New national monument proposed south of Joshua Tree National Park azcentral.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from azcentral.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the dying days of the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management tried to stick one more knife in California’s back by unilaterally proposing sweeping changes to the 2016 Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a complicated and delicately-constructed compromise among an array of organizations with competing interests in developing or preserving 10.8 million acres of desert. President Biden needs to withdraw the proposal and preserve the equilibrium his predecessor sought to disrupt.
The plan was crafted to balance the need to provide space for renewable energy projects, such as solar and wind farms, against the need to preserve delicate environments that are home to an array of flora and fauna, including endangered species such as the desert tortoise. In the tradition of compromise, after eight years of negotiations, proposals and counterproposals, at least a dozen public hearings and more than 16,000 public comments, all the affected parties got some of what they