The Mojave Desert Land Trust has become an official fundraising friends’ group for Joshua Tree National Park. Here’s reporter Andrew Dieleman with the story…With the signing of a new partnership agreement, the Mojave Desert Land Trust can now raise funds to support Joshua Tree National Park’s resources and values. The additional funds will help preserve heritage resources, understand landscape system dynamics, conserve rare and threatened species, restore habitat, protect wilderness values, and ensure quality visitor experiences and educational opportunities within the park.

The Mojave Desert is filled with ancient petroglyphs and other symbols of the past preserved in the landscape. Community members have been working to protect a 30.25-acre plot in Joshua Tree rich with Native American history and on May 22, the county Board of Supervisors authorized the conveyance of the land to the Native American Land Conservancy, a group that aims to protect the history of the site.

In 2002, Pat Flanagan, a 78-year-old conservation activist, fled the bright lights of the big city for outer San Bernardino County and the stark beauty of the Mojave Desert. “I’m a desert person,” Flanagan said. “I have to live here.” Her home sits in a part of California that encompasses three deserts — the Mojave, the Colorado and the Sonoran — five national parks and monuments, and more than 10 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management for multiple uses, including conservation of threatened species such as the desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep and Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard.

There’s less graffiti on the rocks bordering Horsemen’s Center in Apple Valley of late thanks to a little elbow grease and a lot of snot. The grease came courtesy of Jonah Olson and 15 or so of his friends. The snot — Elephant Snot, to be exact — was provided by the fine folks of the Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT) in Joshua Tree.

Bonanza Springs, a wildlife water source once of interest mostly to animals and desert hikers, has become the focus of a fight over the future of the Cadiz water project. A study published this month in the Journal of Environmental Forensics asserts Cadiz Inc.’s plan to pump water from beneath the Mojave Desert would drain water from Bonanza Springs.

Below the rocky, sunbaked ridges of the Clipper Mountains in the Mojave Desert, a ribbon of green teems with life. Cottonwoods, willows and reeds sway with the breeze. Crickets chirp. Bees buzz around shallow pools. Clear water gushes from a hole in the ground, forming Bonanza Spring, the largest spring in the southeastern Mojave Desert. This rare oasis is at the center of the fight over a company’s plan to pump groundwater and sell it to California cities.