Napa Valley Register - Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument: what comes next?

It's too early to say how soon the region might feel the effects of the newly created Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, federal official's say. Friday's declaration of the monument status begins a long process of creating a new management plan for the federal lands included it its boundaries.

"You're talking about 330,000 acres," Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Martha Maciel said on Friday. "You're dealing with multiple jurisdictions, multiple cities, multiple counties. You're dealing with two federal agencies, tribal interests."

Hours earlier, President Barack Obama gave two federal agencies their marching orders to protect environmental and historic resources and promote recreational opportunities in newly created monument.

Obama created the national monument by proclamation, issued in an Oval Office ceremony. The monument covers 330,780 acres—515 square miles—of existing federal lands from Snow Mountain Wilderness extending 100 miles south to the hills between Napa and Solano counties.

This is a diverse landscape that includes pine-covered mountain peaks in Mendocino National Forest and the chaparral-covered hills Napa County. Despite its name, the monument includes neither Lake Berryessa nor its immediate shoreline, though there are several pockets of land included on nearby hills.

The new region includes only lands currently owned by the federal government. It does not affect private property, and did not expand the federal acreage.

"This changes the degree of protection and makes it permanent" on existing federal lands, Maciel said.

Next, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management must develop a management plan. The agencies will gather input from nearby towns and hold public meetings.

Not only is it premature to say how long the process will take, Maciel said, it's not even clear when the agencies will begin.

"We got the news today along with everybody else," Maciel said. "Our next step will be to get together with our Forest Service counterparts and kind of lay that out."

Obama talked about Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument during the Oval Office ceremony that also saw him create national monuments in Texas and Nevada.

"Once covered by ocean waters, it's a landscape that is shaped by geological forces that are unique, and it has been a refuge for Native American inhabitants for 11,000 years — so that gives you a sense of the time scales that we're working off of with some of these national monuments," Obama said.

The management plan is to protect the resources identified by Obama in his seven-page proclamation.

Berryessa Snow Mountain has prehistoric and historic legacy and scientific resources, the proclamation says. Among the many examples it lists are insects such as western sulfur butterflies, mammals such as black bears, Napa County's 3,000-acre stand of Sargent Cyprus and foundations of mineral springs resorts.

"This dramatic and diverse landscape is a biological hotspot providing refuge for rare plants and animal species and showcasing the human history of north-central California," the proclamation says.

In addition, the area is important for ranching and provides outdoor recreation that includes hunting, fishing, hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in a fast-growing region, it says.

A national monument is not the same thing as a national park. For one thing, national parks prohibit hunting. But BLM Field Manager Rich Burns said he expects hunting and off-highway vehicle use to continue in the local Knoxville Recreation Area managed by his agency.

In fact, Burns talked about improving the off-highway vehicle road-and-trail system, an undertaking that would take money. He said national monument status could help.

"It elevates the profile," Burns said. "It allows for greater opportunities to do exactly that."

On the map, Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument appears long and narrow as it takes in a swath of coastal hills.

While much of the lands are contiguous, that's not the case with the land in eastern Napa County. For example, Cedar Roughs Wilderness Area is an island of national monument amid private lands.

A Napa County Board of Supervisors report from November said the eastern county contained 62,000 acres of the then-proposed national monument. It was unclear Friday whether Obama's designation includes this much land, given the decision to leave out Lake Berryessa. County officials were uncertain.

Acreage reports for the monument as a whole have shifted. A press release from Rep. Mike Thompson in February mentioned seeking 360,000 acres of Snow Mountain Berryessa protections, while other recent press releases mentioned 350,000 acres. But Obama's proclamation puts the acreage at 330,780.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell toured the Berryessa Snow Mountain area in December, along with Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. They came at the request of Thompson, D-St. Helena.

Tidwell said in press release Friday the area has so much to offer, from small insects and flowers to large mammals and trees to vistas that look across the expanse of the Sacramento Valley to the High Sierras.

"Visitors can get a truly wild experience on this landscape, spending days and even weeks exploring the rugged terrain and finding something new in every corner," Tidwell said.

The nation has 117 national monuments. Among those in the Northern California are Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County and recently designated Point Arena-Stornetta California Coastal National Monument in Mendocino County.

But Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was the standout on Friday. The top of the White House website featured a photo splashed from one end to other of local, oak-covered hills and the caption "America the Beautiful."