Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today is in Palm Springs with federal and state officials to announce the completion of a draft blueprint for solar and wind energy development on 22.5 million acres of public and private land in the California desert. The goal of the plan is to identify areas of the desert suitable for large-scale renewable energy development projects, while protecting areas with particularly high values for wildlife and habitat. As California and the United States move aggressively toward ambitious renewable energy goals, it is also vital this rush toward renewables not degrade our valuable natural treasures.

The draft Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan covers desert areas in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, Imperial, Inyo, Kern and San Diego counties, and will designate 200,000 to 350,000 acres as development focus areas, enough to meet California renewable energy goals through 2040. Despite being in the works for some time, the document is far from final. After it is formally filed in the federal register on Friday, a 90-day comment period will begin, after which a final document will be finalized.

To those not familiar with it, the desert might seem barren and uninhabitable. But in fact it is rich with a wide diversity of wildlife, particularly birds. And that’s why Audubon California was part of the broad coalition of environmental groups, government agencies, land managers, and renewable energy developers working on the plan for the last four years. This is complicated: The great threat to birds from global warming reinforces the need for us to move toward renewable energy, while at the same time, we must also protect the habitats that birds need to survive. We don't want have to choose between renewable energy and wildlife protection. We want both if we can get it, and this plan offers that chance to have our cake and eat it, too.

Audubon California Renewable Energy Director Garry George (right) speaks with Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (center) and California Energy Commissioner Karen Douglas (left) at today's press conference outside of Palm Springs.

A few of the environmental groups we have been working with include Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The area covered by the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan includes 22 Important Bird Areas, and hosts a great variety of breeding and migratory birds. Audubon California has been particularly concerned with protecting Burrowing Owl, Golden Eagle, Tricolored Blackbird, Mountain Plover, Bell’s Vireo (pictured), Swainson’s Hawk, and Southwestern Willow Flycatcher.  In addition we are concerned with protecting migratory stopover sites such as riparian and floodplain forests.

While the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan focuses on large-scale renewable energy development, Audubon California strongly supports distributed solar energy, such as rooftop panels, that will benefit local communities as well as reduce pressure on desert ecosystems. Large-scale projects should be planned on already disturbed and degraded lands such as abandoned developments, degraded agricultural lands, mines, and brownfields.

Audubon California will certainly be commenting on the draft plan, and we hope that others do as well. It’s important that we get the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan right. As we’ve seen at the Ivanpah solar facility in the Mojave Desert, the cost of poor planning on local wildlife can be immense.

We’ll talk more about this plan in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

(photo of Bell's Vireo by Tom Benson)