Can bighorns, desert future coexist?
Bullet train, solar farm eyeing Soda Mountains
BAKER, Calif. — To most travelers on Interstate 15 between Barstow and Las Vegas, the Mojave Desert’s jagged Soda Mountains rise above a seemingly lifeless wasteland of hellish sand dunes, lava flows and vast flatlands.
But scientists say the scorched terrain just half a mile north of the Mojave National Preserve’s aptly named Devil’s Playground is a deceptively delicate and vital ecosystem rich in wildlife: tortoises, foxes, badgers, bobcats and bighorn sheep.
Now, proposals to build a highspeed electric rail linking Southern California to Las Vegas and revive a long-dead solar project in the area have triggered a clash with conservationists over how best to ensure that bighorn sheep populations do not become genetically isolated — or wind up as roadkill.
Of particular concern was a recent announcement that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is reviewing a revised version of the controversial Soda Mountain Solar Project that includes requests for permits to “take,” or fatally injure, desert tortoises and alter desert washes during construction.
“We can’t let this solar project happen,” said Chris Clarke of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
“The value of this landscape and its habitat,” he said, “far outweighs the value of energy the proposed project would generate.”
For Mojave watchers, the situation is a crucial test of state Fish and Wildlife’s ability to mediate compromises among the developers while also planning a sustainable future for complex and fragile ecological networks across the desert.
Critics worry that the solar project could jeopardize negotiations among federal rail officials, Caltrans, state wildlife authorities and the rail developer, Brightline West of Miami, to include three wildlife overcrossings in its $8 billion project, which would occupy the center divider of Interstate 15.
Zglobal, the Folsom, California, renewable energy company backing the Soda Mountain Solar Project, and Brightline were unavailable for comment.
But Christina Aiello, a biologist at Oregon State University and expert on bighorn sheep along Interstate 15, said, “It’s a bit of a shock that this zombie solar project has re-emerged from the dead.”
In the worst-case scenario, it could lead bighorn sheep populations to avoid the region, which would render wildlife overcrossings a huge waste of money, she said.
“It would also amount to a slap in the faces of all those who’ve poured labor, money and years of their lives into local bighorn recovery efforts,” Aiello said.
State wildlife authorities will evaluate the project’s environmental impacts, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.
“The desert is an invaluable landscape, and any proposed solar project has got to go through a public process,” said Chuck Bonham, director of state Fish and Wildlife.