Sacramento Bee
Published Sunday, August 1, 2004

Hope grows for bill to add wilderness

By David Whitney

WASHINGTON - Legislation that would turn more than 300,000 acres of federal forestlands into protected wilderness along California's North Coast received a warm reception before a Senate committee last month, suggesting that a key piece of a massive wilderness bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., may finally be moving.

But with just a few workweeks remaining in the election-shortened congressional session and politicians maneuvering for every political advantage they can, it's uncertain how much further the legislation will go this year.

Even so, environmentalists who helped Boxer craft the bill and now are lobbying for its passage, in whole or piece by piece, were elated by the progress on Capitol Hill, where partisanship and acrimony have stopped movement on bills with wide popular support.

"This is a first, after four years," said longtime environmental activist Tim Mahoney, who is serving as a consultant to environmental backers of the Boxer legislation.

The legislation was spun off from Boxer's 2.5 million-acre California Wild Heritage wilderness bill introduced two years ago. If it were approved, it would be the second chunk of the massive legislation to be enacted. Congress in 2002 approved adding wilderness protections to some 57,000 acres of federal lands in the Big Sur area.

The North Coast wilderness bill affects lands in the Mendocino and Six Rivers national forests and more than 90,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management forests.

All of the land is in the congressional district of Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who joined Boxer before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for a hearing on July 23. Thompson has introduced similar legislation in the House.

"This legislation is not only important for the protection of some of my district's most treasured lands, but also protects the threatened and endangered salmon and trout and helps ensure a source of clean, reliable water for California's future," Thompson said.

Thompson said the bill is the product of four years of work that involved public meetings with communities throughout the affected areas. He said no public roads would be closed because of the legislation, and that some areas have been dropped because of concerns about forest fires.
Thompson stressed that the legislation has broad support among timber companies, agricultural interests, Indian tribes and other users.

But Don Amador, Western representative of the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition, contended the legislation has not been as carefully drafted as Thompson and Boxer say.

"The BlueRibbon Coalition has reviewed this proposal and finds that it has many programmatic and technical deficiencies that could result in the loss of those values that we all seek to protect," he said.

Mark Rey, undersecretary at the Agriculture Department over the Forest Service, pointed to some areas in the Six Rivers forest that should be excluded from wilderness designation because of motorized recreational use, and the Interior Department noted the inclusion of some lands that are not in Thompson's district.

Much of the acreage has been under study for wilderness consideration for years. And while the administration witnesses pointed to certain tracks they would like to see deleted, and stressed the need for other changes to address forest fire concerns, for example, the tone of their remarks was generally supportive.

"The areas proposed for designation include stunning landscapes, dramatic coastlines, and unique habitats," said Chad Calvert, deputy assistant secretary for lands and minerals management at the Interior Department.

"Taken together, these proposed wilderness areas include pristine Pacific coast, steep inland canyons, rushing whitewater and mountainous terrain," he said. "The array of wildlife is incredibly diverse."

Presiding over the hearing was Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who consistently scores near the bottom on environmental vote ratings. Craig, chairman of the Senate committee's public lands panel, raised no questions about the measure and complimented Boxer and Thompson for all the work they had done building local support for the measure.

"You've done your due diligence," he told them.

The legislation languished in the Senate for more than a year after Boxer and Thompson introduced it, waiting for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California's senior Democratic senator, to weigh in with any changes before offering her endorsement.

At the July 23 hearing, Feinstein said she, too, met with local civic leaders and property owners to ensure that private property rights were not being diminished by the legislation. She said the modifications she sought were related to forest fire protection, including elimination of 4,000 acres of proposed wilderness around Orleans because of the need for intensive thinning.

Feinstein said she is still in discussion with the Hoopa Indians to make sure that Six Rivers wilderness additions near their reservation along the Trinity River don't pose forest fire worries. She said the Hoopa have expressed no concerns.

With only a few workweeks left in the congressional schedule before the House and Senate adjourn in late September, it seems unlikely that the wilderness bill has much of a chance for enactment this year.

But after the warm reception at the Senate hearing, with promises from House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, to hold a hearing after the long August recess, Thompson and Boxer said they have not given up on getting the bill through this year. "We have a chance," Thompson said.

Mahoney, the consultant for environmental groups, said the bill's chances would improve considerably if Congress returns to work after the November elections.

© Copyright 2004 by Sacramento Bee