Home Care In Joshua Tree, CA

California has approved an unprecedented plan to protect the iconic Joshua tree from climate change and development.

The western Joshua tree conservation plan is a broad blueprint that compiles scientific research and traditional ecological knowledge to identify areas where the plant may thrive in a warmer future and plot out how to best protect that land. It recommends limiting development, taking steps to reduce wildfire risk like culling invasive grasses and introducing Joshua trees with genetic variations that make them more resilient to warming temperatures.

The plan was required by a state law enacted in 2023 and received final approval Wednesday at a Fish and Game Commission meeting. Proponents say the effort is groundbreaking because it seeks to conserve a species that’s abundant now but is projected to lose much of its habitat to climate change.

“This is the first time I've ever seen the Legislature and governor take this step to protect a species that may be imperiled in future,” said Isabel Baer, acting manager of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat conservation planning branch. The department is tasked with carrying out and enforcing regulations set by the Fish and Game Commission and providing information to inform its decisions.

The forward-looking nature of the plan and underlying law has fueled controversy, with some local residents and politicians pointing out that the tree is currently ubiquitous in some high desert communities and questioning why it needs protecting. The law also requires property owners to obtain permits and pay fees to kill, damage or remove Joshua trees, which some fear will stifle growth and drive up the cost of living in some of the last affordable regions in Southern California.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe, whose district includes communities surrounding Joshua Tree National Park, said the law has already stalled housing and infrastructure projects and driven away desperately-needed jobs and investments.

"The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act is a blunt instrument that threatens the future of the Morongo Basin and other desert communities by imposing costly, inflexible regulations," Rowe said in a statement. "It was written and passed by legislators with no ties to our community, who have never seen how the Joshua tree thrives and is intricately interwoven into our developed areas."

The conservation plan has drawn criticism from a coalition of local water agencies, a residents' organization and trade groups representing realtors and farmers, who last month sent a letter to the state that called the plan “untried, and in numerous respects very confusing.” The letter demanded changes in the implementation of the plan, including exemptions or expedited permitting for projects like water distribution system repairs and maintenance.

“Doing so would help reduce the disproportionate and harmful impacts on affected communities and public agencies during this experimental effort to conserve a species based solely on climate change projections,” the letter states.

There are two distinct species of Joshua trees — referred to as "eastern" and "western" — that grow in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Mexico. The spiky succulents are revered for their cultural import, having inspired both a namesake national park and a U2 album. They have served as a guide for Indigenous people in both a physical and spiritual sense, with some tribes using their roots for basketry, their fibers for cordage and their petals and fruits for food, said Robert Przeklasa, executive director of the Native American Land Conservancy. The nonprofit was a partner in the creation of the plan, buoyed by a grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board that enabled tribal members to be compensated for their time and travel.

The trees are also a linchpin of the Mojave Desert ecosystem. Dozens of animals rely on them to survive, from ladder-backed woodpeckers who nest in their trunks to desert night lizards who sleep and forage beneath their fallen boughs.

Yet more than a third of the western species’ range in California is private land and includes some of the fastest-growing communities in the region, according to state scientists. On top of that, climate models clearly show there won’t be much suitable habitat left by the end of the century, scientists say.

“This plan is a major milestone in efforts to protect one of California’s most ecologically important and iconic species that’s facing a very, very difficult future,” said Brendan Cummings, conservation director of the Center for Biological Diversity. The nonprofit petitioned to list the western Joshua tree as threatened under the state Endangered Species Act in 2019. The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act was enacted after the Fish and Game Commission deadlocked on whether to do so.

That law requires people who perform work that kills all or part of a Joshua tree to receive a permit and to pay mitigation fees for each tree harmed. Exactly how close a person can dig to a Joshua tree before the work triggers the fee and permitting requirements is determined by CDFW staff on a case-by-case basis depending on the project, Baer said.

Those fees can add up quickly for even small projects.

Alec Mackie owns three lots in Yucca Valley and wants to build his retirement home on one of them. But now he may not be able to, because there are 88 Joshua trees on the property — and his plan would require removing eight of them.

The state reviewed his proposed construction project, said he must pay mitigation fees for 63 trees, and sent him a bill for $32,961.75. Mackie was also required to pay about $4,000 for the tree census, which covered two lots. And he must commission arborist reports and pay for contractor training, which he’s estimating will cost another $4,000.

Worse yet, Mackie said, since 55 of the trees will remain standing, he will have to pay again to dig near them if he wants to undertake another construction project in the future.

He's now considering abandoning the project.

