S2E4: Protecting Wonder Valley

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Gina): Hi, I'm Gina.
0:00:01 - (Russ): My name is Russ.
0:00:02 - (Gina): I love this area. I love the Morongo basin. Specifically, I love Wonder Valley. That's how we discovered this area 18 years ago. So I felt this when we first discovered Wonder valley, I felt this, like, calling from Wonder Valley, like, to protect this land. Anyways, we're here now and we have this development in front of us. So that call to action is bubbling up in me. But yeah.
0:00:48 - (Alicia Pike): It's time for 90 miles from needles, the Desert Protection podcast with your, your hosts, Chris Clarke and Alicia Pike.
0:01:00 - (Chris Clarke): Let me just for a moment pretend that I don't know everybody you've talked to for this episode, and just in the service of listener comprehension, ask you, Gina and Russ. They sound really interesting. Who are they?
0:01:14 - (Alicia Pike): Gina and Russ Kohn are residents of 29 palms, and they own several properties in Wonder Valley. And they are part of the stop wonder in group that I was introduced to by attending a community meeting a few weeks ago, and they were part of the presentation. Could you set the scene to our listeners who maybe have never set eyes on Wonder Valley? Could you describe it to us?
0:01:41 - (Gina): It's a very expansive place, different from any other area, I believe, in my opinion, in the Morongo basin, dotted with these interesting shacks in different states of disrepair as a kind of charm to it. The mountains are just spectacular. It's almost womb like being in Wonder Valley. For me. I feel really rooted there. You feel like you're in the sky, the dramatic weather that kind of rolls through the clouds.
0:02:13 - (Gina): Sometimes you feel like you can reach up and touch them, or the thunderstorms that roll in during the monsoon seasons, or just spectacular to watch. And even the creatures that appear like the desert tortoises that we've been able to see walk in front of us, a large adult tortoises, little baby hatchlings. We've seen, it's thriving with wildlife and it's really beautiful to get to witness that. But, yeah, it's just this beautiful, expansive space that really makes you feel insignificant.
0:02:46 - (Gina): But it just is a kind of spiritual place, too, I think for a lot of people.
0:02:52 - (Russ): When I first noticed when we started coming out was, yeah, the spans, the quiet, the views are beautiful. I love being in the valley. I have a great view of the mountains all around. I worked in construction for my career and I have tinnitus. My years been racked with noise for my life or various things, and just the peace and the quiet and wonder valley, the first thing that hit me when we started going out there and then, of course, the clouds and the sky and the dark sky and the Milky Way you could see every night. And it's just serene and quiet. It'opposite of what the city is.
0:03:27 - (Russ): And it is pulling that brought us both out. We love Wonder valley. It's different than the other places in the Moranga basement. They all have their charm. But yeah, we're here because of Wonder Val. That's why we live here full time.
0:03:38 - (Chris Clarke): Now, I know we're going to get into this. In some of the interviews that you have here. Can you give us a two or three sentence description of what Waderin is? What are we looking at?
0:03:48 - (Alicia Pike): The Wder Inn is a proposed resort development that is entirely out of scale with the place that they are proposing building it.
0:03:57 - (Chris Clarke): Is it cater to the local crowd or are they looking for more affluent visitors?
0:04:03 - (Alicia Pike): It's for a higher end crowd. The rooms are about 500 nights, clearly for people who have money to spend.
0:04:11 - (Chris Clarke): Okay, so let's go back to Gina and Russ then.
0:04:14 - (Alicia Pike): What is happening lately in Wonder Valley that is causing a stir?
0:04:18 - (Russ): There's a pink building that's in eye shot of our cabin and many other people. It's a known place in Wonder Valley. Drive down Amboy Road and you come across the pig building. There are these pyramids attached to it. A geodesic dome. And it's been empty for years. We didn't know the people who made the pyramids were there. And we did that one since we've been going out there. But everyone knows a pink building in Winer Valley. And now we heard about a developer wanting to build a project on it. And then all of a sudden, last year, we heard it was a go. They're gonna start building this thing.
0:04:54 - (Alicia Pike): The person who caught it, were they actively looking through submittals to the county?
0:05:00 - (Gina): Yeah, that was Rick. Yeah, he's pretty much the heart, I think, of this. And he was on top of it.
0:05:05 - (Russ): Yeah, he's been on top of. Because we've heard rumors. First there was going toa be a spa just for the pink building. There's always rumors of someone building something out there. But yeah, Rick discovered that they put a lot of money and effort and time to try to get. When they started working on this. So that's what he started this at the right time.
0:05:23 - (Gina): And he's that activism that's been seated in Wonder Valley even before we were there.
0:05:31 - (Chris Clarke): Who is this Rick person?
0:05:33 - (Alicia Pike): Rick Hamburg is a long time wonder Valley resident. He's been coming out here for over 20 years. Lives out here full time now. Rick is a member of this stop wonder in group that Russ and Gina are working together with true desert lover.
0:05:49 - (Rick Hamburg): The pink building used to be southern California Edison headquarters back in 1980 and before is a mile and a half from where I live. And so when I drive down the road to Amboy Road, which the pink building is on, to go into town, I and some of my neighbors noticed that there were some markers being put up, some white, I think, pvc tube markers around there. And I was curious as to what was going on because I think I had already known that there had been some kind of application to do something there, but it was back of mind.
