Name: BLM CA California Desert National Conservation Lands
Display Field: NLCS_NAME
Type: Feature Layer
Geometry Type: esriGeometryPolygon
Description: Dataset of feature classes for Conservation Lands of the California Desert within NLCS. In 1976, Congress designated a 25-million acre expanse of resource-rich desert lands in southern California as the California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) through the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. In 2009, Congress, passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which directed the BLM to include lands managed for conservation purposes within the CDCA as part of the National Conservation Lands. To protect this area's natural resources and facilitate development of its energy resources, the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan was undertaken in 2013. This collaborative, multi-stakeholder, landscape-scale planning effort comprises 22.5 million acres in the desert regions of seven California counties, 10.8 million acres of which are BLM lands.
Phase I of the DRECP was completed in September 2016. It designated 4.2 million acres as part of the National Conservation Lands of the California Desert. Much of this land was already a part of the National Conservation Lands (in particular, large portions of the Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow National Monuments), but 2.89 million acres were a new addition to the system. National Conservation Lands of the California Desert are closed to all energy development.
Copyright Text: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), California State Office