Show your support for the Desert Lands today!
Sign and send this petition text (or your own edited version) to Acting Director Stout
Dear Acting Director Stout,
We’re writing you to register our support for improved protection, public access, and management of the California Desert National Conservation Lands. These treasured public lands are a valuable part of the National Conservation Lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Located throughout California’s southeast corner, these landscapes hold the habitats, history and culture that reflect the stories and values that make the California Desert so unique. In addition, the economic benefit these lands give to the stability of the region’s tourism and business community continues to grow, making protections even more important. Places like Juniper Flats, Amargosa Basin, and Conglomerate Mesa protect cultural resources, provide for passive outdoor recreation, and form the scenic backdrop for hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Designated because of their exceptional ecological, cultural, and scientific values, these spaces need better policy protections from industrial development, vandalism, and groundwater extraction, including:
- Maintaining Conservation Management Actions that underpin the Congressionally mandated permanent conservation of these lands.
- Protecting these public lands from uses which are not consistent with the conservation purposes for which they were designated such as new rights-of-way, grazing, and illegal off-road vehicle recreation.
- Keeping the California Desert’s open vistas intact as they are for current and future generations to explore and enjoy.
The California Desert National Conservation Lands require better management and stewardship, including:
- Improving the monitoring and management of cultural resources to protect them from vandalism.
- Ensuring off-road vehicles stay on designated routes.
- Restoring areas previously impacted by OHVs and other activities to their natural state. In some places, out of control OHV use is quickly destroying our natural heritage before our very eyes.
People from California, throughout the country and across the globe deserve improved access to these special places. This means:
- Making sure diverse communities can navigate and better understand what these lands have to offer.
- Improving route signage on hiking and riding trails, roads, as well as installing entry kiosks with trail and backcountry with informational materials in different languages.
For the benefit of our collective history, current cultural and ecological necessities, and the future we want to offer generations to come, we ask that you stand with the thousands of public lands advocates in calling for improved management, public access, and protection of the irreplaceable California Desert National Conservation Lands.
Signed,
[Your Name Here]