Baer said the state has been working with towns and residents to address these types of concerns. They've already exempted single-family home projects from a previous requirement to relocate certain Joshua trees and are working on preparing an environmental impact analysis that will make the permitting process easier and less costly, she said. The plan is also expected to evolve, as the Fish and Game Commission is required to review its effectiveness at public meetings next year and every two years after that. In eight years, the commission will reconsider whether to list the Joshua tree under the state Endangered Species Act.

"Hopefully we'll have met our goals under the plan to where the species doesn't need that protection," Baer said.

Twentynine Palms, Calif. — Desert tortoise burrows dot Cindy Bernard’s property in Indian Cove, a sprawling residential neighborhood just outside Joshua Tree National Park.

Some are so well known by local humans that they have names. There’s Big Boy, a hefty male who likes to roam. And Squiggles, a female who leaves wavy tracks in the sand.

But when consultants hired by developers seeking to build a luxury eco-resort next to Bernard’s 40 acres conducted a field survey, they said they found no members of the species — which is listed as endangered by the state of California. And the city of Twentynine Palms, where the land is located, concluded the project did not require a full environmental impact report under California law.

“The same noise and light issues that might disrupt our ability to see the night sky or enjoy the quiet will also affect the wildlife here,” Bernard said on a recent afternoon as she pointed out a crescent-shaped hole in the ground from which she saw a tortoise emerge just days before. “We’re not against this project. We’re against it here.”

The proposed Ofland Twentynine Palms hotel is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and community group Indian Cove Neighbors, which Bernard co-founded. The groups allege Twentynine Palms failed to adequately assess and mitigate potential environmental harms including traffic, water, air quality and wildlife impacts.

They note that the 152-acre project site — an undeveloped swath of creosote scrub about a half-mile from the national park boundary — may support at least 10 plant and 17 animal species that are either listed as threatened or endangered or recognized as species of concern, including loggerhead shrikes, golden eagles, burrowing owls and, of course, desert tortoises such as Big Boy and Squiggles.

The project is also slated for the center of a wildlife corridor that enables bobcats, badgers and dozens of other species to move between the national park and large tracts of undeveloped land, yet documents approved by the city contain only a cursory analysis of the potential impacts on wildlife movement, states the lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Bernardino County Superior Court. The lawsuit requests the court to direct Twentynine Palms to rescind its approval of the project.

“You’re placing a luxury glamping resort right in the middle of a residential area so there are going to be impacts on people’s lives and on the species that are coming through,” said Meredith Stevenson, staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. ”But the city just completely overlooked so many impacts and then found they weren’t significant because they weren’t even disclosed or assessed.”

Stone James, the city manager of Twentynine Palms who is also an Indian Cove resident, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But he passionately defended the project, saying it will provide much-needed jobs and revenue to an area where many struggle to eat. (The area has 15.6% poverty rate compared with 12% in the state as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey.)

James said that state environmental laws intended to help communities evaluate project impacts are now at times weaponized to crush development. And he called complaints that the city should have required an environmental impact report “a ruse,” saying the project simply did not meet the requirements established by the state.

“We have a project that’s consistent with the core identity of our community, a conservation-based project that would allow people to come in[to] our community in a respectful manner and enjoy the beauty of Twentynine Palms, enjoy the beauty of the national park, visit the artists and people who are starting businesses in our downtown, and we’re going to say no to that?” he said. “There are many levels to this but what’s so disheartening is to see the few wealthy elite say, ‘We got ours. We don’t want anyone else to have something here.’”

Bernard pushed back on that assertion, pointing out that many members of Indian Cove Neighbors are on fixed incomes. “There are no wealthy elites in the Morongo Basin,” she said, referring to the high desert region that includes Twentynine Palms and other towns near the national park.

The project calls for 100 small cabins, two lodges, multiple pools, a stargazing area and an outdoor movie screen, plus a wastewater treatment plant that will process more than 13,000 gallons a day. It would be the largest development undertaken by Las Vegas-based Ofland Hotels, which in 2021 opened an outdoor boutique hotel in Escalante, Utah, and has been greenlighted for a second hotel near the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

According to Luke Searcy, head of development for Ofland Hotels, the company was drawn to Twentynine Palms by its “natural beauty” and “unique culture.” The hotel buildings will be single-story to protect views and located at least 500 feet from neighboring properties to mitigate noise, he said in an email. The hotel also plans on obtaining a Dark Sky International Lodging Approval Certificate, which is above and beyond city light-pollution standards, he noted.