0:06:31 - (Rick Hamburg): But that'forred me to go on to the county's land use services permit site and I was able to identify the parcel that the pink building is on. And I saw that a conditional use permit to rezone large acreage that surrounds the pink building was made to the county in the winter of 2020, and it had very few details, but it did show that the proposal was to rezone this area from rural living to commercial and to build a 106 room hotel, the Wonnder Inn, with a restaurant, wellness center, meeting rooms and all of that. So from there, googling for Wonder Inn, I was able to find a project description, site plans and other information.
0:07:31 - (Rick Hamburg): And from that I was curious enough and started doing a little bit more research on this. That culminated with me giving a presentation to some people at the Wonder Valley Community Center. I believed in March of 2021, I gave a presentation of what I knew just to raise a little bit awareness and concern, because even then it was quite concerning and disturbing to me that a hotel resort would be built in Wonder Valley, which has nothing of the like.
0:08:09 - (Rick Hamburg): The only other real business out here is the Palms bar, and that's very low key and very much appreciated by the community. But it's not a hotel with cars coming in and out and all the attendant Adu that would accompany it at that meeting. The presentation I made in March was I met a lot of people. I met neighbors that are very close by here who are in proximity to this pink building and others who I never knew, and they were concerned about it from there.
0:08:47 - (Rick Hamburg): This group of people, and we call it the StopW Wonder in project working group, met on a regular basis to try and organize our thoughts, try and create other awareness. I worked to put up a website, Stopwondderin dot Orga, which documented what we knew, gave tools for people to send their comments into us, but also comments into the assigned planner at land use services and copying the planning commissioner for the third district, to Don Rile, the supervisor for this district.
0:09:25 - (Rick Hamburg): And throughout that, we got really good response of sending those comments in. On January 13 of this year, we saw what was published by Land Use Services as what is called the initial study of the project. It's about 100 pages long, and it's accompanied by about a 900 page appendix of consultant studies on in the judgment of landn use services. After looking at the developer s application consultants studies, they deem that all of the factors that are required to be considered in the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA posed no environmental impact that couldn't be mitigated by actions that the developers would take.
0:10:23 - (Rick Hamburg): That's called a mitigated negative declaration. There are about 25 categories within CEQA. Traffic, environmental, public services, water, on and on. You can see all the details on our website. And January 13, these study documents were made public, and it gave us a 21 day period to comment. So the study was prepared by the developer and the consultants and within land use services for over a year, and we had 21 days to respond. We were too happy about that.
0:11:06 - (Alicia Pike): That doesn't seem fair now, does it? You get a year and we get.
0:11:09 - (Rick Hamburg): 21 days, is what it is. But we also decided that we would try and take some action on. We talked to various people. We looked at the CEQA guidelines. We found out that we could apply for an extension. And we did get an extension for our response until February 22, which was more than 21 days. Not as much as we would like, but at least we have a deadline. And our working group has been working very hard over the past three weeks or so to organize our group, divide these environmental factors in cequa to various people, and to do in depth research on what mitigations that land use services is proposing and where we think it can be responded to.
0:11:59 - (Rick Hamburg): And so we've been working hard. We are finding many areas where we think that assumptions made by language services and the developers are incorrect have holes in them, were just flat out wrong. We want the county to require the developers to go through an environmental impact report, an EIR, which is a process that will delve into all of these factors where we have concerns and certainly take more time before the project is approved or perhaps denied, which, frankly, is our hope.
0:12:45 - (Chris Clarke): We're back in the studio. So Rick talks about two dozen layers of CEQA that that law is concerned with evaluating for projects. What are some of the issues? Were you able to find out things that people in this campaign are concerned about?
0:13:00 - (Alicia Pike): Certainly an outstanding issue is the desert tortoise population. That is existing on and around the proposed development area. At that community meeting was a lovely lady named Pat Flanagan, who had a lot to say about tortoise and tortoise surveys, and we should check out what she has to say.
0:13:23 - (Chris Clarke): Okay, let's listen to her.
0:13:24 - (Alicia Pike): Tell us a little bit about yourself, Pat.
0:13:26 - (Pat Flanagan): I have a degree in of biology from Long Beach State, which I went back to later in life to get. And then I went and worked for a while in the Anzerarerego desert. I was the first uniform person in their fully new visitor center. Then for many years, I was the education coordinator for the Tijuana River National Estarine Research Reserve, which is down in Imperial beach, and it's just on the border with Mexico.
0:13:53 - (Pat Flanagan): Imperial beach has an extremely active citizenry, and when you could go to a city council meeting, you could be there till ten or eleven with people standing up and making substantive comments. And then for a few years I was at the San Diego Natural History musum mus, which is the same situation when I moved out here. I moved here for several reasons. I had family here, and I could become active with the local city council. I could go. I could learn about things and go. And it would be easy. I didn't have to drive for hours to get there.
0:14:28 - (Pat Flanagan): And I was around when they were redoing their general plan, and I was on the citizens advisory committee for that. So that's where I learned about the California Environmental Quality act and how it works and what you do and the benefits of these kinds of things, which it was like going to school. And I wish they had school like this for people. Cause it would help.
0:14:49 - (Alicia Pike): Sure would.
0:14:50 - (Pat Flanagan): A lot. So that's my background. I've been on the board of the Morongo Basin Conservation association for, I would guess, 19 years. And I've been active in a number of projects. The first meeting out here, that was held by the developer in the community center, I am positive he thought there'd be 15 people there and they'd all be kind of drooling. And that wasn't the case. They didn't like the project and they were vocal about that.
