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Interior Department stops future wilderness consideration

Pristine California lands now at risk of development

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- April 17, 2003

Contact: Keith Hammond, California Wilderness Coalition: (530) 758-0380
Ryan Henson, CWC, 530-474-4808

Davis, CA -- The Interior Department has dealt a devastating blow to California's wild lands, with a policy change that directs the Bureau of Land Management to immediately stop further consideration of wilderness, and halt the creation of new wilderness study areas (which afford the land temporary protection from development). Nationwide the decision potentially leaves millions of pristine acres vulnerable to oil and gas development, mining, and dirt bike and other off-road vehicle use.

In a secretive move late Friday, the Interior Department announced a settlement with the State of Utah of a lawsuit over BLM wilderness inventories in the state. A federal judge approved the settlement on Monday. It reverses more than 25 years of the practice of encouraging the BLM to consider public land for wilderness qualities before allowing it to be developed for other uses.

In California, 35,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas will immediately lose protection from development (see attached list), including places like Case Mountain with its giant sequoia trees just outside Sequoia National Park, and Big Butte, a proposed addition to the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness in legislation currently before Congress. In addition, BLM will stop wilderness evaluations it has been conducting in the Headwaters Forest Reserve, Carrizo Plain National Monument, Santa Rosa-San Jacinto National Monument, and other wild lands like Walker Ridge, threatened by energy development.

Wilderness areas, as defined by the 1964 Wilderness Act, are those "untrammeled by man," and are protected from oil and gas development, off-road use, and various types of construction. As part of the Interior Department settlement, BLM's Wilderness Inventory Handbook, which requires that wilderness be considered on a level playing field with other multiple uses on public lands, will be abolished. Ten conservation groups, including the California Wilderness Coalition, filed to intervene in the lawsuit, but the settlement was announced before a decision was finalized.

"California citizens spent four years and thousands of hours of volunteer time to inventory our state's last remaining wild places, to make up for BLM's poor wilderness inventories in the1980s under the infamous Interior Secretary James Watt," said Ryan Henson, policy director for the Davis-based California Wilderness Coalition. "Now the Bush Administration is trying to lock in those James Watt inventories forever and outlaw any further wilderness consideration. Californians, and those who visit California to enjoy our spectacular scenery and wilderness, are being cheated out of these special places - places that deserve to be protected just as they are, for those who come after us to enjoy. Now these wild lands can be mined, logged, drilled or otherwise destroyed - without any consideration of their value as wilderness."

Because BLM's early inventories were acknowledged to be widely inadequate, citizen groups across the West subsequently conducted their own wilderness inventories, identifying millions of additional acres deserving wilderness protection. In California, conservation groups have inventoried 1.8 million acres of wilderness-quality BLM land. More than 900,000 acres of unprotected wilderness are currently at risk.

Conservationists charge that the Interior Department settlement is just the latest in a broad and far-reaching effort by an anti-wilderness faction within the department to stamp out further wilderness protection in favor of the interests of powerful extractive industries. Also on Friday, Interior Secretary Gale Norton directed BLM to halt any wilderness reviews or inventories anywhere in the state of Alaska, unless directed to by an Act of Congress and with the support of the Alaska delegation. This follows an agreement struck last week between the Interior Department and the state of Utah over a controversial road rule, providing a loophole for giving away public lands across the West to special interests.

In California, just 14% of lands in the state are designated wilderness. Interior's move in the late Friday "ambush" will leave fully 900,000 acres of wild public lands in the state at development risk without due consideration of these areas' wilderness values. "When less than five percent of America's land is permanently protected for future generations, anything that takes away the opportunity to preserve our special wild places is not in the public interest," said Mary Wells, executive director of the CWC. "The people of California - who overwhelmingly want to see wilderness preserved - will not sit silently by while their wilderness legacy is sacrificed to the highest bidder."

*Includes only those areas that are part of ongoing planning
processes. The CWC has identified at least 689,000 additional acres
of BLM roadless areas that should have been evaluated for WSA status
by the agency.

CWHA = California Wild Heritage Act, legislation introduced by Sen.
Barbara Boxer and Rep. Mike Thompson and Rep. Hilda Solis.

Founded in 1976, the California Wilderness Coalition defends the pristine landscapes that make California unique, provide a home to our wildlife, and preserve a place for spiritual renewal.