In October 2000, Congress established the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument.
This year, the Friends of the Desert Mountains (FODM) and their partners in the conservation of the national monument—including the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians—are planning a series of celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary.
However, those celebrations were temporarily jeopardized in early August, when the Rosa Fire broke out and burned a portion of the national monument. As of this writing, the cause of the fire is undetermined.
Karin Jaffie, the marketing and development associate at FODM, recently spoke to the Independent about the celebration plans, and the impacts of the Rosa Fire on the national monument.
“At the 25th anniversary, there will be a kickoff party, and then we’ll have (an event) for young people,” Jaffie said. “There will be hiking, and Palm Springs Life magazine will be highlighting a different hike each week for a year. … When people come back in October, they’ll be able to enjoy the glory of this national monument.”
The Rosa Fire burned almost 1,700 acres and caused the evacuation of the Pinyon Pines, Alpine Crest and Ribbonwood communities, as well as the closure of Highway 74. More than 1,000 personnel were engaged in battling it at one point.
Of the burn area, “422 acres of it was Friends of the Desert Mountains conserved lands around the trailhead of the Palm Canyon Trail, at the upper end of it,” Jaffie said. “Both sides of Pine View Drive in different parcels burned, plus a really big piece just above that. … We had some other parcels conserved in the Pinyon Pines neighborhood, and all of that burned.”
Jaffie explained that the national monument includes land owned by various organizations, including FODM, the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service.
“A lot of different entities come together to make up this National Monument,” Jaffie said. “When this fire was burning, it got into some Forest Service land; it burned some private land; and then it burned some conserved FODM land—but it’ll come back.”
A Time for Research, Recovery
An Aug. 18 news release from the Friends of the Desert Mountains expressed appreciation for the fire-suppression personnel who battled the Rosa Fire, and announced plans to work on re-opening the Palm Canyon Trail.
“While the damage is devastating to see, fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem,” said Tammy Martin, the FODM executive director, in the news release. “Several species actually need fire to propagate, but there are others that don’t fare as well, like the single-leaf pinyon pine.”
The news release explained: “In cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service, to prevent the unintended consequence of a long (Palm Canyon) Trail closure, Friends will be helping rehabilitate the Palm Canyon Trail so it can re-open as soon as possible. Friends’ community science volunteers will document and record species recovery. Friends will install photo point stations as well, allowing visitors to take photos from the same vantage point, then share the image to a database.”
In the news release, Lee Beyer, a U.S. Department of Agriculture forestry technician, pointed out that the public has an important role to play in the recovery.
“The USDA San Bernardino National Forest will be closing other Forest Service lands within the fire perimeter for up to a year to allow plants and animals to recover,” said Beyer. “The trail itself will be affected by rain and erosion. Limiting hiking, horseback riding and mountain biking allows for the area to recover, so please respect the closures.”
Jaffie told the Independent that the organizations are still figuring out the extent of the fire’s effects on the animal and plant life.
“As far as the animals go, we’re going to try to work with UC-Riverside Professor (of biology) Dr. Lynn Sweet,” Jaffie said. “Her biology people really know this area pretty well, so they’ll be the ones who will advise us more about any animal species that might be severely impacted by this fire. … We actually were watching with binoculars to see if animals would come charging over the hills, like you see in movies when they’re moving ahead of fires. But desert animals are probably a little more discreet than that and just got out of the way. We didn’t see anything, and so far, I haven’t heard any reports of any sheep damage, because we do have the Peninsular Ranges’ desert bighorn sheep,” an endangered species, in the affected area.
Jaffie said climate change continues to be a big threat to the national monument.
“Obviously, that is partially why we had a big fire,” Jaffie said. “Everything got all dried out more than it normally would, and we’re not having our usual rain patterns. In the last couple of years … about 23% of our desert plants have burnt to the ground just from the sun. Now, those plants know how to come back. They know how to lay low, like those frogs that only come out every other year when it rains enough.