0:15:23 - (Pat Flanagan): What I understood then, when I listened to them, they kept wanting information from the developer. But the developer has no requirement to give them information. His requirement is to do some studies and give it to the land use services to do the initial study first. And then Eric Hambberg got the stop wonder in website up in a blink. So that's where people can go to be informed. Now we wa want toa get voices for the initial study.
0:15:54 - (Pat Flanagan): And everybody doesn't need to write a letter every day. They can write one letter within the timef frme, because every single letter has to be addressed by the planner.
0:16:05 - (Luke Basulto): Oof.
0:16:06 - (Pat Flanagan): But you don'tnna have him go crazy because he has to find all of your letters around. So you send one letter with all your points, and then ultimately he will put that all together before he submits it to a planning commission.
0:16:23 - (Alicia Pike): So this is a great example of a very small step in the process where your voice really counts and it goes on the record.
0:16:30 - (Pat Flanagan): It goes on the record. The reason for CEQA is that your voice needs to be heard and that those who make decisions aren't doing it behind closed doors. And so there's Nepa for the feds, and there's ceqa for the state. Every entity that's in California who's doing plans has to either say that there will be no adverse effects, which is that mitigated negative declaration, or you have to do an environmental impact report. They have said that this mitigated negative declaration will be fine, and they'll give the initial study with the responses to the planning commission, who will say, this is dandy, and. And pass it on to the board of supervisors.
0:17:09 - (Pat Flanagan): It's not gonna be that easy because there's a lot of problems with this, like traffic, for instance. In the traffic study, they talk about all this, where people are going to Joshua Tree National park, et cetera. No mention is made that this is a major pathway between the largest Marine Corps base in the world and Las Vegas, or that trucks go there all the time. They don't mention that.
0:17:39 - (Alicia Pike): The river crowd.
0:17:40 - (Pat Flanagan): Exactly. That's not mentioned. That's a through way. They also don't mention, and this is key for people who live there. You're on a sand transport path, which means that you're on a linear a land dune. No surprise. You look at the base of the sheep holes, and you've got these sand ramps going up. That's been happening since the end of the ice age. So if people, if I'm staying at Wader Inn and Inna go up to Joshua Tree National park, the easiest way is to get on gaml.
0:18:11 - (Pat Flanagan): That's a dirt road. And because I travel from elsewhere, I don't know anything about the speed limit. The speed limit is, please keep the dust down. And so there'll be a number of people raising dust, and that'll be their easiest access to get up to highway 62 to then go into the park. We don't mention thate we just please. That gets in our way. It will have unique adventure tours, ATV, and hot air balloons. What do people do when they get on an all terrain vehicle?
0:18:41 - (Pat Flanagan): They drive fast. You get on that atv, which they give you or rent to you from Wonnder Inn, and then you're free to do whatever you want.
0:18:52 - (Alicia Pike): Frightening.
0:18:53 - (Pat Flanagan): It's very frightening.
0:18:54 - (Alicia Pike): It's frightening.
0:18:55 - (Pat Flanagan): Very frightening. So I don't know how that works into spiritual wellness experiences when you're driving a community of people nuts. That whole area of Wonder Valley, if you drive through it, it's totally obvious that you have sand everywhere. It's stabilized because there's plants on it. There's those creosote, which are all tied together underground with the mcorrhizal fungi, which is sequestering carbon when there's rain. But it's stored deep in the kiche, which everybody probably complains about. But that's ice age carbon that's been stored. But at the end of the ice ages, all of these valleys that were between the many mountain ranges, the lakes that were in there dried up. And when they dried up and the wind blows from the west, it blew the dust out. So that's how you get these. Anybody who lives here knows that the wind can blow, and it's not blowing in a place where it's been disturbed, like on a dirt road, et cetera.
0:19:56 - (Pat Flanagan): It's quiet from where I sit here, and I look out at the marine base. If I can't see the marine base, what I know is the wind is blowing the dust down from Lucerne Valley. And I've actually seen this. It makes a left hand turn in front of the marine base because of the way the mountains are.
0:20:12 - (Alicia Pike): Oh, wow.
0:20:13 - (Pat Flanagan): If I can't see my own yard, it's coming from the west. And it was particularly bad for the first bunch of years that the solar plants were there because the ground was unstable, and it just blew this way. When they scraped the ground there to do this, that and the other thing. It's gonna blow.
0:20:31 - (Alicia Pike): Yeah.
0:20:31 - (Pat Flanagan): Do they care that people live out there? No. And that have to breathe this and have a high cardiovascular problem out there. Right now, we're concerned with the dark sky because dark skies are disappearing at a very huge rate because of the way people treat light. And it's dark out here. No matter what they say, that place is gonna glow because otherwise, people are gonna be in danger of tripping and falling, and they not get to the right car, and they won't be able to turn their lights on when they wa want toa read at night in this very special place.
0:21:04 - (Pat Flanagan): So you have these experiences where you have weddings and you have concerts, they talk about music and soundbath, yoga. Let me see. Live music around fire features. Oh, really? And then we know that the water is infiltrated with things like chromium six. That's one aquifer for the entire valley. So it's all the same water, and people who live out there have to deal with that. It's chromium six, and that's something you have to take care of. And it's naturally occurring when there's arsenic and there's other things, the rocks in the desert can be full of these chemicals, and then the water is just sitting down there in the rocks, just leaching it out. What can you do?
