Smart Planning Leads to Wins for Wildlife in the California Desert

The sun is just beginning to light up the granite peaks of the Eastern Sierra Nevada as I drive up Highway 395 in the Owen’s Valley. I imagine what this spectacular valley could look like if covered end to end with industrial scale wind and solar facilities. I imagine what that would mean for the migratory birds, the Mohave ground squirrels and the other wildlife that call this spectacular valley home. This image and my love for wild, vast and breathtaking places in the California desert is what inspires me to do the work I do: finding appropriate places for renewable energy facilities.

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In the California desert, there is a massive planning process underway – the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan – or the “DRECP”. This joint state and federal plan aims to protect irreplaceable wilderness and habitat while also identifying where renewable energy development can take place with the least impact to wildlife and habitat. This way, we can protect vulnerable landscapes but also help meet the state’s goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, the lead state and federal agencies announced a new approach to this 22.5 million acre planning process: They plan to move ahead with the public lands portion of the plan first, and address the private lands portion on a slower schedule.

Separating the public and private planning processes makes it more challenging to achieve a cohesive conservation framework for the California desert as a whole. Our job now is clear: make sure that the Bureau of Land Management creates a plan that protects wildlife on public land, while also identifying appropriate renewable energy development areas. But we are also continuing to work closely with California desert counties to ensure they are developing plans for the private lands. The Mohave ground squirrel, desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep do not know the difference between public and private land. It is our job to make sure the lead agencies and the counties work together to protect their habitat on both sides of the jurisdictional lines.

This is why I found myself in the Owen’s Valley heading to an Inyo County Board of Supervisor’s meeting early last Tuesday morning. Inyo County is the first of seven desert counties to move forward with a plan for locating renewable energy projects on private land. This will set the stage for how other desert counties move forward on their planning processes, and it is the reason why Defenders of Wildlife and other national environmental organizations have been engaging with Inyo County on their renewable energy plan since 2010.

Our work has paid off. The final plan will keep Mohave ground squirrel habitat connected through a key linkage area in Rose Valley (critical for individual ground squirrel populations to reach each other and to access food and habitat). The final version also took out plans to develop areas that would have disrupted desert bighorn sheep habitat. The plan was modified to ensure water resources within the county are protected to support species that depend on them, such as the endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish. Stands of Joshua Trees were also set off limits to utility-scale development. Equally significant, our team helped Inyo County staff to identify areas that ARE appropriate for renewable energy development – abandoned alfalfa farms and other disturbed land with access to existing transmission lines, and that won’t have as big of an impact on wildlife.

Not only will Inyo County be able to put clean energy onto existing transmission lines, but it has also taken bold steps to protect wildlife and important places from the impacts of utility-scale energy development. We’ll continue our efforts to do smart from the start planning for renewable energy in the other desert counties. With enough of this work, we will achieve the original vision of the DRECP – a comprehensive public-private conservation and renewable energy plan for the California desert that helps reduce the impacts of climate change on people and wildlife alike.