellion and acted against the CDPA out of concerns of expansion of federal control and increased environmental regulation. [96]

Those actively in favor of the California Desert Protection Act generally identified themselves as environmentalists and often were members of one or more nationally organized conservation groups. They generally believed the Bureau of Land Management, because of its multiple-use mission and its history of conflicting management policies, could not be trusted to provide lasting protection for fragile desert lands. Over time and after significant media coverage of the CDPA debate, much of the urban California public agreed with the need for greater protection for parts of the California desert. The urban press at its most extreme portrayed the main CDPA opponents as welfare ranchers, welfare miners, right-wing extremists, and juvenile yahoos on fast dirt bikes who tore up the desert for thrills. Certainly, such hyperbole and exaggeration contributed to a lack of sympathy for CDPA opponents among the urban California public.

Illustration 10 - Many desert users fiercely opposed the CDPA. This painted sign, constructed by a four-wheel drive club, still hangs on a building in a remote part of the Preserve. (Photo by Eric Nystrom, 2002.)

Congressional field hearings demonstrated the depth of feeling on both sides of the CDPA issue, but the public's sharply polarized views did nothing to break the senatorial stalemate. In July 1989, the House began holding hearings on HR 780, with typical Washington, DC-based hearings supplemented by three field meetings in California. The first, in late October 1989 in Bishop, set the tone for the subsequent two hearings. Supporters of the CDPA arrived in yellow shirts, and opponents, mostly off-road vehicle users, wore orange. Estimates of attendance ran as high as about one thousand, evenly divided between opponents and supporters. Both sides cheered or booed speakers, according to their philosophy, and chanted slogans supporting their positions. At the second hearing, held in Barstow two weeks later, both sides used the same kinds of tactics, although supporters got a jump on the opponents and occupied most of the chairs in the meeting room as soon as the doors were opened, guaranteeing a "sea of yellow" in the Congressmen's view. The final hearing, held in Beverly Hills in February 1990, was chaotic, filled with angry and rude OHV riders smarting from the two-month-old announcement of the cancellation of the 1990 Barstow to Vegas ride. These hearings seemed to do nothing more than polarize debate over the CDPA. Later that year, Wilson and Senator James McClure (R-Idaho), a long-time opponent of conservation in almost every form, halted S.11's progress in a Senate subcommittee. [97]

Although the California Desert Protection Act was associated most closely with Senator Cranston, the most substantial moves toward desert protection in the early 1990s took place in the House of Representatives, where a clear Democratic majority and spirited leadership overcame obstacles that derailed the Senate version. Beginning in 1991, conservation groups focused their lobbying energy on the House after it became apparent that senatorial deference precluded further action on Cranston's reintroduced bill - S.21. Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who became a leading supporter of the CDPA, chaired the House Interior Committee. He assigned Mel Levine and Rick Lehman, two California supporters who had different visions for the CDPA, to a special subcommittee to draft a bill that would be an acceptable compromise. Levine favored a proposal with a Mojave National Park, but Lehman disagreed, believing that the area did not merit national park status. The bill they crafted, HR 2929, gave several concessions to leading single-issue opponents, and specified the creation of Mojave National Monument, with no hunting allowed. Despite opposition from Rep. Jerry Lewis, who had his own limited-protection bill, and the Bush administration, which proposed only ratifying those WSAs approved during the Watt years as wilderness, HR 2929 reached the House floor in late November. Opponents tried to pass several amendments that would have killed the bill, but the Democratic-majority House, combined with Miller's strong leadership, foiled the attempts. One amendment, authorizing hunting in Mojave National Monument, was approved largely as a way for lawmakers to appease the powerful National Rifle Association. HR 2929, including Mojave National Monument with hunting allowed, passed the House of Representatives on November 26, 1991. [98]

The bill did not pass the Senate. At first, Senator John Seymour, Wilson's appointed successor, indicated a willingness to compromise with the proponents of the CDPA. Under pressure from Republican leaders and the Bush White House, Seymour's stance turned to opposition. Senator Cranston announced that he intended to retire in 1992, and Republicans were unwilling to give him a legacy project. In April 1992, Seymour held a U.S. Senate field hearing - a rare event - in Palm Desert, California, where the typically polarized testimony took place. Seymour used the opportunity to speak against the CDPA and its advocates, an unpopular position based on a 3-to-1 margin of support for the CDPA bill among Californians in a September poll. In June, desperate to see to fruition the project he championed for years, Cranston offered to reduce the size of BLM wilderness and eliminate Mojave National Park entirely, but Seymour refused to compromise. S.21 did not make it out of committee. [99]

