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The Desert Protective Council began around a campfire in Palm Desert in 1954. Over 100 caring individuals, including desert botanist Edmund Jaeger and Desert magazine editor Randall Henderson, resolved to protect Joshua Tree National Monument from proposed mining. It's been 50 years since that battle was won, and in that time the DPC has grown both in numbers and in scope, but our cause remains the same...the protection, appreciation, and enjoyment of some of nature's most marvelous bounty: our deserts. We speak for landscapes – and the plants and animals that depend on them – that are threatened by exploitation, development, poaching, and other abuses.
Since our small beginning, we have spearheaded many hard-won successes that have resulted in the preservation of wildlife habitats and natural resources of the four great deserts of the southwest. In addition to our early success in Joshua Tree, we also were there for the battle against dams in Grand Canyon National Park, the genesis of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, the successful passage of the California Desert Protection Act, and recent off-highway vehicle legislation.
The new century has brought many changes for our organization, including the recruitment of our first paid Conservation Coordinator, an organizational restructuring, and a legal settlement in our Mesquite Landfill lawsuit. The fund from this settlement has increased our effectiveness and focus in California’s Imperial Valley. We use the funds from this settlement to support vital conservation work in this often overlooked area (see our Mesquite Fund page to learn more). So, while we carry on the mission set over 50 years ago, there’s a lot that’s new about us. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to change and grow during our next 50 years!
As a non-profit organization, we depend on our membership to increase the power of our conservation activities. Working together, we can spread our enthusiasm for the desert to a greater audience, ensuring a lasting constituency for desert conservation. Members also elect our board of nine volunteer Directors, which determines policies and strategy and oversees the activities of one paid staff member. For people who love the desert, we offer opportunities to help protect this remarkable landscape, including grants for Imperial County conservation and education projects, stewardship outings, action alerts, wilderness area monitoring, and more. To learn more about what we do, explore our website further, including our online newsletter, and our Stewardship, Education, and Advocacy sections. Then we hope you’ll consider supporting the Desert Protective Council by joining or donating.
For even more information contact:
Terry Weiner,
Imperial County Projects and Conservation Coordinator
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In 1937, Randall Henderson created the now-legendary Desert magazine. For its first issue, he wrote an essay that asked readers to look beyond the desert’s superficial hostility to its true nature, the one filled with an astonishing diversity of life, beauty and wonder. Revealing this side of the desert remained the mission of Desert magazine for the 21 years of Randall’s editorship, and he pursued the same mission when he helped to found the Desert Protective Council in 1954, serving as President and Executive Director during its early years.
Today, we carry on that same tradition of encouraging appreciation and preservation of the true desert. As that view of deserts as wastelands has morphed into one of deserts as motorized playgrounds, it is even more important to promote a vision of the “other desert,” the one that appeals to those with “a bit of poetry in their souls.” It is with pride that we reprint here an excerpt from Randall’s first statement of the importance of desert places, taken from the version that appeared in his book, On Desert Trails... Today and Yesterday (Westernlore Press, 1961). ________________________________________ There are two deserts: One is a grim, desolate wasteland. It is the home of venomous reptiles and stinging insects, of vicious thorn-covered plants and trees and unbearable heat. This is the desert seen by the stranger speeding along the highway, impatient to be out of the “damnable country.” It is the desert visualized by those children of luxury to whom any environment is intolerable which does not provide all the comforts and luxuries of a pampering civilization. It is the concept fostered by fiction writers who dramatize the tragedies of the desert because there is a market for such manuscripts. But the stranger and the uninitiated see only the mask. The other desert - the real desert - is not for the eyes of the superficial observer or the fearful soul of a cynic. It is a land which reveals its true character only to those who come with courage, tolerance and understanding. For these, the desert holds rare gifts: a health-giving sunshine; a sky that after the sun goes down is studded with diamonds; a breeze that bears no poison; a landscape of pastel colors such as no artist can reproduce; thorn-covered plants which during countless ages have clung tenaciously to life through heat, drought, wind and the depredations of thirsty animals, and each season send forth blossoms of exquisite coloring as symbols of courage that triumphed over appalling obstacles. To those who come to the desert with tolerance it gives friendliness; to those who come with courage it gives new strength of character. Those seeking relaxation find in its far horizons and secluded canyons release from the world of man-made tensions. For those seeking beauty the desert offers nature’s rarest artistry. This is the desert that has a deep and lasting fascination for men and women with a bit of poetry in their souls. |
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