Treehuggers International » California Desert Protection Act of 2010

Fresh Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River Opportunities In the Golden State

tommy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:02:59 +0000

Rocky outcrop near the Mt. Waterman summit, San Gabriel Mountains.

It’s an exciting time for wilderness and outdoor advocates in Southern California, as three different conservation initiatives are underway in the southern half of the Golden State, including wild areas in the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County, a pair of remote locales in northern San Diego County, and a vast expanse of currently unprotected land in the Mojave Desert, including multiple wilderness expansion proposals, numerous Wild and Scenic River designations, and two new National Monuments.

On this edition of Treehuggers International, Daniel Rossman from the Wilderness Society’s Los Angeles office, and Steve Evans, the Conservation Director from Sacramento-based Friends of the River, talk about the remarkable amount of conservation opportunities already underway in Southern California, and those under consideration.

San Gabriel Mountains

Pitch leaks from a freshly cut limb.

Led by the Wilderness Society, Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and other organizations in the San Gabriel Mountains Forever coalition, the current San Gabriels plan calls for additions to the range’s three established wilderness areas: the Sheep Mountain, Cucamonga, and San Gabriel Wilderness in the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests.

Significant Wild and Scenic River designation is also being proposed on the San Gabriel River’s East, North, and West forks, as well as Lytle Creek, Little Rock Creek (on the range’s north side), and San Antonio Creek, including San Antonio Falls, located along one of the proposed additions to the Sheep Mountain Wilderness near Baldy Notch.

Also, with the extraordinary and still-growing recreation use of the area, a plan is being proposed for a new San Gabriel Mountains National Recreation Area in conjunction with the National Park Service.

The park service has already done a feasibility study on the possibility of a National Recreation Area, which would be especially valuable to lower income and ethnically diverse areas at the base of the range. Currently, the Wilderness and Wild and Scenic package needs the support of Congressman David Dreier from California’s 26th district in order to get aboard “the legislative train.”

2010 California Desert Protection Act

Backed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Desert Protection Act is of significant size, and would include the proposed Sand-to-Snow National Monument, rising from the western end of Joshua Tree National Park into the forested high country of the San Bernardino Mountains, and includes one of several proposed Wild and Scenic River designations in the area for the Whitewater River, which flows through the proposed monument’s length into the Coachella Valley basin.

To the north, the proposed Mojave Trails National Monument would protect wild and historic locales along both sides of historic U.S. Rt. 66, along with a sizable chunk of the Mojave Desert west of the Mojave National Preserve, and another sizable area west of the Arizona state line near the Colorado River and Needles. Several proposed wilderness areas are also part of the package, and would provide an opportunity to enhance wildlife corridors between Death Valley National Park, the U.S. Army’s Fort Irwin, and Mojave National Preserve.

An upcoming show featuring David Lamfrom from the National Parks Conservation Association will go into more detail about this proposal, one of the largest land management initiatives ever undertaken in the lower 48 states.

Northern San Diego County

Springtime flowers in oak woodland country.

We at Treehuggers International were pleased to learn Congressman Darrell Issa, who represents California’s 49th District in San Diego’s inland North County, had introduced legislation in December to expand the current Agua Tibia and Beauty Mountain Wilderness areas in Riverside County into adjoining wild areas in his district in San Diego County.

Passage of the bill will add 7,796 acres to the Agua Tibia Wilderness and 13,635 acres to the Beauty Mountain Wilderness, originally established by Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack and Sen. Barbara Boxer in the California Desert and Mountain Heritage Act.

Crisscrossed by canyons with oak woodland and chaparral-covered slopes, the areas are intensely rugged and heavily bouldered, with the Cutca Trail marking the main human passageway through the region. As has become the case with recent wilderness proposals in areas with private property patchworked into public land, the legislation allows for the continued use of a popular campground at the end of a pre-exisiting road “cherry stemmed” into the wilderness, and will also permit a corral along the edge of the Beauty Mountain Wilderness boundary.

Another modern wilderness concession is an allowance for mechanized firefighting efforts in the areas, though the Agua Tibia Wilderness in particular has already burned four times since the late 80s, most recently in the Poomacha Fire in October 2007. Several proposed Wild and Scenic River designations are also being considered as part of the overall legislative package, including the upper Santa Margarita River (before it flows into Camp Pendleton) and the San Diego River Gorge.

