For example, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act provides for the protection and administration of public lands in the California Desert Conservation Area "within the framework as a program of multiple use and sustained yield, and the maintenance of environmental quality." (The area proposed for protection under S. 11 includes the California Desert Conservation Area as well as additional acreage.)

Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the California Desert Conservation Area Advisory Committee, prepared a comprehensive, long-range plan for the management, use, development, and protection of the public lands within the Conservation Area. The plan provides for the protection of certain lands, while recognizing the needs of miners, ranchers, utility companies, and Federal interests such as the military. The plan received approximately 400,000 public comments and was approved in 1980. Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, concurred with the final plan.

The plan also provides for an annual amendment process by which the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, or the public, may propose revisions through the Advisory Committee. Enactment of S. 11 would, in effect, disregard this substantial public input. Most importantly, it would reverse the careful balancing of interest and the consensus which emerged from the

Desert Plan.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we believe S. 11 would severely restrict the Defense Department's present ability to perform its mission. But more importantly it compromises the future, and it risks the lives of future Service men and women. legislation.

We oppose this

Senator BUMPERS. Mr. Secretary, are you operating under any restrictions now in the California desert?

Mr. STONE. Oh, yes. We have a lot of them.

Senator BUMPERS. Are they satisfactory? Are you happy with the way things are right now?

Mr. STONE. We are satisfied with them.

There is a constant state of compromise. We understand we do not have a blank check to operate, but by and large we are doing what we need to be doing.

Senator BUMPERS. There is not anything in the bill now that would change your modus operandi, is there, as long as you were permitted to continue doing what you are doing right now?

Mr. STONE. Yes. That is fair, Senator, but in the process of negotiating and in the process that was set up, we make compromises, but we are doing things now that we were not doing a few years ago because of military necessity or military opportunity.

Just thinking back a few years, we would have said we do not need to fly small cruise missiles at low altitudes from the Pacific all the way across Southern California because we did not know of such a thing, and now they are here.

And, because of our facilities in the Southern California desert, we were able to develop them.

Senator BUMPERS. What would you like S. 11 to say to satisfy your concerns?

Mr. STONE. We have miles of technical language, but I think most simply put-and this is not all the lawyers' language-we would like to be able, where military necessity dictated, to fly over that entire area, and we would like to have the opportunity to make fairly modest expansions of our ground training areas at Fort Irwin and around there.

Senator BUMPERS. Well, could you draft language that would accomplish that and we will put it in the bill?

Mr. ADOLPH. There are two issues. One is the use of the existing airspace. As new technologies evolve, we may need new low-level routes to test those technologies, so we would need the flexibility to establish new low-level routes in the future.

Secondly, S. 11, when combined with Public Law 100-91 which directs the Department of Interior to develop an aircraft management plan may further restrict us. Public Law 100-91 directs the FAA to establish new low-level minimum altitudes over National Parks and Wilderness areas.

So, even if you were to grandfather the existing low-level routes, Public Law 100-91 would have some impact on those and would certainly restrict us from establishing new low-level routes.

Senator BUMPERS. Well, what if we pass this bill and we exempt you from the requirements of Public Law 100-91, would that be okay?

Mr. ADOLPH. My preceding remarks address the airspace needed for testing. What we need is the prerogative of establishing, in the future, low-level routes that we deem essential for testing new technologies as they evolve. That is the test airspace concern. The training community has airspace concerns as well as some other considerations.

Senator BUMPERS. Gentlemen, let me say to you that nobody here wants to impede the necessary training of the Air Force, Marine Corps and Army and Navy in the area, but we do not want to just hear that you are opposed to everything.

I mean I am trying to work out something here that might be acceptable to you so you have discretion in the future for whatever new technologies come along, and I understood that Senator Cranston has been leaning over backwards to address these concerns and thought he had.

For example, we allow the Army to train in national forests, and they of their own volition—not because Congress has made them— do certain things.

For example, the Army lets the public know in advance when they are going to be training at night and so on in the forest so the hunters and other people will be forewarned.

And while, as I say, we do not want to impede your training or impair our national security in any way over this bill, we do need some spirit of cooperation and willingness to at least tell us what, if anything, would be acceptable to you.

I must confess to you, I am getting the impression that you just do not want the bill, but there are a lot of people who do want the bill. We want to do it in such a way that your national security is not impeded.

As a former Marine, I tramped over that whole area out there. We need it. I did not think at the time I was tramping over it we needed it so badly.

Mr. ADOLPH. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the people at this table are as concerned as anyone about preserving the wilderness areas. I myself spent 25 years living on the California desert and have backpacked into those desert and mountain areas many times. I believe that I am a conservationist.

But, by the same token, we need some flexibility to test new weapon systems. I think we in DOD have proven our stewardship of those areas.

You look at the areas that are under DOD management, the Naval Weapons Center in particular, and what has been done to preserve wilderness values.

The California desert area is a unique national resource in many respects. It has the terrain features required for low level testing. The reason those test and training facilities are there in the first place is because it (the desert) does not have the population pressures that exist in other areas of the country and, secondly, it has the varied terrain features that we need to test and train with today's weapons systems.

Mr. STONE. Senator, it is not our job to decide the greater picture of what should be done with the Southern California desert, but it is our job to tell you what the Defense Department needs to be able to operate in the future.

Senator BUMPERS. That is what I am asking.

Mr. STONE. It is a reasonable question, and we will provide you an answer, sir.

Senator BUMPERS. Thank you very much and, gentlemen, thank you all for being with us.

Our next witness is James Duffus, III, Director for Natural Resources Management Issues, GAO.

He is accompanied by Robert Robinson, Assistant Director for Natural Resource Management Issues, GAO.

STATEMENT OF JAMES DUFFUS III, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT ROBINSON, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Mr. DUFFUS. Thank you.

I would like to take a minute and briefly introduce my colleagues. On my right is Bob Robinson, who is an Assistant Director in GAO, with direct responsibility for the report which you referred to on the California desert.

To my immediate left is Jim Luckroth, and to his left is Joe Gibbons. They are the team from our Seattle Regional Office that spent about four months in the California desert in developing information for the report.

I will summarize my statement, Mr. Chairman, and request that my prepared statement be included in the record.

I am pleased to be here today to discuss our June 1989 report on the management of wildlife habitat in the California desert conservation area by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management.

Our report dealt with the effectiveness of BLM efforts to protect and enhance wildlife and wildlife habitat under current legislative authority.

It did not address the specific merits of S. 11, a bill aimed at protecting the public lands in the California desert and the focus of today's hearing.

Because we have not analyzed the many provisions of S. 11 in depth, we have no overall position on it. Our work, however, suggests that a significant change in management philosophy will be needed if the wildlife habitat in the California desert is to be effectively preserved.

While BLM considered wildlife needs in its land use planning process and reflected concern for wildlife in establishing management objectives for the area, it has not done a good job of translating the broad expression of concern into tangible wildlife protection efforts and achievements.

Many plans were completed behind schedule. Moreover, as of March 1989, almost a decade after the comprehensive California desert plan was issued, 38 of the 85 required habitat management and area-of-critical environmental concern plans remained to be developed.

Even when plans have been developed, they have not always been effectively implemented. Of the 349 tasks in the 22 completed wildlife-related plans the GAO reviewed, work had been completed on only 33 percent, another 21 percent had been partially completed, and work on 46 percent had not started.

An element often missing from plan implementation was systematic monitoring designed to tell managers how well plans were