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On Friday President Barack Obama moved to set aside Berryessa Snow Mountain as a national monument. The decision will preserve a wilderness area of more than 330,000 acres covering parts of Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Yolo, Glenn and Colusa Counties.
The decision was applauded by environmental groups, as well as an alliance of politicians and business leaders and community members throughout Northern California who had been pressing for the designation.
President Obama announced that he will protect a huge swath of land stretching 100 miles from the shores of Lake Berryessa to the flanks of Snow Mountain, a longtime dream of local residents and North Bay politicians.
The White House said the 331,000-acre wildland area known as Berryessa Snow Mountain is one of three national monuments that the president is protecting for a total of more than a million acres of public land.
More than a million acres of wilderness will be protected as part of three new national monuments that President Barack Obama is creating in California
The presidential move, announced by the White House early Friday, brings to 19 the number of monuments that Obama has created or expanded since taking office. Environmental advocates hailed the new monuments as bringing sorely needed protection to natural American treasures, even as Republicans in Congress were pursuing legislation to stop the president.
President Obama used his own authority on Friday to make it official: A vast and varied expanse stretching from just northeast of Napa, into Mendocino County, will become the Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Monument.
The designation, under the 1906 Antiquities Act, could create California's biggest national monument–slightly edging out the recently-designated San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California. Initial announcements carried conflicting versions of the monument's size, from just under 331,000 acres to nearly 360,000.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce Friday that he has created a "Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument" that includes parts of eastern Napa County.
The White House revealed Obama's intentions on Thursday in a press release embargoed until early Friday morning Eastern time. The release called the area "a biodiversity hot spot."
President Barack Obama is designating the Berryessa Snow Mountain area as a national monument, permanently protecting the rolling mountainous region that runs through Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Solano and Yolo counties.
Democrats are renewing efforts to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill after a string of recent mass shootings.
The Safer Communities Act, introduced Thursday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would temporarily prohibit people who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution from purchasing or possessing a gun.
The legislation also takes steps to strengthen the nation's mental health system.
Relatives and friends of the victims of last month's shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina church traveled to Washington on Wednesday to demand that US lawmakers vote on legislation to expand background checks on gun sales.
But their chances of success are at best considered slim. Similar legislation failed a Senate vote two years ago after 20 children were shot to death in the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut.
Since the shooting in Charleston, S.C. that killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said America has for some reason become focused on the symbol of the Confederate battle flag.
"It's a very strong symbol, but the fact still remains that though this young man worshiped that symbol, he carried out his desolate act with a gun," he said of the alleged shooter, Dylann Storm Roof, during press conference Wednesday.
Family members of the nine people killed in last month's shooting in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, traveled to the nation's capital Wednesday to turn their grief into action.
The families, accompanied by Charleston community leaders and advocates for more stringent gun laws, called on lawmakers in Congress to push for a vote on legislation that would expand background checks for gun sales.