Just three miles off of Interstate 80, Castle Peak Potential Wilderness is among the most scenic areas in the Tahoe National Forest. Home to extraordinary old-growth red fir forests and the little Truckee River, Castle Peak provides clean drinking water to residents of Nevada County.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS Wilderness Study Areas Stripped of Protection
		Interior Secretary Gale Norton has revoked protection for WSAs in California including Case Mountain Wilderness Study Area and its giant sequoias. Click here for a list and photos of existing WSAs losing protection in California. What newspapers are saying More facts and backgrounders

No More Wilderness:

The Interior Department's Attack on Wilderness Protection

A full-scale assault on America's wilderness heritage is underway, re-opening many of California’s last wild lands to wilderness-destroying activities. The Bush Administration is seeking to wipe out wilderness protections and short-circuit the responsible multiple-use planning process used by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on our public lands. This concerted effort was quietly developed and implemented at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior with very little paper trail and no input from the American people who own these lands.

If the administration's radical policies are not reversed, tens of millions of acres of public lands in the West and Alaska will be open to drilling, mining, logging, road construction, and off-road vehicle abuses–without ever properly considering whether these areas merit wilderness protection by Congress.

1. Revoked existing protections for wilderness quality BLM lands, renounced its legal authority for conducting new inventories and wilderness reviews of BLM lands in the lower 48 states, and rescinded the BLM Wilderness Inventory and Study Procedures Handbook -- which outlines criteria for considering wilderness on a level playing field with other uses for public lands. (Settlement with State of Utah, April 2003)

In California, 35,000 acres of existing Wilderness Study Areas will immediately be stripped of protection, opening them to road construction, oil and gas leasing, logging, power line development, and off-road vehicles. These include Case Mountain with its giant sequoia trees, and Big Butte, a proposed addition to the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness in legislation currently before Congress. Click here for a complete list of existing California WSAs losing their protection.

In addition, 113,000 acres of potential new WSAs in California will be canceled as BLM ceases wilderness reviews it has been conducting in the Headwaters Forest Reserve, Carrizo Plain National Monument, Santa Rosa-San Jacinto National Monument, and threatened wild lands like Walker Ridge, where Enron and General Electric have proposed to build wind turbines in wilderness. Click here for a complete list of new WSAs canceled in California.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL No More Wilderness Inventories
		Interior Secretary Gale Norton says it's illegal to check for new Wilderness Study Areas in California's Carrizo Plain National Monument -- or anywhere else. Click here for a list and photos of new WSA reviews canceled in California.

Further, citizens will be unable to press the BLM to inventory our last wild lands before it develops them. In California, conservation groups have inventoried 1.8 million acres of wilderness-quality BLM land; more than 900,000 acres of unprotected wilderness were never properly inventoried by the agency and are currently at risk. The BLM's Wilderness Inventory Handbook previously required BLM to inventory wilderness before allowing development; now this safeguard has been revoked. (See the citizens' inventory California’s Last Wild Places to learn more about BLM's unprotected wilderness.)

The California Wilderness Coalition has joined other state and national conservation groups to challenge this illegal settlement in court.

2. Established a process to facilitate the giveaway and development of thousands of miles of unsubstantiated rights-of-ways across our national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, BLM lands, national forests, and wilderness areas, under the antiquated "R.S. 2477" mining law of 1866. (Federal Rule regarding Recordable Disclaimers of Interest, January 2003)

In California, more than 5,000 miles of these so-called "highway" right-of-way claims crisscross the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks, the Siskiyou Wilderness, the King Range National Conservation Area, and other national lands managed by the BLM and the Forest Service. Many are nothing more than abandoned jeep ruts, cow paths, and hiking trails, which off-road vehicle interests want to permanently pry open for ORV use, claiming that they are "highways" in order to disqualify the areas for wilderness protection. Click here to learn how these RS 2477 road giveaways threaten California’s National Parks and wilderness.

CWC is organizing volunteers to hike and field-check bogus highway claims in national parks, wilderness, and proposed wilderness areas, and we are monitoring all such claims for potential challenge as they are submitted to the BLM.

3. Instructed the BLM in Alaska specifically to cease consideration of any public lands in that state for wilderness protection.

No more wilderness in the wildest state in the union — what more can we say?

4. Asked the Supreme Court to overturn a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that held that the public has the right to sue public land management agencies when they don't protect wild lands from damage.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, and overturns the lower court's decision, the public's right to participate in the day-to-day management of public lands could be abruptly terminated.

These actions by the Bush Administration are part of a deliberate effort to end wilderness as we know it on the public lands — and they are illegal. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) requires the Secretary of the Interior to maintain current, continual inventories — that includes wilderness inventories — and to establish and revise resource management plans for public lands. Additionally, the public's voice in land management decisions, guaranteed under the Wilderness Act, FLPMA, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), has been completely undercut by these actions.

The Interior Department oversees a quarter of a billion acres of federal lands administered by the BLM in 12 Western states, including Alaska. This is amazingly beautiful and ecologically diverse land -- deserts, mountains, forests, redrock canyon country, sweeping grasslands, icy peaks and tundra. Of this vast amount of BLM land, only about 6.5 million acres are permanently designated as wilderness by Congress, with another 15 million acres temporarily protected in Wilderness Study Areas not yet touched by this anti-wilderness assault. With the Department of the Interior's new policy, all the rest will receive no BLM study that could lead to congressional action. The bottom line: wilderness values that could exist on as much as 220 million acres of BLM lands (much of which has obvious and spectacular wilderness qualities) can no longer even be "studied," the long-used process that precedes the agency's recommendation that Congress designate additional wilderness areas.

California's existing and potential Wilderness Study Areas are some of the last wild places owned by the American public, and should be safeguarded until Congress can consider them for permanent protection as wilderness areas. Instead, the Bush Administration has hung out the "Open for Business" sign inviting energy companies, timber companies, and other developers to exploit the last remaining wilderness.

For more information please contact:
Ryan Henson at (530) 246-3087.