Mojave Desert Blog

Clark Mountain is an impressive mass towering over the desert, and visible from many parts of the Mojave National Preserve. This photo was taken from the New York Mountains, with Clark Mountain in the distance, across the Ivanpah Valley.

How much has changed since Michael Jackson's Earth Song video was released in the mid-1990s?  The most sustainable change starts from the grassroots. Not from slogans, mass e-mails, glossy PR campaigns, or Wall Street.

Of all nature's wonders that capture our attention, it's easy to take our soil for granted. But a new study reaffirms the importants of cryptobiotic soil crusts.  As the study explains, "organisms fuse with soil particles, stabilizing desert crusts and forming fragile peaks in the soil that influence a variety of processes to allocate important resources." KCET published a great article on these crusts and explaining the important functions they play in desert ecosystems.  These layers take many years to form, and are very fragile.  As we disturb and destroy desert soils, we are turning back the clock on an ecological fabric that could take decades to repair itself. The dark striations on the soil in the center area of the photo is a patch of cryptobiotic crust in the Ivanpah Valley, where First Solar plans to build its Silver State South solar power project.

The Department of Interior today released the final version of a policy that will smooth the way for industrial-scale solar energy development on public lands throughout America's southwestern deserts.   Even though Interior weakened environmental protections seen in earlier drafts, and crafted the policy to meet industry demands--essentially putting on paper what is already Interior's de facto policy of allowing solar companies to bulldoze wherever they please--several national environmental groups still applauded the announcement, including the Sierra Club, NRDC, the Wilderness Society, and the national Audubon Society.  Their statements of support for the policy probably represent efforts to put positive spin on what is ultimately an environmental catastrophe for the renewable energy industry and our public lands. Corporate Giveaway of Public Lands The final policy--which is expected to be signed by Secretary Salazar later this year--designates nearly 30,000 square miles

Biologists tried to warn BrightSource Energy not to build a massive solar project in the Ivanpah Valley -- an area with a particularly high number of the normally hard-to-find desert tortoise.  The company did not listen, and the company's costly plans to "mitigate" its environmental damage may not do much to improve the recovery of this threatened species.  Now that it has mowed and bulldozed nearly 5.6 square miles of prime desert tortoise habitat, the company is now responsible for nearly 400 orphaned or displaced tortoises that have survived the bulldozer blades or were born to mothers that were put in cages during construction. Several tortoises died last year after being attacked by ants in their holding pens, or after they were left wandering the construction area now devoid of any life-saving shade and burrows.  In May, the company reported to the California Energy Commission (CEC) that 6 tortoises have been lost -- three of the tortoises were juveniles being he

BLM sent a letter to the California Energy Commission (CEC) this month recommending stronger measures to mitigate or monitor BrightSource Energy's proposed Hidden Hills Solar project.  If approved, the project would be built in the Pahrump Valley next to th California-Nevada border, and draw an estimated 227.1 million gallons of water during a 29-month construction period, and 45.6 million gallons each year during operation.  Groundwater is already severely overdrawn in the Pahrump Valley, causing subsidence in the land that may ultimately reduce. the amount of water that can be stored. BLM provided the following photo of large cracks in the land near the proposed Hidden Hills solar site-- an indication of subsidence resulting from overdrawn groundwater. Photo from BLM submission to the CEC. In its submission to the CEC, BLM noted that simply requiring BrightSource to replace extracted water at some point over the expected 30 year life of the project may not be sufficient

Many national environmmental groups think that the solution is to find alliances with multi-million dollar companies on Wall Street to advance a sustainable agenda. But when they do that, they have to make compromises on how they define "sustainable" and "green".  The world can only be sustainable if the 99% acts sustainably.  Solar panels on rooftops, not on desert wildlands.  Flipping off the light switch for the room you are not using. Recycling your plastics.  Taking a bike, and not a car.  Sharing the planet with a growing population will not be easy, and saving the wildlands we love will be even more challenging.