California’s Wildlife Conservation Board has approved nearly $60 million in grant funding aimed at preserving the state’s biodiversity and protecting its public lands.

$5.5 million in grant funding will go toward the Mojave Desert Land Trust to fund environmental review and design for two wildlife crossings over State Route 62 near Yucca Valley. The bridge will reconnect the San Bernardino and Little San Bernardino mountains, including Joshua Tree National Park.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT) has announced the beginning of the planning process for two wildlife crossing overpasses on State Route 62 (SR62). The non-profit says the crossings will benefit locals by reducing wildlife and vehicle collisions, and of course benefit the mountain lions, black bear, deer, bighorn sheep and other animals that choose to use the eventual crossings.

For the past twenty years, the Mojave Desert Land Trust has focused on steadily purchasing these private inholdings and handing them off to the National Park Service, one small parcel at a time. Last year, the land trust acquired an 800-acre property in the Mojave National Preserve, the nonprofit's largest single acquisition in the preserve to date. 

A transformation is underway across the Desert West to meet current and future electricity needs, especially in California and Nevada’s biodiverse deserts, where vast, open areas are being converted into industrial energy zones that previously hosted desert tortoises, kit foxes, and old-growth Joshua trees. View-obstructing transmission lines will crisscross the land, and data centers may follow. This change, driven by a collision of sunlight, technology, and ecology, will be significant and permanent, and is reshaping the desert as we know it.

For almost 20 years, the Mojave Desert Land Trust has worked to preserve prime desert habitat, protecting more than 125,000 acres of California desert. Recently, the trust acquired 1,280 acres at the entrance to Mojave Trails National Monument, a massive swath of federal land south of Mojave National Preserve that had been suffering from illegal dumping, graffiti and more.