The company estimates that groundbreaking will take place in early 2027, Searcy said. It plans to build the hotel on 42 acres at the center of the site, with the remaining 110 acres set aside as open space. Still, the Center for Biological Diversity notes that open space will contain roads and the wastewater treatment plant, which could subject wildlife to pollution and increase the risk of getting hit by vehicles.

The city last month approved the project, adopting what’s known as a mitigated negative declaration. California environmental law allows the shorter, less detailed document to be used for projects when initial studies identify environmental impacts but changes to the plans can reduce those impacts to an acceptable level, Stevenson said.

But if substantial evidence supports a fair argument that a project may result in significant impacts, a full environmental impact report must be prepared, she said.

Stevenson argues that in the case of the Ofland project, the mitigated negative declaration did not provide enough information to understand the project impacts, and the city overlooked evidence that such impacts may be significant.

For instance, Stevenson said, the mitigated negative declaration states the project will add nearly 900 vehicle trips a day but did not take into account traffic from employees or vendors that will service an on-site restaurant.

The city did not commission a vehicle-miles-traveled analysis, even though Caltrans recommended that it do so, she said. And although the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identified numerous deficiencies in plans to mitigate impacts on plants and wildlife, the city said it would adopt only some of those recommended changes, she said.

The lawsuit also alleges that, by approving the project — and in the process, rezoning the land from residential to “tourist-commercial” and “open-space conservation,” the city violated state housing law. The move technically reduced the potential for new housing units on the land by 61. And California housing law prohibits cities from taking any action that reduces the legal limit of new housing within their borders. In other words, according to the suit, Twentynine Palms should have found a way to add 61 more potential units elsewhere within city limits, Stevenson said.

Neighbors also said the move to redesignate the land amounted to allowing developers, rather than residents, to drive the zoning process.

Local bakery owner Travis Poston said his Indian Cove home has provided a much-needed respite from the stress of running a small business. He fears that the approval of a commercial project in the residential area will set a precedent that could mark the start of a larger development push.

“If this goes in, what’s next?” he said. “The whole area is on the chopping block at this point.”

The National Park Service (NPS) issued a safety advisory on Tuesday for visitors to Joshua Tree National Park, following heavy thunderstorms and flooding, warning that debris may be present on roadways.

Why It Matters

Conditions created by inclement weather presented a potential hazard for drivers at the park, which saw almost three million visitors in 2024, according to the NPS.

What To Know

Notices on the NPS website stated that the park had received heavy rainfall, which had caused flooding both within and along its boundaries.

"At this moment, the Oasis of Mara is closed due to current conditions," read the alert, posted August 26, which also urged visitors to drive safely due to the possibility of sand and debris on roadways.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said Wednesday that isolated showers would be possible in southeast and southwest California on Wednesday and Thursday, as a push of moisture moves into the region from Tropical Storm Juliette.

In a separate notice, the NPS said that a portion of the Black Rock Canyon trail was also scheduled to be closed for repairs until September 30. Hikers would be directed to a temporary detour while the project is ongoing, the NPS said.

Additionally, the west entrance of the park will be closed to vehicle traffic through 6 p.m. on August 29, with visitors directed to instead use the north or south entrances.

Joshua Tree National Park, located in Southern California, straddles the Mojave ("high desert") and Colorado ("low desert") ecosystems. It features sandy plains dotted with giant yuccas in the west and sparse terrain with cholla and ocotillo cacti flowering in the east.

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"The main road from the north entrance of the park traveling south were impacted by flooding. Some dirt and debris may remain throughout the week," a spokesperson for the park told Newsweek. We have crews in the park working to clear the roads and assess any damage that may have occurred."

What People Are Saying

Joshua Tree National Park said on Instagram on Tuesday: "Heavy thunderstorms hit the park yesterday. Drive safely! There may be debris on the roadways...Another heavy storm is forecast between 2-5 p.m. today. Avoid unnecessary travel if conditions become unsafe. Do not drive through moving water."

The National Weather Service (NWS) said in a post on X, Wednesday: "Most will stay dry today, but some isolated showers and storms are possible, mainly in southeast California and southwest Arizona. Better chances (20-40%), out west, move in during the overnight/early morning hours Thursday."

What Happens Next

In its forecast for the area, the NWS said there would be a "slight chance" of showers before 2 p.m. and after 4 p.m. There is a 20 percent chance of precipitation on Wednesday, according to the agency.

For Thursday, there is a 40 percent chance of showers, the NWS said.

Update 08/28/25, 1:22 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the National Park Service.