“The desert is alive. (Many plants) know how to hide underground and chill until everything’s cool, and then you come up again.”
A Special Place
As everyone involved with the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument prepares to celebrate its 25th birthday, Jaffie explained what makes the national monument special—even among other public lands.
“Here in Coachella Valley, we have more conserved lands than any place else,” Jaffie said. “These lands were conserved 25 years ago through an act of Congress, as opposed to the Antiquities Act. It was actually drawn out and made a law by Congress that this national monument should exist and be preserved, for the natural and the scenic (elements), but also due to its amazing cultural and scientific resources.
“Our desert is so unique. We have over 25 different endangered or critically threatened species of plants and animals, not the least of which is the desert bighorn … but also, there are different kinds of milkweed that doesn’t grow anywhere else, but need to exist, because it’s all part of this big desert ecosystem. It’s a park where we don’t charge entrance fees. You want people to have access to nature, and the national monument we have preserved is 280,000 acres of unimaginable resources.”
While planning for the anniversary celebration has resumed after the fire, details are still being finalized.
“We’re going to be kicking it all off on Oct. 23 with an event up here at the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center,” Jaffie said. “That will be for VIPs with presentations and proclamations. … We’ll do a time capsule and some other cool stuff. A couple days later, it looks like we’re probably going to be doing a youth event at night up here. We want to get people on the land, so there will be an anniversary hike organized, that is probably going to be led by the (Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians).”
The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto National Monument is more popular that ever. Jaffie said visitor numbers have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 shutdowns, with about 100,000 visitors each year—and now, the Friends of the Desert Mountains are dealing with significantly diminished support from their federal partners.
“They’ve done nothing but cut back the resources for the monument and for staffing and everything,” Jaffie said. “Our volunteers help out as much as they can, but we can only work in partnership with the BLM or the USFS, so right now, in the summer season, the visitor center is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But in season, it should be open all the time—especially with the anniversary coming up.”
How concerned is the FODM team about recent talk out of Washington, D.C., of rescinding national monument designations for protected monuments in our region?
“At the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, I don’t think we’re under any threat here,” Jaffie said. “It was established by an act of Congress, and what they seem to be most concerned about right now is (national monuments) that were established by the Antiquities Act, which includes Sand to Snow and Chuckwalla.
“The main thing that I would be concerned about here in Coachella Valley is the BLM land that is not actually in one of our units. It’s (land parcels) out in Sky Valley and that area, where there’s a lot of BLM land. That’s the kind of stuff that they would look to sell off first, if they could get to it—but hopefully, it would take way too much effort for them to do it.
Jaffie said the onslaught of executive orders and resulting court battles are intended “mostly just to exhaust us and antagonize us.”
“But in the fight for the land, you know, ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine,’” Jaffie said, quoting a phrase from ancient Greek philosophy. “There’s a reason that it took so long to (create) Chuckwalla and all of these national monuments. It’s because they wanted to make sure that we did it by the rule of law, and so it will not be easy to untie any of it.”
Meanwhile, the FODM team plans on doing everything they can to make sure as many people as possible are safely enjoying the national monument.
“We do nighttime hikes that are really popular,” Jaffie said. “Full moon hikes, people love, but we also do desert nighttime adventures when it’s not a full moon. We give people black lights, and we take them out in the desert, because scorpions glow in black light, and we have some plants and some rocks that fluoresce under that UV light as well, so we’re giving people a chance to see what the animals see, and to see the desert in a different way. Since we already have these nighttime adventures, I want to build on that and be able to bring some young people up here. We’re working on doing a little silent disco up here to teach them that you can go out into the desert, not tear it up, and have a good time.”
Learn more about the Friends of the Desert Mountains at www.desertmountains.org.
Conservation Celebration: The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Marks 25 Years of Existence as Recovery From the Rosa Fire Continues is a story from Coachella Valley Independent, the Coachella Valley’s alternative news source.