Our Program Areas
Federal Strategy
This program supports our work on federal legislation to secure wilderness designation for wilderness quality lands, lakes, and rivers in California. It includes on-the-ground work as well as work done at the home office on surveying, GIS mapping, organizing local activists, outreach, media contact, drafting bill language, coordinating stakeholders, meeting with legislative staff, providing guidance on potential obstacles and strategies to overcome them and alerting the public, lawmakers and business communities to the inherent value in wilderness protection, production of fact sheets, policy papers, online and print publications promoting wilderness.
Wilderness Protection
This program supports our work to monitor and respond to changes in management policy, administrative directives, planning, or legislation at federal or state level that impacts wilderness or wilderness quality public lands, lakes and rivers. We use outreach, public education, and constituency building to ensure protection. We also sometimes seek legal remedy in the courts. Currently our work is focused on the following:
- Filed suit to overturn U.S. Forest Service management plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Gabriel National Forests. The plans would open more than 80% of these lands to new roads, development and other damaging activities.
- Monitoring and stopping illegal off-road vehicle use on public lands.
- Over turning the 1872 Mining Law and R.S. 2477.
Desert Programs
California’s desert region is vast and has enormous wilderness quality lands, rivers and recreation areas. It is one of the state’s fastest growing regions and is ground zero for alternative energy proposals, OHV damage and fragile ecosystems. It is a politically conservative area of the state and actions allowed here can set precedents affecting areas not only in California but across the West. Our work here is to secure federal wilderness designation, build diverse constituencies to protect the desert, and monitor federal and state management, policy and administrative actions affecting current wilderness and wilderness quality lands, lakes and rivers.
Restoration
Through our restoration program, volunteers gain the skills and tools necessary to become stewards of wilderness areas for the life of a project and beyond. Individuals enthusiastically devote their time and energy to helping maintain California's unique landscapes.
Membership
This is our program for expanding the public, and other’s awareness of the value of wilderness and to build a statewide constituency of wilderness supporters, involves education, publications, and communications, requests members to take action to explore wilderness in their area, volunteer and promote wilderness protection.
