Advocacy is more than a tool for making our voices heard. We view policy advocacy as a crucial form of environmental protection. We are witnessing challenges to bedrock environmental and climate laws, rollbacks to endangered species protections, and erosion of the agencies that steward our public lands. The 26-million-acre California desert also faces persistent threats from climate change, poorly sited development, wildfires, drought, and ecosystem degradation.
MDLT’s advocacy approach is two-fold. Our staff engage with state, local, and federal decision-makers, bringing them the latest science and experience from the field. We also work alongside our community, providing the public with the training, analysis, and opportunities to defend the desert and inspire responsible policy outcomes. Together, this work helps tackle the biggest challenges affecting the California desert and is the next step in preserving its natural, cultural, scenic, historic, and scientific values.
Tell the Department of the Interior: No data centers on our public lands
Public lands are being targeted as locations for resource-hogging data centers. The first facility on public lands was already approved for Nevada this summer, and land within a National Park Service forest on the east coast may now be transferred to a data center developer. The Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has reportedly ordered the Bureau of Land Management to identify other places for development. This follows an executive order last year to expedite permitting for AI centers and infrastructure.
Ceding public lands to private interests exposes these protected landscapes to significant environmental harm and data centers already have devastating impacts on communities by generating noise pollution, localized heat islands, and high demand for water and electricity driving up utility rates and strains the power grid. Please, tell Secretary Burgum NO data centers on public lands. Thank you for taking action with us today.
Top issues facing the desert
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Weaker bedrock environmental protections
Since January 2025, the federal administration has introduced a dizzying number of policies, rules, and revisions that have eroded our bedrock climate and environmental laws and are fundamentally undermining how conservation works in public lands. Explore our interactive timeline to see these decisions in more detail.
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Public lands under attack
The California desert is home to three national park units; Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks, and Mojave National Preserve. The Bureau of Land Management oversees another 11 million acres, including the new Chuckwalla National Monument. But our public lands and the people who manage them for our benefit are in dire straits. The 2025 One Big, Beautiful Bill brought deep cuts to land management agencies. Congress is still considering even more massive defunding proposals for our public lands and waters.
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The extinction crisis
The Endangered Species Act protects more than 1,600 species. But our ability to fight the extinction crisis is in peril. In 2025, the Trump administration launched a major challenge to the Endangered Species Act by prioritizing economic impact over critical habitat, removing climate change impacts, and abolishing automatic protections for threatened species. The Mojave desert tortoise became endangered in 2024 due largely to loss of critical habitat—one of the key elements under attack in these proposed rules. Stay updated. Learn what we are doing to protect the desert’s iconic species through proactive programs.
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Climate change
Desert life is accustomed to adapting to planetary extremes, and there are climate innovations everywhere you look. Like the desert tortoise’s bladder, which functions like a spare water bottle. Or the Joshua tree, which does its photosynthesizing at night. The Mojave Desert Land Trust is bringing its own innovations to the climate change struggle, from banking seeds to protecting natural carbon sinks and redefining how we look at species protection.
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Biodiversity loss
The California desert is one of the most biodiverse places in the country. It is home to over 2,000 species of native plants, comprising over 30% of California’s diverse flora. The extreme environment to which these plants have adapted has produced some extraordinary characteristics. Iconic species like the Joshua tree and the Endangered desert tortoise provide vital ecosystem benefits as keystone species. But today, habitat fragmentation through development, wildfires, and invasive species threatens the desert’s rich biodiversity.
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The blocking of conservation efforts
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is America’s major source of funding for conservation and recreation. In 2025, Secretarial Order 3442 was introduced to halt the use of LWCF for conservation and recreation expansion on Bureau of Land Management lands. Hundreds of projects may not receive funding as Congress intended. That includes the stalled transfer of land stewarded by MDLT. To date, LWCF has enabled MDLT to return 57,900 acres to national parks, wilderness areas and national monuments. This improves the well-being of our communities by enhancing the health of our ecosystems, supporting people’s physical and mental health through recreation, and boosting rural economies.
Help protect endangered bighorn
In California's Jacumba Wilderness, border wall construction is cutting off a migration corridor for federally Endangered Peninsular desert bighorn sheep, permanently separating these animals from fresh water and altering their life-long migration patterns. This federally protected wilderness, comprised of expansive desert washes and plentiful mountains and canyons, spans more than 31,000 acres along the national border in San Diego and Imperial Counties. Its high elevations serve as a corridor for Peninsular desert bighorn sheep, a species that was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1998. It is here that the U.S.-Mexico border wall is about to be constructed.
If the wall proceeds with no protective measures in place, the Jacumba subgroup of the Endangered Peninsular desert bighorn sheep will be cut off from rare sources of water, food, shelter, and mates, their migration routes blocked. They are already facing deadly razor wire being installed at some points of the border. Add to this, the effects of wall construction, road building, and an increase in human activity. Experts believe that this will be the last gasp for this population.
Please urge your representatives to push for protective measures to ensure that these majestic and endangered animals have a way to access water and forage in the Jacumba Wilderness. Use our quick action form to contact Congress today.
Please join the effort to preserve the California desert.