Coalition urges BLM to protect desert targeted for large project

A group of former Interior Department officials, conservationists, scientists, and local business and government leaders is asking the Bureau of Land Management to reject a controversial proposed solar power project near the Mojave National Preserve in the Southern California desert.  Instead, the diverse group wrote in a petition letter delivered late Friday to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell that they want BLM to permanently protect the area where the agency is considering approval of the 358-megawatt Soda Mountain Solar Project, which would sit on 2,500 acres of federal land in San Bernardino County.
The photovoltaic solar project has drawn heavy fire from conservation groups and some federal and state agencies because of its location adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve and its potential impacts on sensitive wildlife species and habitat. BLM is expected in the coming weeks to issue a final environmental impact statement (EIS) that could advance the project. The letter to Jewell -- signed by 120 individuals, including three former Mojave National Preserve superintendents -- asks that BLM designate the proposed site of the solar plant, as well as additional areas among the North and South Soda Mountains, as a formal area of critical environmental concern (ACEC). They want it off-limits to a commercial-scale solar project due to sensitive habitat for a host of species, including bighorn sheep, kit fox, burrowing owl and the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise. The letter follows the submittal last month by the National Parks Conservation Association of a formal petition to designate the site as an ACEC...more