The political landscape changed drastically in the November 1992 election, and with it, the California Desert Protection Act gained its first real chance of success. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was elected president, removing White House opposition to the passage of the CDPA. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, filled Cranston's seat, and pledged her support for the act as well. More importantly, an election was held at the same time for the seat held by Seymour, who was originally appointed when Wilson resigned to become governor. Seymour lost in the Republican primary, and Democrat Dianne Feinstein beat her Republican challenger to win Wilson's former post. As a result of the staggered Senate terms, Feinstein had to run for the Senate again in 1994, just two years hence. Like Boxer, Feinstein supported the CDPA, and made an issue of it on the campaign trail. In support of Feinstein's impending reelection, Boxer agreed to let her colleague spearhead the fight. Passage of the CDPA became Feinstein's top priority, and would be proof to the voters that the new senator could do her job well. Feinstein hired Kathy Lacey, Cranston's environmental aide, who had been very involved in the CDPA effort from the beginning. [100]

In January 1993, Feinstein introduced the California Desert Protection Act as S.21, which consisted of most of Cranston's last bill, plus many of the HR 2929 compromises. The draft included provisions for a Mojave National Park without hunting, continuation of grazing for twenty-five years, and exclusion of Viceroy Gold's claims around the Castle Mountain Mine from the park. In the House, Rick Lehman introduced HR 518, similar to Feinstein's S.21 but calling for a Mojave National Monument, with no sunset on grazing in the park, and with Viceroy's claims included in the monument's boundaries. In late 1992, Henri Bisson replaced Gerry Hillier as the BLM Manager of the California Desert District. Not in favor of the bill, Bisson was willing to work civilly with the CDPA advocates to make minor boundary adjustments on the congressional maps based on up-to-date information from the field. [101]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had been the failure point for previous CDPA attempts, but from the first hearings in April 1993 onward, prospects looked good for the bill. Proponents organized a campaign to convince Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-Louisiana), chair of the committee, that the proposal was worthy of his support. Johnston was initially in favor of hunting in Mojave National Park, but after his daughter told him that she was afraid of hunters' guns in an NPS Preserve in Louisiana, Johnston supported a no-hunting park. Feinstein made a considerable number of compromises to appease single-issue opponents to the bill. She compromised with the American Motorcycle Association over desert OHV routes, the Catellus company on land swap provisions, and utilities on rights of way issues, to name only a few. One crucial concession came after Feinstein visited the Oversons and the Blairs, two ranching families in the eastern Mojave. They argued that any sunset on grazing would destroy the value of their leases and their livelihoods, and convinced Feinstein to change the proposal to allow grazing indefinitely. [102]

Feinstein was not a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, so Senator Dale Bumpers (D-Arkansas) agreed to work on her behalf in committee. Republicans on the committee attempted to burden the bill with "poison pill" amendments - provisions that would undo the legislation if passed - but the Democratic majority managed to defeat all of them. One problem arose over the issue of what to do with the private lands in Lanfair Valley. Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, favored a complex management formula; Feinstein preferred a much simpler alternative, and Senator Wallop argued that the valley should simply be deleted from the park. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-Colorado), who had been voting with the Democrats, agreed with Wallop for an unexplained reason likely associated with his future March 1995 switch to the Republican party, and the amendment deleting Lanfair Valley was inserted in the bill. The map that the committee called "Lanfair Valley" in actuality covered much more than the valley itself - some twenty percent of the total land, from Piute Creek to Hole-in-the-Wall, was included on the map, and therefore was left out of the park. Without any of the senators realizing what happened, the bill passed out of committee on October 5, 1993. [103]

