Winter 2007

The Mojave Desert Land Trust • P.O. Box 207 • 6847 Adobe Road • Twentynine Palms, CA 92277 • (760)361-6401 • www.mojavedesertlandtrust.org

WE ALL HAVE THE SAME DREAM

A letter from President Claudia Sall

We love the unique beauty of Joshua Tree National Park.
We wander among its interesting and diverse plants and trees. We listen and speak to over 250 species of birds, animals, and reptiles. And, we explore the canyons, cliffs, mountains, and all the evidence of the complex and humbling story of its geology.

But how deep does our shared affection for Joshua Tree National Park run? We think you share that love. Now we will find out.

Eight months ago your board of directors met to discuss a difficult but important opportunity. The owners of Nolina Peak, a square mile of land next to Covington Flats in Joshua Tree National Park, wanted to sell. If we were bold enough to accept the challenge and raise the needed money, we would then transfer this beautiful property to Joshua Tree National Park for permanent protection.

The sellers were generous and willing to give Mojave Desert Land Trust the time to raise the needed money - about $970,000. Needed funding includes the purchase price and the necessary management costs to steward the land and prepare it for conveyance to the Park.

The risk is that we might not raise all of the needed money by the deadline of May 11, 2007. We need substantial community support and if we don’t make it, we will have to refund 81% of the donations made for Nolina Peak or, at the option of donors, hold the funds for another land deal.

We revisited our own dream and signed the deal. The property is special and needs to be permanently protected in Joshua Tree National Park.

The history of our desert is a history of people who were not afraid of big challenges. It is story of Native Americans seeking a secure place to raise their families, cowboys pushing herds of cattle onto virgin grasslands, prospectors on the hunt for their fortunes, people desperate for their health, and escapists from urban crowds and complexities. None of them were afraid of big challenges. We gambled that this community is not afraid either.

Of course we wanted to improve our odds. The federal Bureau of Land Management owns another square mile immediately to the north of Nolina Peak. If we could persuade the BLM to add its section to Joshua Tree National Park then we will have succeeded in permanently protecting two miles of desert mountains.

The BLM managers checked the regulations. They found that this land is presently "unclassified", meaning that it is eligible for disposal to developers. However, if Nolina Peak is added to Joshua Tree National Park, then the BLM section would be adjacent to a national park and eligible for transfer to that national park. We’re in luck. Our odds have improved. We now have a two-for-one deal.

These two square miles of land act as a natural picture frame for residents of Yucca Valley and provide a scenic buffer between the communities of Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree.

Give big now. Become a member and buy a piece of this wonderful land for Joshua Tree National Park. We all have the same dream.

Sincerely,
Claudia Sall
President
Mojave Desert Land Trust

This is a creative way for people who know and love our desert to come together and preserve it for future generations. This is what "community" is all about. -Huell Howser

THE GEOLOGY OF NOLINA PEAK
D. D. Trent and Rick Hazlett

The geologic history of Nolina Peak is the story of how continents grow. Only two major rock types, gneiss and granite, compose the mountains of the Nolina Peak area. But what a story they tell.

Granitic outcrop on Nolina Peak

Gneiss, a metamorphic rock, forms when heat and pressure force earlier-formed igneous, sedimentary, or other metamorphic rocks to recrystallize. This change occurs deep in the Earth’s crust by a process of chemical diffusion (the movement of chemical elements from one place to another through a solid rock body, but without melting). The metamorphic rocks in the area of Nolina Peak, and throughout the Joshua Tree National Park region, are named the Pinto gneiss. The extreme changes that cause metamorphism over so large a region in the Earth’s crust happen during periods of mountain building when two tectonic plates collide. The ancient mountain range that once existed in the Joshua Tree region was eroded away long ago, and what we see left behind are the remnants of its roots.

Radiometric age dating of the Pinto gneiss reveals that these ancient mountains existed about 1.7 billion years ago, making these rocks some of the oldest rocks in western North America. They formed by the metamorphism of sedimentary rocks of very great (unknown) age and indicate the existence of an ocean in the area of Joshua Tree National Park before the mountain building epoch 1.7 billion years ago. Caught in the collision of tectonic plates, these sedimentary rocks, banded gneiss, were crumpled, heated, and stretched while recrystallization was occurring. The result was one of the most distinctive types of metamorphic rock, banded gneiss, which is characterized by alternating bands of light (quartz and feldspar) and dark (biotite mica) minerals. Other minerals indicate that the gneiss metamorphosed at depths of about 10 miles. Thus, the restless motion of the tectonic plates accounts for what were once seafloor sediments and some igneous rocks to become crushed and squeezed into an ancient mountain range that eventually was added to the North American continent. This is how continents grow.

