Desert Lands In Three California Parks Being Protected Through Partnership Efforts

Many national parks include inholdings, privately-owned property which poses a potential threat for development that would be detrimental to surrounding park lands. Unfortunately, Congress often fails to appropriate funds in a timely fashion to purchase these inholdings, even if an owner wants to sell to the NPS. In the case of three California desert parks, a non-profit partner is helping to fill this gap.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT) was founded in 2005 by concerned local citizens to "acquire critical habitat for permanent preservation in the Mojave Desert, a need that cannot always be met with public dollars." MDLT went to work immediately to secure private funds from philanthropic foundations, non-profit organizations, and individual donors, and by 2006 had acquired its first property for gifting to the National Park Service. 

Over the past eight years, this public-private partnership has completed 234 transactions which "resulted in the federal acquisition and permanent preservation of over 15,000 acres of private inholdings in three desert areas." Much of this property has been donated to the NPS by the MDLT. The property acquired is located in Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and Mojave National Preserve.

Plenty of Work Still To Do

The organization is making great progress, but it won't run out of projects anytime soon. According to the MDLT's website, "There are more than 98,000 acres of private land held by more than 2,200 landowners located within these three parks, with the majority located within Mojave National Preserve."

"Development of these lands for rural home sites, commercial and solar facilities, and off-road-vehicle recreational areas threaten adjacent national park lands," the group notes. "Uncontrolled land use activities, such as dumping and land clearing, also adversely impact these ecosystems and the wild and scenic nature of these vast national parks."

Parks Also Benefit From Group's Protection of Nearby Lands

NPS areas can also benefit from land acquisition outside the park boundary by partner groups. In 2013, a cooperative effort by The Trust for Public Land and the Mojave Desert Land Trust resulted in purchase of a 623-acre parcel of land near Joshua Tree National Park. Plans had called for 2,400 homes to be built on the property, which includes more than 10,000 Joshua trees and sits near the northern edge of the national park. 

MDLT currently holds over 10,000 acres in the three desert parks and plans to convey all of them to NPS over time. In 2011, Secretary of the Interior Salazar called for a collaborative, landscape-scale proposal to identify critical interagency land acquisition needs in the Mojave Desert, using the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) as the funding vehicle.

In fiscal year 2014, Congress recognized the need with a LWCF appropriation of $2.3 million to acquire land at Joshua Tree and Mojave. Most of the land identified for acquisition is owned by MDLT.

According to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition, the LWCF "was a bipartisan commitment to safeguard natural areas, water resources and our cultural heritage, and to provide recreation opportunities to all Americans. The idea was to use revenues from the depletion of one natural resource - offshore oil and gas - to support the conservation of another precious resource - our land and water." 

It seemed like a fine concept, but another organization, the Trust For Public Land, notes that while the "LWCF is authorized at $900 million annually," Congress has rarely actually approved that funding level. As a result, public funds are often unavailable when the opportunity arises to purchase an inholding from a willing seller.

Preventing Lost Opportunities for Land Protection

In such situations, groups such as the Mojave Desert Land Trust can step in to avoid a lost opportunity, protect the property from development, and hold it until the NPS can come up with the funds for the purchase. In such cases, depending upon the funds available for the non-profit group, the property can be either donated or resold to the NPS.

According to NPS spokesperson Gregory Gress, "The NPS Pacific West Region's Lands Division is currently working to purchase over 100 tracts from MDLT at market value. The well-established collaborative relationship that PWR Lands and MDLT enjoy greatly facilitates the transfer of these critical lands to federal ownership and protection."

Since August 2014 alone, the PWR Lands Division has finalized the acquisition of 11 tracts containing approximately 200 acres within Mojave National Preserve.

There's a key benefit to this public-private partnership, Gress notes. "All proceeds from the sale of MDLT's lands to NPS will be used by MDLT to purchase more in-holdings from willing sellers in the three desert parks. Now that's an investment any public-private partnership would envy."