Conservationists quickly realized that the deletion of lands in Lanfair Valley, known as the "Lanfair Bite," was an omission of major proportion. Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club produced a series of photographs, keyed to a map, that depicted major resources that would be left out if the Bite went through. Gary Overson, whose lands were included in the Lanfair Bite, wrote to Feinstein asking to have his property included in the park, to make it possible for him to sell his ranch to the Park Service if he so desired. The bill moved to the Senate floor in late March, and serious debate began in April 1994. Several procedural amendments were added without debate, then Senator Wallop proposed an amendment that would delete Mojave National Park from the bill. After much debate, Wallop's amendment failed. Another poison pill amendment was proposed and failed. Then several other hostile amendments were withdrawn before debate. Senator Johnston added an amendment creating the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, then announced that there were no more amendments. Park opponents, led by Wallop, cut a deal with Johnston and Feinstein: if CDPA proponents did not add any more amendments, the opposition would not either. Feinstein had to make the choice between a flawed Senate bill or none at all. She decided to try to make up the deficiencies in the House, and let the bill pass on April 13, 1994. [104]

Two weeks later, Congressman Miller began the committee process in the House. The House version called for a National Monument without hunting in the eastern Mojave. Rick Lehman offered an amendment, since known as the "Lanfair Nibble," that excluded any non-Catellus private lands from the park, thereby addressing the property rights concerns that prompted the original Lanfair Bite without unnecessarily excluding vast amounts of federal land from the park. The rest of the bill passed the committee the same day. [105]

There are no filibusters in the House, but a similar stalling effect can be achieved by throwing amendments at a bill until time for debate runs out. This was die-hard opponent Jerry Lewis' strategy to kill the CDPA. The House Rules Committee, which sets procedures for debate on each House bill, acted at the urging of CDPA proponents to make it more difficult for Lewis to carry out his plan by requiring that all amendments to HR 518 must be printed ahead of time. Even so, Lewis and his allies were able to print some forty amendments in time. The rule allowing the CDPA to come to the floor passed on May 17, though not before some unusually acrimonious debate between Lewis and Miller. After the rule passed, time could be scheduled to debate the bill before the House, but only when appropriations bills were not under consideration, as that legislation takes precedence over other House business. The House worked on the bill throughout June and July, a little bit at a time, as Lewis successfully prolonged the proceedings such that only a few amendments could be considered on any given day. [106]

House opponents successfully added one of the most significant changes to the bill, the addition of hunting in what later became Mojave National Preserve. On July 12, Larry Larocco (D-Idaho) proposed an amendment to allow hunting in the east Mojave park proposed by the bill, and call the unit a National Preserve rather than a National Monument. His amendment passed, by a vote of 239-183, in the majority-Democratic House - a clear indication of the bipartisan power of the National Rifle Association and other pro-hunting groups. These lobbying groups harkened to the recreational value of hunting activity, the historic nature of the practice, and the benefits derived by non-hunted animals from water sources improved for game animals. [107]

The hunting issue was more complex than proponents of the change allowed. The primary game animals, in terms of numbers of hunters and numbers of animals harvested, were deer and upland birds like quail and chukar. The total annual harvest of deer, an introduced species in the area, was less than twenty-five animals annually, which, as conservation lobbyists were fond of pointing out, was fewer than the number that were hit and killed by automobiles each month on the George Washington Parkway in D.C. There were many places in California and the west that offered better deer and bird hunting. However, the east Mojave was one of the only places in the world where hunting of Nelson Bighorn Sheep was allowed, beginning in 1987. The volume was small, with an average of five or six tags a year distributed by a computer's random number generator, and one additional tag auctioned publicly, usually for more than $100,000, with the money going back to California Department of Fish and Game. Sheep hunting, an elite activity practiced in small volume by rich hunters, was the biggest reason that the National Rifle Association and other pro-hunting groups worked so tirelessly to permit hunting in Mojave National Preserve, even though their public arguments largely ignored the issue. [108]

By late July 1994, George Miller noticed that members of the House of Representatives were growing tired of Lewis's stalling tactics. Miller engineered a motion to cut off debate and vote on the bill. It passed on July 27, 1994. [109] Even though the Senate and the House had both passed the bill, it was still possible for opponents to kill the measure. If both houses did not pass an identical conference bill before they adjourned in October, the measure would simply vanish without a vote, and the process would have to begin anew the following session. Lewis pledged to delay the bill, and Senator Wallop likewise promised to filibuster. In the Senate, a vote of cloture, which limits debate and cuts off a filibuster, is itself a multiple-day process that requires sixty votes to pass, and the simple procedure of going to conference over a bill requires three motions, each potentially subject to a separate filibuster. In late August, both Lewis and Wallop suggested a compromise that would create a small park in the eastern Mojave, surrounded by a larger preserve with hunting permitted. This proposal was inspired by the example of the Alaska parks created by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, known by its acronym ANILCA, where sportsmen are allowed to hunt in national preserves, administered by the Park Service, that adjoin several national parks in Alaska. Some proponents were willing to go along with the plan, but the Park Service did not agree with the compromise and the idea was dropped. [110]

