California Desert Miracle: The Fight for Desert Parks and Wilderness (Sunbelt Natural History Guides) [Paperback]

Frank Wheat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1999 | ISBN-10: 0932653278 | ISBN-13: 978-0932653277 | Edition: 1st

California Desert Miracle is a story of how unpaid and under-funded volunteers fought for the last large area of wildland left in California. Their efforts, lasting over 20 years, culminated in the enactment of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994. The story describes how masterful leadership helped work the Act through Congress despite filibusters, "holds", and other legislative mechanisms of delay and destruction arrayed against it. This story will engage and enlighten all who care deeply about the environment.

Editorial Reviews

Review

... This twenty-seven year struggle to achieve passage of the California Deseert Protection Act of 1994 is the crux of Frank Wheat's book. ...This is an epic with many heroes, and Wheat's work is a chronicle of their efforts... ...One might think this account of the long campaign for California desert protection would make for tedious reading. Not so. Frank Wheat writes well and weaves an insightful and fascinating narrative of the 27-year struggle. Southern California's premier historian Doyce Nunis calls this "environmental history at its superbly crafted best. California Desert Miracle is a rich treat for those of us who treasure the state's unspoiled wildlands. -- John Robinson, Fullerton, CA

California Desert Miracle is one of those books that come along perhaps once in a decade. The reason is simple: reading it leaves a memorable impression. The gripping narrative details the endless difficulties, disappointments, and twists encountered by a dedicated group of individuals who fought valiantly to gain federal protection for southern California's threatened desert lands. Here is environmental history at its superbly crafted best. The narrative sparkles from the outset. It s a book that not only informs, it entertains. Wheat's book is destined to become a "classic" n desert lore literature. -- Doyce D. Nunis, Jr., Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, USC

California Desert Miracle... will serve as an instructive and inspiring account for anyone interested in helping to carry out any major conservation campaign involving public education and promotion of legislation.... Already we are engaged in a major legislative campaign to preserve the wildlands of Utah and we hear rumblings of wilderness to be proposed in Nevada. Then there will be New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming.... Wheat's book is timely indeed." -- Edgar Wayburn, Five-time Past-president of the Sierra Club

Frank Wheat proves that lawyers really can write - lucidly, from the inside, and, in this case, with high drama. This marvelous California saga will be the standard navigator forever through the shoals of conservation. -- Neil Morgan, Senior Columnist & Associate Editor, San Diego Union Tribune

The California Desert Protection Act, signed into law by President Clinton on October 31, 1994, traces its roots nearly 30 years earlier to the appointment of a foresighted and forceful California State Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Russ Penny. The history of the Act is tracked in meticulous detail by Wheat, a desert devotee lawyer, whose account of the numerous opponents and proponents (including five desert tortoise "lobbyists" who traversed Congressional desks) provides the needed vitality to a convoluted narrative. Considerable space is devoted to the arcane procedures of Congress, leaving the politically inexperienced reader with a sense of despair about the legislative process. A brief chronology enables one to keep the story in perspective, half-tone illustrations of key players add reality, and the basic provisions of the Act, along with footnotes, a glossary, and brief description of the key players, help keep perspective in the complexities in the evolution of the final legislation. The author wisely ends with a cautionary note on the need for eternal vigilance against erosion of the Act. General readers; graduates through professionals. -- E.J. Kormandy, emeritus, University of West Los Angeles, Choice Magazine, May 1999

Wheat has taken a seemingly simple story, and translated it into a ballad of democracy vibrant enough to stir Walt Whitman's blood. If you have ever wondered why you should bother to vote, or have concluded that democracy simply doesn't work well enough to protect our environment for our families and our future, just spend a few hours with California Desert Miracle. -- Carl Pope, President of the Sierra Club

From the Publisher

From San Diego Union Tribune, Sunday, December 27, 1998] Big wasteland, not the fight to save California's deserts was epic-and it's not over First, there was the story of Moses and his followers, who wandered through a desert wilderness for 40 years. Now comes the saga of Russ penny, Bill Holden, Judy Anderson and others, wanderers too for more than 20 years in the political wastelands of Sacramento and Washington, D.C., true believers bent on saving a desert wilderness.

This is their story, the epic history of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994, whose creation took far more than seven days (9,855 would be more accurate) and involved a fervent, decidedly persistent cast of hundreds.