For more information on these ongoing initiatives, contact the Wilderness Society’s Los Angeles office at (213) 514-4030, or Friends of the River in Sacramento at (916) 442-3155.

Rugged vistas of the San Gabriel high country abound along the trail to Chilao and Twin Peaks.

Solar vs. Wilderness In Mojave Desert Protection Act

tommy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:55:33 +0000

The Mojave Desert's last wild lands: Only appropriate for solar collection sites?

Will wilderness-worthy legislation rain on big solar’s prarade? There are a zillion places in Southern California where solar farms can be developed other than areas proposed for wilderness designation, like the roof of every massive warehouse and industrial park from the Inland Empire to the Coachella Valley and beyond, or the tens of thousands of acres of desert outside of cities and recreation, conservation, and military areas.

Roofs of warehouses and industrial parks in the Southland already constitute significant wasted space and limtless opportunity for solar collection. If such spaces were used effectively for giant solar collector “farms” (instead of reflecting the solar energy back into the sky), the energy collected would already be in accessible urban areas, thereby undoing the need to construct colossal, eyesore power lines to bring electricity from the backcountry into cities.

Southern California should be leading the world in the development and use of solar technology, and yet, pay a visit to housing tracts in Indio or El Centro and what do you find? Households with summertime electricity bills exceeding $800 dollars a month, all to power air conditioning with electricity generated by either coal or fossil fuel-burning plants, or the one element more scarce in the southwest than anything else: water, in the form of dam-powered hydroelectricity.

Desert Couple

Treehuggers International can’t believe we’re the only ones who find this counter-intuitive. An editorial in the January 25th San Francisco Chronicle editorial seems to agree:

It’s an environmental catch-22. California needs to meet its aggressive goals for renewable-energy production, but solar and wind farms require lots of space. The farms’ land gobbling can conflict with one of Californians’ most cherished values: the preservation of pristine wilderness and animal habitat. As the state gets serious about increasing its renewable-energy portfolio, there’s going to be tension.

The territorial flare-up is the result of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s recently introduced legislation for the California Desert Protection Act of 2010.

If passed, the act will protect over one million acres of the Mojave Desert’s last wild, staggeringly scenic, resource-heavy areas, with the creation of the Mojave Trails National Monument on former railroad lands adjoining historic U.S. Rt. 66, and the Sand-to-Snow National Monument, which would include land from the desert floor in the Coachella Valley to the top of 11,400 ft. Mt. San Gorgonio in the San Bernardino Mountains, and extend full environmental protection to Big Morongo Canyon and Whitewater Canyon.

Five new wilderness areas are also slated to come into being with the bill, mostly on land currently managed by the BLM, and the bill will add additional, adjacent lands to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks and the Mojave National Preserve.

We at Treehuggers International are thrilled with the legislation. If passed, the California Desert Protection Act of 2010 will set aside significant, wilderness-worthy areas long under consideration for greater levels of protection by a variety of agencies and community leaders. The fact the sun also happens to regularly shine in these areas, however, should not and does not preclude them from any other type of use, including wilderness. With few exceptions, the sun shines equally bright in San Bernardino, Banning Pass, and Palm Springs as it does in these locations. Why then make these special places the only locale in Southern California where solar farms can be erected?

There’s still more than enough developable desert available. California has more than 20 million acres of desert. The California Energy Commission estimates that we’ll only need between 100,000 and 160,000 acres of desert to meet our goal of having 33 percent renewable energy by 2020. Of course, if California wants to be a leader in this field, we’ll develop far more than that for export to other states – but even then, the well is hardly going dry.

So while Feinstein will need to make adjustments to her bill, she’s still on the right track. There is a way to balance conservation and renewable energy production, and we’re discovering it right now.

Learn more about the California Desert Protection Act of 2010 and the two new National Monuments and five wilderness areas it would create at the links below, or click HERE to voice your support for the measure with Senator Feinstein’s office.

Also, stay tuned for a new, upcoming episode of Treehuggers International with David Edelson, the Executive Director of the Wilderness Society’s California / Nevada office. We’ll not only talk about the California Desert Protection Act of 2010, we’ll also discuss additional wilderness areas under consideration in California, including Congressman Darrell Issa’s bill which would add on to and extend the Agua Tibia and Beauty Mountain Wilderness areas into northern San Diego County.