Big expansion of wilderness areas in state expected

Press Democrat

In the largest expansion of wilderness protection in 15 years, Congress on Wednesday sent President Barack Obama a bill that would conserve a wide swath of the West, including stretches of California from the desert to the Sierra.

The legislation, which passed the House 285-140 with North Coast Democratic Reps. Mike Thompson of St. Helena and Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma voting yes, is expected to be signed by Obama.

It would give the highest level of federal protection to more than 2 million acres in nine states -- prohibiting new roads, use of motorized or mechanized vehicles, most commercial activities, logging, new structures, new mining claims and new grazing.

That is almost as much land as was designated for protection during George W. Bush's presidency.

In California, already with 14 million acres of wilderness, the bill would protect an additional 700,000 acres.

The legislation, which cleared the Senate last week, is an amalgam of about 160 bills, calling for such things as designating President Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope, Ark., a national historic site, increasing protection of Oregon's Mount Hood and creating a commission to plan for the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, Fla.

California land that would be designated as wilderness includes about 40,000 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County. The bill would create the Magic Mountain Wilderness, named after a mountain northeast of Santa Clarita, not the Six Flags amusement park, and the Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness, west of Angeles Crest Highway.

Also designated as wilderness would be about 428,000 acres in the Eastern Sierra, about 147,000 acres in Riverside County, including parts of Joshua Tree National Park, and about 85,000 acres in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park.

The legislation would strengthen protections of scenic rivers, including eight in California that stretch from the upper Owens River in the Eastern Sierra to Piru Creek in Los Angeles County. The bill would add about 8,400 acres to the 272,000-acre Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument near Palm Springs and order a study on whether the World War II Japanese American internment camp at Tulelake should be added to the national park system.

The legislation also implements a 2006 legal settlement to restore the San Joaquin River, bringing water and salmon back to a now-dry stretch.

The lawsuit stemmed from the opening of Friant Dam in 1949, which transformed the San Joaquin Valley's main artery from a river thick with migrating salmon into an irrigation source for more than a million acres of farmland.

The bill brought together members of opposing parties who were eager to trumpet their conservation efforts and water projects.

But it drew opposition from a number of congressional Republicans and business and property-rights groups, who attacked it as a land grab that would close off public land to energy production.