0:21:50 - (Pat Flanagan): What we know for sure is the federally endangered and state endangered desert tortoise is there. They said it wasn't. They sent a man out to do the surveys for not only the desert tortoise, but birds and plants and insects and all of that on 134 acres. And he did it in a day. And then he didn't find anything. So I called up Ed Laru of Circle Mountain biological consultants, because I know that Ed has done work all over the place and he will give and has given all of his data when there's development, so that you can see if there's tortoise. He's more concerned about the tortoise than anything. He's 33 years of experience. Wow.
0:22:40 - (Pat Flanagan): So I called up Ed and I said, ed, have you done any tortoise surveys in Wonder Valley? Guess what? He'd done a tortoise survey for the exact site. And evidently somebody never saw it because it was not filed. And the person that went out there to do the tours for the ElMT, did I get it right? Found nothing. Absolutely nothing.
0:23:07 - (Alicia Pike): In one year apart.
0:23:08 - (Pat Flanagan): And one year apart, in fact, Edaru not only found tortoise, he took a picture of a live tortoise. He took a picture of shell of a tortoise that had died a couple years ago. He found scat, he found all that stuff and he did a map of what it was. And he told you how he did it. He told you how many hours they spent. He did everything the way you're supposed to do under the protocol of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
0:23:34 - (Pat Flanagan): There were two of them out there. They walk the area 10ft apart and they do. None of that was done by the consultant for the owner. They just said they didn't see anything. What that tells you is that they didn't look very deeply.
0:23:50 - (Alicia Pike): Development like this in the desert is a real hot button issue right now because all sorts of different projects are coming out across the Morongo basin. And it is definitely clear that the desert is a place people want to develop right now, almost as if we're running out of land or something. And I think that new attention needs to be paid to where we're developing. And totally, it may just be the citizen's responsibility to educate these outsiders who come here and say, oh, we want to build this sustainable eco resort, as though it's such a wonderful thing, when in fact you're go goingna be eliminating 30 acres of 30,000 year old old.
0:24:28 - (Pat Flanagan): Growth desert that's part of that land is already disturbed. It had the Jojoba farm and something. But a good portion of that 134 acres is creosote. The deserts of California, the three of them, the sonoraan Colorado, the Mojave, and the great Basin, are 28% of the state, and they have 38% of the native plants. And we have way fewer invasive species than other parts of California. So we are actually a biodiversity hotspot.
0:25:02 - (Pat Flanagan): And the way to preserve that biodiversity is just leave it alone.
0:25:06 - (Chris Clarke): Just to take a break for a minute from the sort of litany of all the things that are wrong with this project. It'd be great to revisit what's worth protecting and worth celebrating about this place.
0:25:19 - (Alicia Pike): The homesteading history out here is definitely a prominent part of the culture of 29 palms, and I wanted to highlight that. I reached out to my dear friend Lisa Moncur. She's owned property out in Wonder Valley for at least 20 years or so, and I know she's a keen lover of the desert. She has this beautiful voice, so I thought she'd be wonderful. To express the homespun sentiment that the homesteading culture really brings. I asked her to read from sand in my shoe, which she graciously did, and I hope you enjoy her reading, evoking the spirit of the past.
0:25:56 - (Chris Clarke): Here's Lisa Monk here reading from Helen Bagley's sand in my shoe.
0:26:01 - (Lisa Moncure): Excerpts from sand in my shoe by 1920s pioneer Helen Bagley this region has been indian country, prospected in, mined, used as open range for cattle. Then came the homesteaders. They used to have a saying, uncle Sam bets you 160 acres of sand that you can't live on it for three years without starving to death. In early years, few who filed remained to make a home after the war. In the twenties, there was an increase in homesteading.
0:26:44 - (Lisa Moncure): Frank and I came in 1927. We estimated that there were 50 to 100 such settlers from Yucca Valley to the Dale mining region. Many of these were veterans of World War one and some had been sent here by doctor James B. Lucky. He knew this generation of veterans, for he was one of them. Many were disabled by asthma, tb, or had lungs burned by mustard gas. He traveled the deserts to find a climate that would help them.
0:27:21 - (Lisa Moncure): He wanted about 2000ft elevation, pure water, warm and sunny air. He found them here. Doctor Lucky began to tell his patients, go out to 29 palms and file on a homestead. When we came here, we drove over a winding road worn and rutted by the wagons that had carried supplies to the mines. There was not 1 mile of straight road. There was no group of buildings that could be called a village, no post office, store or school.
0:28:00 - (Lisa Moncure): But there came a corps of homesteaders who wanted homes on land they owned and a background of sound community life. Most were poor, but they worked together. They shared, they shared water, they nursed and helped each other in trouble. Shared too the joys, had fun in the homespun ways. They rejoiced in the challenge of frontier living in wilderness, in wide spaces and the stars.
0:28:49 - (Chris Clarke): Were you able to get out on site and look for some tortoises?
0:28:53 - (Alicia Pike): I did. I went out there with Luke Basulto of the National Parks Conservation association.
0:28:59 - (Chris Clarke): I've heard of that.
0:29:00 - (Alicia Pike): He joined me and we walked around the area near the proposed project for a little impromptu tortoise survey for at least an hour, just shooting the breeze and looking over the creosote bush. We just thought we'd walk around and see what we could see.
0:29:18 - (Chris Clarke): And how did that go?
0:29:19 - (Alicia Pike): I was elated that we found two burrows that were very clearly used in the last year, he estimated. And then we found scat that correlated with that. And anytime I find rare scat'seen, me stop and pick apart kit fox poop analyzing it. And the same thing happened with Luke out on there, that hike.
0:29:39 - (Chris Clarke): It's one of the reasons we're friends.
