🚀 go-pugleaf

The California Desert Protection Bill (SB21) is scheduled for senate floor
debate on Monday, 4/11/94. The bill needs your support to be passed, and to
be protected from a barrage of anti-environmental amendments.

In case you're not familiar with the bill, it would do the following:

	Transform the existing Death Valley and Joshua Tree National
	Monuments to national parks, with greatly expanded territory.

	Create a new Mojave National Park.

	Transform many CA wilderness study areas to official wilderness.

The bill, as it stands, has two harmful amendments attached: The Wallop
Amendment (Malcom Wallop, r. Wyoming) permits unlimited military overflights
anywhere in the desert, overriding the wilderness act and and land policy
act. There would be no recourse against military abuse of the desert (and
there's plenty!) if this is passed.

The Lanfair Valley Exclusions will exclude a large area from the Mojave
N.P., at the behest of land owners in Lanfair Valley. In addition to the
valley floor, the exclusions remove large areas in surrounding mountains
from the park. These include some of extremely significant areas for
ecological, historical, archaeological, and scenic reasons, which deserve
protection via inclusion in the park.

On top of this, senator Diane Feinstein (d. CA), one of the sponsors of the
bill, allegedly intends to propose another amendment to allow cattle grazing
in perpetuity in the Mojave N.P. (in the current form of the legislation,
grazing would be phased out over the next 25 years).

If all of this was not enough, it is said that conservative republicans will
attempt to fillibuster the bill.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Call or FAX your senators (there's no time now for letters) and tell them to
oppose the bad amendments listed above, and to vote for cloture in the case
of a filibuster.