Babbitt checks out Sonoran Desert area as another national monument area

GILA BEND, Ariz. - President Clinton has named four new national monuments in Arizona this year, and he may not be done yet.

Less than two months before leaving office, his interior secretary inspected another Sonoran Desert candidate Thursday.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt led an entourage onto a remote, pristine hilltop in the Sand Tank Mountains on the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range to see why a mix of environmentalists, Indians and government officials want him to recommend that Clinton create the Sonoran Desert National Monument.

Babbitt declined to commit himself immediately to saying he would recommend that Clinton designate yet another Arizona monument in his 51 days left in office.

But he clearly was impressed with what he saw about 25 miles southeast of Gila Bend: a montage of stately saguaros, palo verde and mesquite trees, creosote bushes, Teddy Bear and ocotillo cactus dotting and overlooking a maze of similarly landscaped rocky, rugged rises and dipping valleys.

Mountain ranges peeked through for 50 miles or more in every direction - all without hint of a utility line and closed off to cattle grazing, mining or other human-related activity.

''It would be premature to try to make a prediction,'' Babbitt said after proponents urged him to combine nearly 500,000 acres into a new monument.

A day earlier, Babbitt said that he was inclined to recommend Pompeys Pillar, a sandstone butte in south central Montana that bears explorer William Clark's carved signature, as a national monument.

The New York Times reported that Babbitt might recommend another, controversial monument designation at the Missouri Breaks in Montana as well.

And an aide said Babbitt might recommend that Clinton designate an additional monument site in California and one in the Virgin Islands as well as the Arizona site.

This year alone, Clinton has created 10 new national monuments, including four in Arizona: the million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument on Arizona's Shivwitz plateau; the 293,000-acre Vermilion Cliffs National Monument north of the Grand Canyon; the 129,000-acre Ironwood Forest National Monument near Tucson and the 72,500-acre Agua Fria National Monument near Phoenix.

''Everyone agrees this is exceptional habitat,'' said Babbitt, the former Arizona governor, about the state's latest candidate.

''On a global basis, this is rare to have an intact desert,'' botanist Richard Felger, director of the Dry Lands Institute in Tucson, told Babbitt.

Edward Manuel, chairman of the Tohono O'odham Indians, whose reservation abuts part of the lands under discussion, said the tribe has the resources and BLM has the credibility to manage the land.

''Maybe we can work it out,'' he said.