0:29:41 - (Alicia Pike): Yeah, yeah. And I found kit fox poop with Luke and just to make sure I was cutting it open and to find tortoise poop, that's a stop. Stop in your tracks. Let's stop. Which direction was he going? How firm is it? How old is it? It's an exciting thing to analyze. The left, the leave behinds of animal presence. So for me it was like, oh man, there's definitely tortoise out here. This is great. But Luke didn't have the same degree of comfort. He really wanted to find a tortoise.
0:30:11 - (Luke Basulto): Hey'all. This is Luke from saving slowpoke and the impromptu field representative for 90 miles from needles. Today I am out on the access road that sort of borders the proposed Wonder inn. Alicia and I were out here a couple days ago walking the road and looking for tortoises and walking the boundary and just sort of seeing what we could find, and we found some pretty promising tortoise sign, and I wasn't totally satisfied with with what we found. And today is a really nice day. It'I. Think it's about 65 degrees.
0:30:52 - (Luke Basulto): The area just got a little bit of rain. Not a whole lot. Not enough to wet the ground or anything, but enough to maybe spike the humidity a little bit briefly. So I'm out here today walking the road again, and I'm gonna see if there's anybody poking their head out of a burrow. Hopefully there is, but we'll see. The reason I came back is because this habitat is just so nice. After walking through here today, there's. And seeing the sign that we saw, I'm pretty confident that there's got to be tortoises here. Obviously there's tortoises here, there's sign for tortoises here, but, yeah, just couldn't let this one go. So here I am talking to myself walking down dirt road on a very nice late winter day.
0:31:37 - (Luke Basulto): I can't really call this spring yet, but might flip over a couple of these boards on the roadside, see if there's anybody home. But, yeah, we'll see. There's some lizards running around. It's a good sign. Just saw a little side blotch lizard run under a board. Boards in the desert tend to be sort of a form of refuge for many small critters here. The same concept as an artificial reef in an ocean with not a whole lot of COVID A big shady board turns into a refugia for small animals and occasionally small tortoises.
0:32:11 - (Luke Basulto): So I'm goingna be looking for those today to flip this sport over. Anybody home? Nobody home? Nope. Okay. I don't want to be trespassing, so I'm gonna focus on looking around the boundaries. No one really pays attention to the boundaries, but they are important because these tortoises can potentially wander onto the property. They're likely to wander onto the property. They move around, they like to forage and look for new places to eat, new things to eat. And that's what I'm doing, just looking around the edge of the property and giving it a good buffer, but hoping to find tortoises out here.
0:32:56 - (Luke Basulto): It's lots of tracks from different things. Things are definitely moving around. Yeah. And I'm wandering through some big galletta grass. It's big, beautiful grass, and it makes good tortoise chow. Think.
0:33:14 - (Luke Basulto): Sure.
0:33:14 - (Luke Basulto): In at all these little holes. Some of footprints from yesterday. So following the same path. See, I will head away from this path and head this way. Now meandering in and out of this big galletta grass clumps. It's a good sign that water flows through these areas with the grass. So makes sense that a tortoise would want to set up its burrow close to this grass. Oh, there's a lizard. There's more footprints.
0:33:53 - (Luke Basulto): If those are alicias, go this way. All right. Oh, no fucking way. Oh, my God. It's a tortoise. It's a baby tortoise. O shit. Okay. Okay. How I say this'say? Shit. O look at you, dude. Oh, my God. No way. Okay, so just walking through the big galleta here, and I walked past the creosote, and I thought I saw something at the base of the creosote, and it turns out it was something. Turns out it was a little baby tortoise poking itself out of a hole that looks like it.
0:34:37 - (Luke Basulto): It's commandeering as its burrow. This is super cool. I got. Take pictures. Okay. Okay. Take pictures. I want to. Okay, sorry. I don't wa. Wantna get too close to you, buddy. I don't get too close to ya, but I gotta get close so I could get a picture of y o. He's moving.
0:34:55 - (Luke Basulto): He's moving.
0:34:56 - (Luke Basulto): Let me get a video then. Me get a video. No, I. Nobody. I don't want to scare you. I'm on the west side of the road opposite the proposed development'm sitting here with what looks to be last year's baby Mojave desert tortoise. And I'm taking photos of them, and I'm hoping that these come out trying to get decent photos, show how big he is. Oh, man. This is. You're so small where you come from. Okay. Finding this tortoise is really cool because it means that tortoises are reproducing in this area, which is amazing, and torchoises a very low survival rate.
0:35:42 - (Luke Basulto): So this guy may very well be the last member of his clutch from the fall. It looks like he was. He's about the size. It looks like he would have been born maybe early last fall. He's still very small. He doesn't have any kind of growth rings or any kind of signs of growth on his shell. He's only about the size of a ping pong ball. This is very important, and it's blowing my mind that there's a baby tortoise in front of me. This is the first tortoise I've seen this year and it's really close to the road.
0:36:08 - (Luke Basulto): This is probably, I don't know, 50ft from the road that I was walking down. So he's real close to the road. He's just. It looks like he came out to get some heat and some sun out of his little hole here. Yeah. Baby tortoises like this, at this size, they don't take very long to heat up. So today, being in the low to mid sixties, is still plenty warm for a baby tortoise to get up to an operating temperature.
0:36:35 - (Luke Basulto): For larger tortoises, it takes a lot longer for them to heat up. So you don't see those guys usually until spring, when, you know, things are consistently warm. But for a baby like this, any warm, semi warm day, today's kind of a. It's a nice day. They'll take advantage and they'll come out and poke around and see if there's any fresh, new little Forbes popping up. And it's not happening here. Y yetah, it's real dry.