Conservation advocates marshaled their forces to fight conservative threats to the desert bill. Environmental organizations utilized nationwide phone banks to rally support against Wallop's probable filibuster. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell planned to retire that year, but agreed to help whenever possible. The first motions needed to send the bill to a conference committee were scheduled for a Thursday, and Mitchell threatened to hold the Senate in session over the weekend to break the filibuster if it was necessary to do so. Under pressure from both sides of the aisle, Wallop agreed to a deal whereby the Senate waited the same amount of time a filibuster would have taken before voting. On October 4, 1994, the Senate voted to go to conference and appointed the conferees. The same afternoon, the House took up the measure. Lewis again tried to delay, succeeding only in stretching thirty seconds worth of voting into a multiple-hour procedure. Before the conferees met, Johnston, Feinstein, and Miller agreed that, because of the lateness of the session and the political factors involved, the ultimate compromise would consist of a Mojave National Preserve with hunting, as specified by the House where the National Rifle Association held considerable power, but that the Lanfair Bite would be reduced to the Lanfair Nibble. At the appropriate time, the majority of conferees met and passed the agreed-upon compromise in less than two minutes, adjourning before the Republican minority could arrive and delay the proceedings. [111]

According to Senate rules, the House was required to pass the conference report first. After considering other business and further delays by Lewis, the House passed the final bill after 1:00am on October 7, the day Congress was scheduled to adjourn. After the House vote, the Senate considered the measure. Wallop insisted on his right to filibuster, and in response Mitchell announced that he would hold the Senate past the scheduled date of adjournment until the filibuster was broken and the bill passed. National elections were less than a month away, and several of Wallop's GOP colleagues, up for reelection, prevailed on the Senator to relax his demands and permit a cloture vote to be taken at 10:00am on Saturday, October 8, 1994.

A victory for the pro-conservation forces was by no means assured. Cloture required sixty votes, which meant that several Republicans had to vote, along with every Democrat, to proceed. To make things worse, senators were already leaving town, and some had to be persuaded to stay an extra day or be brought back to Washington to vote. Earlier votes showed a large number of Republicans in favor of the measure, mostly because the bill was a pro-environment vote that did not affect their state, but the Republican Senate leadership asked members to hold their vote unless the bill was clearly going to pass. If enough Republican senators held their votes, the remaining Democrats could not break the filibuster. Several pro-environment moderate Republicans voted for cloture anyway. In a moment of high drama, the tally of votes for cloture reached fifty nine and stopped. Just after time expired, Senator Carole Moseley-Braun (D-Illinois), delayed by a malfunctioning garage-door opener, burst into the chamber to cast the deciding vote. With passage assured, seven more Republicans who withheld their votes endorsed the cloture, and the bill itself passed by voice vote moments later. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on October 31, 1994, eliminating the East Mojave National Scenic Area and giving birth to the Mojave National Preserve. [112]

During the long debate about the California Desert Protection Act, most of the single-issue opponents were pacified by compromise. Some active mines and mining claims were drawn outside the boundaries to placate mining interests, grazing was allowed to continue indefinitely instead of expiring after twenty five years as originally planned, utilities were given specific language in the final bill permitting expansion and upgrade of rights-of-way, and after much debate, hunting was permitted in the park. Those opponents with the most political clout, such as the National Rifle Association, tended to object to a single issue. As such, the ranks of CDPA opponents were gradually whittled away, leaving in the final calculus a passable though compromised bill and a small group of die-hard opponents who felt as though they had been ignored as the park had been forced upon them. These opponents included many local residents and at least one powerful U.S. Congressman, and provided a note of discord that was largely ignored in the conservationists' elation over the bill's passage and the subsequent difficulties encountered in starting a new unit of the National Park Service.