Bobcat
The Bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a secretive inhabitant of the California desert. Weighing up to 30 lbs, Bobcats are active primarily during dawn and dusk, and subsist primarily on small mammalian prey such as rabbits and mice.
Background
Renewable energy projects in the United States are on the rise. Technologies that received limited attention in the 1970s, such as solar and wind power, are experiencing significant growth today due to the perception of national interest to increase energy efficiency, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, increase domestic energy production, and curb greenhouse gas emissions. This perception of national interest has been made evident by the range of new policies and incentives that spur renewable energy research and development. Policies aimed at increasing the use of renewable energy include the Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit, adoption of a renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) by many states, and creation of markets for Renewable Energy Certificates and Credits (RECs).
In 2002, the State of California adopted its own RPS and now depends on the development of new, utility-scale solar energy installations to help reach its goal of 20 percent of electricity generation from renewable sources by the end of 2010.1 Utility-scale solar development began in California with the construction of Solar Electric Generating Station I, called SEGS I, which was built in the town of Daggett in 1985.2 Between 1985 and 1991, eight additional SEGS facilities were constructed in California’s Mojave Desert.3 Although these nine solar energy power plants totaled over 353 megawatts (MW) capacity, they only represented 0.8 percent of California’s overall electricity generation capacity. Since these were facilities constructed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), their primary purpose was for scientific testing rather than commercial electricity production and they have since been decommissioned.
California has received national attention for solar energy development for two reasons. First, the state has some of the best solar resources in the world and contains several major cities, or load centers. Second, California has sufficient amounts of available land needed to make these projects viable. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) are in the process of evaluating more than 150 applications for wind and solar projects on federal lands in California, covering more than 1.3 million acres.4 In particular, the BLM has 54 applications for solar projects in the California desert.5 In order to judge the cumulative impacts of so many projects, the BLM and the DOE began developing a nationwide Solar Energy Development Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) in early 2008 to guide future application decisions.