0:36:57 - (Luke Basulto): But I don't know, hopefully some, something pops up for this little guy. I'm gonna mark his burrow. It's not really a burrow. Babies like this, as they wander, they'll find holes to take shelter in and stay there until they're big enough to dig their own hole. Or maybe they'll turn this hole into a burrow one day. But it's perfectly located where a desert tortoise burrow should be, which is right at the base of a Creorea soak busush. It's close to this little wash, but it doesn't look like it's ever been flooded, which is good. He chose good. Yeah, he just. It looks like he just started coming out too. He's like on his way out, I can see the roof of the pink building. This is not far from the property of the proposed development.
0:37:37 - (Luke Basulto): Buddy, you got, you got a ways to go. Oh, man, I feel bad for you. Okay, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? I just want to sit here with him for a second. Yeah. So I'm just sitting here with this guy, watching him explore the mouth of his burrow. He doesn't seem to mind me. Much. He's probably never seen a human before in his life. Hopefully never does see another human again. But that seems very unlikely given his proximity to this road and the amount of interest in this area for development.
0:38:19 - (Luke Basulto): I know that the proposed Inn is potentially going to be renting off highway vehicles to to some of its patrons, which is sad because that just means that inexperienced people will be likely trying to cruise up and down little washes like the wash that this tortoise chose to make his life next to, and not really know what the repercussions of their actions are. I hope that this doesn't. He never. I hope he never encounters another person or a motorcycle. God, he's so cool.
0:38:48 - (Luke Basulto): I am so damn happy that I found this little guy. I'm also really sad that I found this little guy because I know that his odds of making it to adulthood are very slim. This species faces a lot of really he's chewing on something's so awesome. The species faces a lot of adversity in its threats. Raven predation, human cause developments like this, and loss of habitat because of them had disease. And I'm not getting close to him for that exact reason.
0:39:25 - (Luke Basulto): He's really tiny and yeah, I want to sit here until you go back into your hol d. It's so seeing this tortoise here is at this size. It's so scary. I just had a daughter, and it's like watching a newborn wandering around by itself. I don't want to leave, but I know I gotta leave. I'm not gonna interrupt him more than I should. You're so close to the road, bud. Damn. Okay. All right, little dude. Good luck and I wish you the best.
0:39:58 - (Alicia Pike): Why do you think a project like this would be a dangerous precedent to set for development in the Morongo basin?
0:40:05 - (Rick Hamburg): Oh, gee. So many other things that are going on in the Moranvo basin. Other projects like the Flamingo 640 glamping project. And there's been a lot of changes in Joshuary area. Joshua Tree has developed this cache as a hip place for people to come from the city. And there's a lot of stuff, a lot of development, and I can't comment on all of them. Certainly the Veroongo Basin Conservation association is aware and working on a lot of those.
0:40:42 - (Rick Hamburg): But just as far as Wonder valley goes, if you were to drive into Wonder Valley from 29 bombs and just turn east on Amboy Road, theres not a stop sign or any type of traffic signal for all of the ales from 29 palms all the way over the sheep hole pass to Amboy. What would happen if this resort is built? And even the conservative, and we think inaccurate traffic projections that will be incurred by the 106 rooms, not to mention any other special events, weddings, music events that will take place there.
0:41:38 - (Rick Hamburg): What will happen to the traffic on Amboy Road, which you now is just quiet? And yeah, there's accidents sometimes people speeding, things like that. But it will create a focal point for the type of disruptive activity that doesn't exist in Wader Valley, the peaceful nature of it. Not to mention the light that will be shed by this resort. Not to mention the noise. You know how noise travels in the desert? It travels a long way and you don't even know where it's coming from.
0:42:23 - (Alicia Pike): Half a mile is close.
0:42:25 - (Rick Hamburg): Yeah.
0:42:27 - (Alicia Pike): O a still night. Forget about it. We can hear whispering.
0:42:30 - (Rick Hamburg): That's right. So just the fact that it is so unlike anything else that is out here, it's disturbing. And for it to be in place will change my experience and my neighbor's experience and the experience of people who just love the desert and come out here from all over the world and appreciate the peace and quiet. So that would be disruptive. And I really do think that if it is approved and if it is built, it will send a precedent out here for more development.
0:43:08 - (Rick Hamburg): We know that the owners of the land on this development have bought other parcels nearby which they are not specifying in their conditional use proposal. The conditional use permit only specifies about 25 acres around the pink building that they had previously purchased, another about 130 acres to the south. You think they don't have any plans to expand their resort or other types of activities there? We think that's highly unlikely, that they have no plans, but it's not included in their proposal.
0:43:50 - (Rick Hamburg): So we question that as well. And we question certainly the precedent that would be set by putting this resort into place and in operation, contrary to what Wonder Valley is and what people generally don't want hear, I think it's.
0:44:07 - (Alicia Pike): Important to clarify here that the project developers proposal insinuates there is no need for an environmental impact report at all. Is that correct?
0:44:20 - (Rick Hamburg): I think that's safe to assume. They would like to have this approved. As it is now, the process for approval is that Landr services has issued the study and the mitigated negative declaration. We have the right, the public has a right to submit their comments. Landuage services digests them and must present them in their final report to the planning commission. But they are also is a process, as I understand it, that as our public comments are absorbed, the developer will have some chance opportunity to provide input to land use services.