It was into the Pinto gneiss that the granitic rocks intruded between about 250 million and 80 million years ago. The term "granite" is a sortof catchall term for a group of rocks that generally have a mix of mineral grains -quartz, feldspar and mica- which give them a salt-and-pepper appearance. In contrast to volcanic ash and lava flows, granite cools deep within the crust solidifying at depths of 10 to 12 miles.

Finding gneiss and granite exposed along the trail to Nolina Peak, and recognizing that these rocks formed some 10 miles deep in Earth’s middle crust, raises a question, what happened to the overlying 10 miles of rock that once existed above these rocks of deep origin? They’ve been eroded away over the last 80 million years, shedding sediments west to the sea floor, south to the Coachella Valley basin, and east and north to form the now flat-floored desert basins.

Aiding the erosion was the uplift of the Little San Bernardino Mountains, including the area of Nolina Peak. The uplift resulted from compressional strain due to the motion of the Pacific and North American plates along the plate boundary marked by the San Andreas fault, which forms the southern boundary of the mountain group. This motion began about 30 million years ago. Accommodating the uplift is the presence of the Pinto Mountain fault that also results from movement along the plate boundary. The trace of the Pinto Mountain fault more-or-less follows Highway 62 from its junction with the San Andreas fault on the west near Morongo Valley, eastward through Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, and the Park Service Visitor Center at the Oasis of Mara.

–D.D. Trent, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geology, Citrus College, and Richard W. Hazlet, Professor of Geology and Director of Environmental Science Program, Pomona College.

THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN
GROWTH IN THE DESERT
We Are Not Alone

For those who visit and live in the Mojave Desert, the rapid growth of urban encroachment on our wildlands can be both a surprise and a shock. However, we are not unique. Before we blame developers for the problem, we need to think about the growth of our populations and the fact that developers are merely responding to that growth.

Our challenge is to raise our voices and efforts so that the inevitable urbanization is properly planned to protect our wild places. We need to ensure a habitat that incubates a wide diversity of life and protect those corridors through our open spaces that encourage a continuing fresh exchange and flow of genetic plant and animal populations.

An internationally focused study is now looking at the impacts of urbanization on protected areas throughout the world. The study seeks to identify common problems and solutions and includes the areas surrounding Joshua Tree National Park, Nairobi National Park in Kenya, Edith Stephens Wetland Park in South Africa, the Sierra Nevada National Parks in California, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area at Los Angeles, and other important impact sites.

The impacts being studied are no surprise to us and include: (1) Fragmentation of habitat; (2) Edge effects, or the study of the disturbance of natural ecosystems along transition lines between urban disturbed lands and wild protected spaces; (3) Water pollution; (4) Water quality; (5) Air pollution; (6) Waste disposal impacts of many sorts; (7) Human-wildlife conflicts; (8) Invasive species; (9) Increased fire regimes from natural, accidental, and intentional causes; (10) Criminal activity; and (11) Human predation on animal and plant life.

Your Mojave Desert Land Trust is a community response to these growing impacts from population growth. We need to acquire for protection areas like Nolina Peak as a response to these potential problems.

In the future we will be looking at additional land acquisitions in the desert. At this time, the Mojave Desert Land Trust is an active participant in studying existing wildlife corridors that will need protection.

MEMBERSHIP

We are pleased to welcome the following organizations, visitors, and residents of our community as members of the Mojave Desert Land Trust:

A Walk Down Nolina Peak

The Mojave Desert Land Trust invites you to become familiar with the 639 acres of Nolina Peak, a wildland property adjacent to Covington Flats in Joshua Tree National Park. Enjoy the breathtaking views and learn about the natural history and geology of this exquisite wild landscape in an easy 1.5-mile walk.

Download the newsletter:
Winter 2007 (pdf)
Fall 2006 (pdf)