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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- April 25, 2003

EDITORIAL

No limit on wilderness

WILDERNESS has lost a key battle. With one April 11 announcement, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has rolled back wilderness protection for 2.87 million acres of public land in the West, including 35,000 acres in California.

The decision effectively limits wilderness lands forever to 23 million acres nationwide.

Californians know wilderness is irreplaceable. That's why Rep. Sam Farr, D- Carmel, successfully pushed legislation last year to protect federal lands in Central California from development. That's why Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, introduced the "Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act of 2003" last month to protect another 303,000 acres of federal land in California as wilderness.

By law, only Congress can designate lands as wilderness. But when citizens complained that Congress was unaware of all the lands deserving wilderness protection, the Interior Department listed them, concluding the inventory in 1991. Conservationists disputed the list and recruited volunteers to survey, on foot if necessary, potential wilderness areas. Under the Clinton administration, many of those lands were set aside administratively as wilderness study areas, pending congressional action to designate them permanently as wilderness.

Without study status, the federal government is free to lease timber, mineral or grazing rights on public lands, effectively disqualifying them from consideration as wilderness.

Norton's policy switch is the result of a legal settlement with the state of Utah. Utah had sued the Interior Department when then-Secretary Bruce Babbitt included 3 million acres of federal land in Utah wilderness study areas. The suit, inactive for five years, was amended last month.

Gov. Gray Davis needs to join with other Western governors to ask the Department of the Interior to restore the study area safeguards before these lands are lost.

Wilderness study areas in California