Monterey County Herald
Published November 21, 2002

Local lands headed for protection;
Pinnacles, Big Sur in wilderness bill

By Mike Taugher; Contra Costa Times

The biggest additions in eight years to California's wilderness are in a bill headed for President Bush's desk this week after the Senate approved the Big Sur portion of a more ambitious statewide land protection plan.

Nearly 55,000 acres in rugged coastal mountains near the Big Sur coast and in the Pinnacles National Monument would become permanently off-limits to off-road vehicles, mountain bikes, oil and gas drilling or any other kind of mechanized activity.

"It is some of the most beautiful country in California. It is just rugged in the extreme," said Dave Westmun, a conservation organizer for the Sierra Club in Oakland. The bill, authored by Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, includes areas proposed for wilderness protection in a broader bill by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California. The Boxer bill would add 2.5 million acres to California's 14 million-acre wilderness system, which is already the largest network of wilderness of any state other than Alaska.

"I hope this gives (Boxer's) bill the momentum to protect pristine lands throughout the state," Farr said.

The areas that would be added to the Ventana and Silver Peak wilderness areas of Los Padres National Forest include chaparral-covered ridges, oak woodlands, old-growth redwoods and pristine streams, according wilderness advocates. The area is home to several rare plants and animals, including the endangered California condor.

All of the new wilderness areas in the bill awaiting the president's signature would be in Farr's district in Monterey and San Benito counties.

Wilderness areas remain open to primitive forms of recreation, such as hiking, fishing, backpacking and boating, but they are places where people and the trappings of civilization are allowed only a temporary presence.

Supporters of the California measure are optimistic that despite disagreements between the White House and California environmentalists, the Big Sur bill will become law.

Although wilderness bills are often controversial, they can often wend their way into law if they pass muster with a state's two senators and representatives of the most affected areas.

And Republican presidents have a long history of signing wilderness bills. Only one of the 134 wilderness bills to pass before this week has been vetoed, according to the Wilderness Society.

Don Amador, a critic of Boxer's wilderness proposal and the western coordinator for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a group of off-road enthusiasts, said his organization had little problem with the Big Sur additions.

"There's not a lot of mechanized or motorized recreation in that area," Amador said.

Boxer called passage of Farr's bill "an important first step" in adding wilderness.

Amador called that "wishful thinking."

The Big Sur wilderness bill would be the state's biggest wilderness bill since the California Desert Protection Act of 1994 set aside 3.5 million acres of Southern California desert as wilderness.

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