Omnibus Bill Adds 2 Wilderness Areas in San Gabriels, 2 Million Acres in U.S.

Hikers on Pleasant View Ridge PHOTO BY JUANA TORRES

From the San Gabriel Mountains to the Rockies, from the Columbia River gorge to the Monongahela in West Virginia, more than 2 million additional acres of public land in nine states now enjoy permanent protection from roads, power lines, mining, oil exploration and commercial development.

President Barack Obama, signing the new Omnibus Wilderness Bill March 30 just before leaving on his Europe trip, called it among the most important in decades to protect, preserve and pass down our nation's most treasured landscapes to future generations.

These treasured landscapes include more than 1,000 miles of new wild and scenic rivers (7 of those miles along Piru Creek south of Pyramid Lake northwest of Los Angeles), three new national parks, larger boundaries for more than a dozen existing national parks, and 10 new national heritage areas.

California gets more new wilderness than any other state with 700,000 acres, more than 400,000 of that in the eastern Sierra, and 147,000 acres in Riverside County (including parts of Joshua Tree National Park).

Locally, two new wilderness areas are created in the San Gabriel Mountains. The Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness covers 26,700 acres north of the Angeles Crest Highway, about 30 miles northeast of La Canada. One of the most beautiful areas in Angeles National Forest, if offers rugged peaks, scenic canyons and waterfalls and views of the desert beyond Devils Punchbowl to the north. The other, 12,300-acre Magic Mountain Wilderness, 10 miles east of Santa Clarita, features condor habitat on oak and chaparral covered hillsides.

Sierra Club and other forest activists had worked to build public and political support for wilderness in these two local areas. The Sierra Club's Angeles Chapter Forest Committee and the San Gabriel Mountains Forever campaign conducted conservation hikes to Pleasant View Ridge, solicited and delivered letters to Congress members, conducted tabling, sponsored special programs and wrote letters-to-the editor making the case for wilderness protection.

The Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley groups conducted the same type of campaign from their side of the mountains, including Piru Creek, Pleasant View Ridge and Magic Mountain.

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 also includes a landmark settlement to restore water and salmon populations to California's San Joaquin River. And it will launch projects to improve flood protection and water supply in the Central Valley.

The Omnibus Bill was a package of about 160 bills that, in addition to wilderness, includes measures to designate President Clinton's boyhood home in Hope, Ark., a national historic site; create a commission to plan for the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, Fla.; and designate the River Raisin battlefield in Monroe, Mich. -- site of a bloody battle in the War of 1812 -- as a unit of the national park system.

Many of these bills had been in Congress for years. Most were the product of compromises to balance the concerns of those favoring preservation of the nation's wild lands, and those concerned that too much land was being locked away from energy production or other commercial use.

The Omnibus Bill's 2 million acres bring to nearly 109 million acres, 5% of the country's total land, half in Alaska, given protection in the National Wilderness Protection System over the last four decades.

Although overall the package marked a huge environmental success, there were parts that drew objections from environmentalists, such as one that could allow building a road through wilderness in Alaska's Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

With bipartisan support in Congress, the Omnibus Wilderness Bill was passed by 2-to-1 majorities or more in both House and Senate. President Obama promptly signed it five days after final passage in Congress. That strong backing bodes well for future efforts to protect more of our treasured landscapes, including some in the San Gabriel Mountains.

There are roughly another 150,000 acres of wilderness-eligible land in the San Gabriel Mountains that forest activists plan to work on having designated over the next few years. Efforts are currently underway to expand the existing Sheep Mountain, Cucamonga, and San Gabriel wilderness areas. To sign up to help out, visit http://www.sierraclub.org/ca/socalforests/.

This article also appears in the May-June issue of Arroyo View, the Pasadena Group newsletter.

Pleasant View Ridge PHOTO BY JUANA TORRES