Desert lovers, of course, should know the tale by heart, if only because it is so remarkable and the results so ... well, so big.

In 1967, Penny, the new California director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, was astounded by photographs of hundreds of motorcycles racing across the desert in a new off-road race from Barstow to Las Vegas. He wondered how such activity affected the desert habitat, and persuaded his Washington bosses to spend $25,000 for a study of desert resources and how they might be protected. The findings, naturally, were not good. The desert, writes Wheat, one of the activists who would later shepherd the CDPA to success, is "extremely fragile, easily scarred and slowly healed."

Penny declared that the California desert was "on the brink of environmental disaster." But the warning fell upon deaf ears in Washington and in the political power circles of Sacramento, where the powers-that were generally viewed the desert as empty barrens, or had other plans for it.

Thus began a long, hard-fought battle between environmentalists and like-minded politicians with the conservative political establishment. In rigorous detail, occasionally leavened by stories of desert adventures and the personalities of people involved, Wheat describes each chronological step of the battle to set aside a huge chunk of the state's desert real estate, to preserve and protect it from the dangers of motorcycle races, mining, development and the like.

It is, remarkably, a lively tale, spiced with drama and a white-knuckle climax in which desert supporters, after fending off assorted filibusters and back-room political maneuverings, watched triumphantly as the U.S. Senate passed the act the day after Congress was scheduled to adjourn.

The act established the 1.5 million-acre Mojave National Preserve, the 3.3 million-acre Death Valley National Park, and the 795,000-acre Joshua Tree National Park, plus 69 other wilderness areas in the desert encompassing 3.5 million acres.

But the fight, Wheat observes repeatedly, is not over. The act now must itself be protected from those who would subvert it. More important, Wheat says, millions of acres of high-quality desert habitat elsewhere in the American West deserve equal protection.

With this book, Wheat provides a real-life narrative of how to fight the good fight-and win. It is an environmental how-to bible.

-Scott LaFee

Science writer for the Union-Tribune

Sunday, December 27, 1998

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sunbelt Publications; 1st edition (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932653278
• ISBN-13: 978-0932653277
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,219,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars MAGNIFICENT BOOK ABOUT A MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVEMENT, November 21, 2009

By 

Elaine Campbell "Desert Dweller" (Rancho Mirage, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: California Desert Miracle: The Fight for Desert Parks and Wilderness (Sunbelt Natural History Guides) (Paperback)

Too bad there are only five stars. This book deserves ten.

The "Fight for Desert Parks and Wilderness" has enabled and gifted me, as a resident of the Colorado Desert, to derive nourishment from my natural surroundings and delight from viewing the desert natural life, rather than be surrounded by back to back condos for as many miles as one can see, or should I say drive.

Mr. Wheat, former President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, has written an edifying and interesting story of heroic proportions. The California desert covers one quarter of the state. And it was in need of protection from destructive forces in the name of progress, along with its natural life. Only an erudite, educated and knowledgeable person such as Mr. Wheat would have had the qualities necessary to carry out the winning of protection for the tender and beautiful desert that I have the privilege of waking up in and taking long walks through with my dog each day of my life.

This book tells how, in a very concise and interesting manner, Mr. Wheat and others, including the late actor William Holden and the Sierra Club, to name a few, got together to rescue what was endangered.

Congratulations to him for letting the reader know just how the enactment of the California Protection Act of 1994 came about in a fascinating narrative which I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hard read, confusing, will put you to sleep, September 17, 2004

By 

L. Olsen (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: California Desert Miracle: The Fight for Desert Parks and Wilderness (Sunbelt Natural History Guides) (Paperback)

This book tries to document how legislation was created to protect California deserts. I am still not sure what was accomplished by the desert protection act. The tale is told in a disjointed manner that is hard to follow. I know much hard work went into these activities, but it will not come through in this book.

Also note that this book is very partisan. For example, groups that ride motorcycles in the desert are portrayed in a negative manner, I guess as the enemy. I would like to have seen their viewpoint presented. So, this book may give you some idea of what happened, but only from one side.

It is not a book for the student of politics, too one sided, and the story proceeds in a random fashion. I hoped to understand what was protected, why, how various viepoints were served. Instead, it is a "pat on the back" to a handful of individuals. I wish it would be postured as such, and I could have saved my money.