0:45:11 - (Rick Hamburg): Ultimately, land use services produces a staff report with their recommendation. Then there will be a meeting of the planning commission schedule where the public will be allowed to comment and the planning of miss. Five members of each of the supervisory districts will vote on the proposal and whether or not they accept report, they accept the report and the project goes through. Or maybe they can indicate that an environmental impact report needs to be done.
0:45:50 - (Rick Hamburg): In any case, ultimately, after the planning commission weighs in on it, it then goes before the full board of supervisors for the same process where the public can make comments at a meeting to be scheduled at some point and that could be the final step in this.
0:46:16 - (Alicia Pike): There are multiple waves where we have the opportunity to show up. It sounds and it is fact that every comment lodged goes on the record and has to be included with the proposal.
0:46:27 - (Rick Hamburg): That's correct.
0:46:28 - (Alicia Pike): So this is the moment where citizen rise up happens that a lot of people have put a lot of work into because teamwork. I'm just so cheesy for saying this all the time. Teamwork really does make the dream work and the efforts of your group has been completely noticed by everyone I've talked to about this project.
0:46:47 - (Rick Hamburg): That's great that we have created some awareness just to plug our website and our efforts. You go to stopwanddern.org comm. You can see lots of information on the background of the project actions that we were taking. You can see a video of the community meeting at the Wonder Valley Community center where we laid out some of the detailed information that we found about the initial study. It was pretty well attended, but you can see a video of that and get an overview. And we are, since we are in the throes of responding in time for this deadline, we are publishing a lot of information about how you can comment, how you can look at a CEQA study, how you can look at the initial study and all the associated documents and you can use the form letter that we will be publishing or you can write your own letter.
0:47:49 - (Rick Hamburg): But on top of that, just to keep up to date with the progress of this and it'a very quick time frme although we think there will be more steps along the way, please sign up for the mailing list on the front of our webpge and we promise we wont send you too many emails. But when critical things happen, we do.
0:48:13 - (Alicia Pike): Send them out and they can sign up@stopwondderin.org. Dot right? That's right Alicia, gotta say it as many times as possible.
0:48:22 - (Pat Flanagan): I'm hopeful. I'm really hopeful that it can be easily seen that it has to have an Eir. And the eir, if, and we will respond to that as well.
0:48:32 - (Alicia Pike): Yeah, we'll all be paying attention.
0:48:34 - (Pat Flanagan): We will all be paying attention. That's what we have to do.
0:48:37 - (Alicia Pike): And that's the fun. Yeah. Pat, in these climate change times, in fighting projects, in development in the desert, and all the storm and stress of change in the world today, what keeps you going?
0:48:54 - (Pat Flanagan): The fact that I can actually do something right now, it's all about making money for companies. It's not about climate change and getting people to do things. And basically, I'm an optimistic person. I don't get depressed. I do. I try to find stuff. I go looking hard, and I spend a lot of time trying to find an avenue. Excell.
0:49:15 - (Alicia Pike): What keeps you going day to day?
0:49:18 - (Rick Hamburg): What keeps me going is the appreciation of where I live, the relationships that I have with people, and just the beautiful place that I live, and how fortunate I am to be here.
0:49:37 - (Alicia Pike): I love it when people answer with nature. The rabbit hole of details on a project like this is deep. And as much as I do want to use this episode to show people this is a project going on that you can freely and easily contribute to, I'm really trying to show people how easy it is to become an activist. I feel like we all have our own little goodies in our pocket because I have familiarity with the vacation rental industry. I know how to check the county parcel map to see who owns it, how big it is, when it was sold, how much it's worth, and all of that. And everybody's got their little hidden tools, and it just comes to you out of curiosity, and that's really something that I wanted to come across in this episode. I didn't really know how to get it across, other than talking to those people about how exactly did you figure this out?
0:50:27 - (Alicia Pike): And it was so easy, it's just noticing a white pole checking, oh, let's see who bought the property. Oh, let's see if there's a new permit pulled on it since they're installing markers on the property. That must mean something. And I just really loved the simplicity of the activism going, going on here, because it seems like you need a revolution or you need some sort of a professional involved to make a difference. And the stop wonnder in committee has just banded together and really made a difference already just by pushing the project deadline. And that, that was really important to me to convey.
0:50:59 - (Chris Clarke): And that seems like something that is really applicable to a lot of other campaigns. Just even around here, within a 20 miles radius of the wonderin there are seven or eight different things that could use the same kind of treatment. But thinking about interstate eleven going in just west of Tucson, and the tourism industry in Moab and water in Salt Lake City, great.
0:51:25 - (Alicia Pike): It can get overwhelming when you hear that. But I want to present it as pick your passion. Pick what's important to you. Is it stuff that's nearby to you? Is it where you live? Is it a place you visited that you're very passionate about and you want to help protect from afar? You know, to get bogged down and overwhelmed by all of the causes can be discouraging. So just knowing that if you chose one, if you chose five, if you do one a month, one a week, like if you just pick a small target and start, you know, you're contributing and it's helping.
0:51:57 - (Luke Basulto): Yeah.
0:51:57 - (Chris Clarke): And that's a really good corrective. And what I was intending to say was that wherever you are in the desert, there is likely something that you're thinking about working on or you're thinking about opposing. And these tools work. The laws are different. Sometimes you need to do a little bit of checking to see whether you have the same tools in Utah that you do in California, but the same basic principles can apply.
0:52:22 - (Chris Clarke): And that's a really great thing. That's a great lesson.
