Possible expansion of the wilderness

[KathyW]

The Desert Sun published this article:

Bill would expand San Jacinto National Monument

DIANA MARRERO
Desert Sun Washington Bureau

Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, is expected to testify at a hearing today for a bill that would designate 200,000 acres of public land in Riverside County as wilderness.

Such a designation provides the highest level of protection under federal law.

Geary Hund, associate director of the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy, is also scheduled to testify at the House Natural Resources Committee hearing.

The legislation would expand the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and designate nearly 40,000 acres in Joshua Tree National Park for conservation.

Another 40,000 acres in the park would be designated as potential wilderness until the National Park Service settles existing property claims.

Other land the bill seeks to protect include areas in the San Bernardino National Forest, the Cahuilla Mountain and the Pinto Mountains.

The lands provide habitat for threatened bighorn sheep, the desert tortoise and bald eagles.

The bill would also designate 31 miles of four California rivers as wild and scenic.
They are: the North Fork San Jacinto River, Fuller Mill Creek, Palm Canyon Creek and Bautista Creek.

Bono is working with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., on the legislation.

Local advocates, meanwhile, continue efforts to buy remaining parcels of land within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto monument that are still owned by private interests to ward off development.

[Hikin_Jim]

Get out your pens! (please) and write your Congressman, Senator, and maybe county supervisor (is there any county opposition to this?)

The article is a little unclear about where all the wilderness designated lands will be. Sounds like the bulk will be in J Tree, but it does sound like some will be in the SBNF, so whether that's in the SGW or SJW areas or in new ares, it's all cool

On another note, the San Jacinto Nat'l Monument is a bit of a joke. It's a National Monument in pretty much name only. Just like when congress declared the entire coast of California a National Monument. It's a way of including in their newsletters etc. "I voted for a new Nat'l Monument!"

If their aren't any National Park Service employees on site, then it's kind of not a real National Monument, IMHO.

[KathyW]

a map:


http://bono.house.gov/UploadedFiles/srsjexpandadditions070727.pdf

[Cy Kaicener]

California desert and mountain wilderness campaign - Scroll down
http://www.desertmountainwild.org/lands ... tml#hi_res

[Hikin_Jim]

They're not adding anything, as best as I can tell, to the Mt. San Jacinto Wilderness. They are re-designating huge areas of Joshua Tree NP as wilderness and creating a new wilderness (among others) west of Idyllwild.

Any chance of this passing; does anybody know?

[KathyW]

Thanks Cy - that's a really helpful site.

[Rob]

Yes, I found the map on Cy's site easier to read than Bono's.

From: http://www.desertmountainwild.org/wild_snowCreek.html
Proposed Snow Creek Area National Monument Addition
Location: The northern end of the Monument adjacent to Interstate 10
Description:
A scientific analysis of the area conducted by the South Coast Wildlands, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring functional habitat connectivity, showed that many plant and animal species, including the mountain lion, badger, lost hiker, and antelope ground squirrel will benefit from the preservation of this habitat linkage.

OK, I embellished.

[Hikin_Jim]

[halhiker]

The additions in the Coachella Valley are no brainers. Most of the area is rocky and contains some pretty cool archaeological features including the fish traps and some old Indian trails with petroglyphs.

A lot of the other areas are additions to lands that were preserved under the Desert Preservation Act in 1994. It looks like a good bill BUT there are a couple of things I would like to see closer before it passes. One, there are some Jeep trails in the Southern Joshua Tree area that look like they'll still be open but I'd like to be sure and two, there is a mountain bike ride that goes from Berdoo Canyon to Thermal Canyon that'd I'd love to take and I don't know if that trail will remain open to use. I'm not a big mountain biker but it seems like it'd be fun to do sometime and I'd hate to have it closed off especially since there are not a lot of mountain bike areas in JT.

[KathyW]

I agree on the road issue Hal - I've often wondered why they closed some of the roads they closed in 1994 - it didn't seem like each area was looked at individually, but maybe I'm missing something.