0:52:25 - (Alicia Pike): Yeah. Also particularly impressed how quickly they put up a website and made creating a comment with all of their most important bullet points already filled out. So you could just literally less than five minutes of your life contribute to a cause. And I'm not trying to diminish the work that can be done. Self learning, educating, finding new resources and taking action. Great.
0:52:51 - (Alicia Pike): But if you're really busy and feeling overwhelmed, just the idea that it's as simple as learning about a project, clicking through it always feels like clicking through these little petitions doesn't do anything and doesn't mean anything. And in this case, I saw firsthand how 150 comments made all the difference in the world. They stopped a project from going fast track and it's, they've had more time to look at all the holes in the proposal and really encourage an environmental impact report instead of just accepting their fate that, oh, this big developers'coming in, they've got so much money.
0:53:28 - (Alicia Pike): Obviously with this idea that they have of creating an oasis in the middle of Wonder Valley, we could never win against. That defeatist mentality is not present at all. There's healthy skepticism, but these people are like, no, we're justn toa point out the facts. This is not a good idea. Y, and that's so empowering. And I just want to share that with everybody, that such a simple act can bring so much comfort and empowerment in your involvement with your community and with your planet.
0:53:55 - (Chris Clarke): This is just an amazing and inspiring episode, and it is just such a kick ass maiden voyage for you. As podcast episode producer, I definitely had.
0:54:07 - (Alicia Pike): A good time doing it.
0:54:08 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent.
0:54:09 - (Alicia Pike): Another thing I noticed about this project that really stood out to me was there's this part of the history of this area that the people from 100 years ago were like, no, we're going to settle here. And even though it hasn't worked for a lot of people before and we're facing a lot of adversity and challenges, we're going toa make this work and we're going to do it together. And that community spirit, I feel like that just showed up again.
0:54:34 - (Alicia Pike): Okay, so if you have a spare few minutes, we need you to submit a comment to San Bernardino county letting them know that you believe this project warrants further inspection via an environmental impact report before any further action is taken on development that needs to be done by February 22 at 04:00 p.m. So get on your computers and clickety clackack clack for five minutes.
0:54:57 - (Chris Clarke): The website you want is stopwandern.org dot stopwanderin.org.
0:55:04 - (Alicia Pike): Thank you for listening. Thank you for making it this far to the episode. And if you haven't noticed, we often slip in little nuggets all the way at the end, end and end of the credits. So listen for sometimes funny things we slip in there. And keep your ears perke for whatever's going on in your community or in your heart that you can fight to protect with five minutes and a keyboard.
0:55:27 - (Chris Clarke): In the meantime, also, keep your ear open to social media because we are planning at least one public event coming up this year and possibly some more. We've got a couple of invitations that we need to figure out if we can do them all. Check out our Facebook page at 90 miles from needles. Just search that on Facebook, go to our Instagram, and our website, as always, is 90 miles fromne needles.com dot.
0:55:57 - (Alicia Pike): I'm still thinking about that camp out. We need to go on that camp out. So if that camp out sounded good to you, let us know because we're still trying to figure out when to reschedule our camp out. And thanks again to Wonder Valley neighbor and my dear friend Lisa Moncur for her beautiful rendition of sand in my shoe. She will be performing at First World with her band Carnal Circus on March 11, so get your tickets and go check it out.
0:56:24 - (Chris Clarke): Links in the show notes first world is an amazing venue in Joshua Tree near the park entrance.
0:56:29 - (Alicia Pike): Local acts, local everything that is like the most local place to see a show. If you want to see a good show.
0:56:35 - (Chris Clarke): And Lisa, anytime you want to read anything for the podcast, let us know.
0:56:41 - (Alicia Pike): Or I'll be letting you know. Thank you.
0:56:45 - (Chris Clarke): This episode of 90 Miles from needles, the Desert Protection podcast, was produced by Alicia pike and edited by Chris Clark. Special thanks to Lisa Moncur and Luke Basultto for their contributions, as well as to Rick Hamburg, Gina and Russ Cohn, and Pat Flanagan for their important work. You can reach us at 9 miles from needles.com at 760-392-1996 or by email by going to our website at 90 miles fromneedles.com and clicking on the little slider on the right hand side of the website.
0:57:22 - (Chris Clarke): We couldnt do this without you folks. If you go to our website, youll see ample mechanisms by which you can drop some cash on us if you like what we were doing. Special thanks to our newest Patreon supporter, Carmen Brady. We well see you next time.
0:59:03 - (Lisa Moncure): Jim Travers had a homestead, a square half mile of land. The desert stretched on every side with greaseood, sage and sand. Jim Travers had a homestead and not much else beside but a shack. A man has made himself can fill his heart with pride. He had no need of many things. He didn't wear a shirt. He hauled water in a can. Clean sand is not like dirt. Boiled beans will fill a belly up with salt pork for a treat.
0:59:47 - (Lisa Moncure): He had rabbit now and then, or turtle for fresh meat. He worked for wages when he could, but neighbors lend a hand and sort of pass themselves around. Out in this desert land, the air was sparkling clear and clean. The sun was hot at noon. Red sunset blazed across the sky. Came dusk and then the moon. Bare mountains 50 miles away shone white beneath its light. Jim slept beneath the vast round sky. He loved the desert night.
1:00:32 - (Lisa Moncure): The desert's wealth is for the poor. A loneness without bars, a loneness in a friendly land, wide spaces and the stars. Jim Travers had the sort of wealth that comes where lands are wide. Jim Travers had a homestead and not much else beside.
1:01:04 - (Alicia Pike): Love that wrap up.