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Bush Administration Ducks Real Wilderness Protection in New Headwaters Forest Plan

Strong Plan is Only Temporary -- Conservationists Urge Interior Department to Recommend Permanent Wilderness, Apply Same Wilderness Protection Standards to All Public Lands

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- October 17, 2003

Contact: Ryan Henson, California Wilderness Coalition - (530) 474-4808
Kathryn Seck, Campaign for America's Wilderness - (202) 266-0436
Ted Zukoski, Earthjustice - (303) 996-9622
Stephen Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance - (801) 486-3161 x16

National and local conservation groups today challenged the Bush administration to recommend wilderness designation for California's famous Headwaters Forest Reserve and to safeguard all wilderness-quality federal lands to the same standards it used in the new management plan for Headwaters. The final plan, released last week, comes just one week after the Bush administration announced a new - and illegal - national policy preventing future wilderness study and recommendation by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Located in Humboldt County, CA, Headwaters Forest was the world's largest grove of privately owned ancient redwood forest until it was purchased by the state and federal governments in 1999. In the draft Headwaters management plan issued in May 2002, the BLM proposed to designate the heart of the reserve as a Wilderness Study Area (WSA), the first step in a recommendation to Congress for permanent wilderness protection. Numerous local groups, elected officials and conservationists supported that alternative. But now, the formal wilderness recommendation from the agency is missing from the final plan.

"The evidence proves Headwaters Forest qualifies as wilderness and the BLM duly noted the wilderness character of the land while it studied the area and devised this management plan, yet now there is no recommendation to Congress for permanent wilderness protection or even a WSA," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness. "If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it must be a duck. But with its new 'no wilderness' policy the administration refuses to notify Congress that there are any ducks out there."

Only Congress can designate permanent wilderness areas, which it traditionally does with the aid of recommendations from the federal land agencies. The Bush administration's new policy terminates the BLM's wilderness study and recommendation process once and for all.

The Headwaters plan formally finds that 4,400 acres of land possess "wilderness character" and protects those areas temporarily, by prohibiting vehicles, road building, mineral leasing, and other damaging activities in that portion of the 7,400-acre reserve. Additional restrictions on camping, hunting, and other recreation are intended to protect ancient trees and rare wildlife.

But conservationists noted that these protections are not permanent, and not representative of how BLM is treating the nation's wilderness quality lands.

"While this plan provides some needed protection for the Headwaters, we have Congress - not the Bush administration - to thank for that," said Ted Zukoski, project attorney for Earthjustice. Zukoski noted that the law creating the Headwaters Reserve required overlapping strong protection for the area's rare old-growth forest and wildlife of the area. "Headwaters is not the true test of Gale Norton's anti-wilderness, pro-industry policy. The law just wouldn't let them trash this place. And the Headwaters plan was in the works long before the Bush administration decided to plan for every other use of public lands except wilderness."

"We challenge the Bush administration to vigorously defend and protect all wilderness-quality lands - not just Headwaters," said Ryan Henson, policy director for the California Wilderness Coalition. "The dirty trick here is that the Bush administration's new policy has wiped out the pipeline to Congress for considering wilderness. This policy is illegal, unbalanced and extreme. And while we appreciate the administration's efforts to protect Headwaters, the question remains if they will establish similar protections on the tens of millions of acres of wilderness-quality BLM lands currently vulnerable to development and destruction."

Conservationists pointed to Utah's spectacular red-rock canyon country as a realistic example of how the Bush administration intends to treat America's wild lands under its new anti-wilderness policy. In Utah, this BLM policy stripped all protection from 3 million acres of lands the agency itself had found to be wilderness quality. This month the agency announced plans to lease for oil and gas drilling on thousands of acres of these formerly protected lands which the BLM said merited wilderness protection just a few years ago. Areas like Desolation Canyon will now be leased with no consideration given to whether the area's wild values should be protected.

"The Bush Administration is planning to sacrifice fabulous wilderness quality lands to oil drilling in Utah's Book Cliffs region without thinking twice about it," said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "By not taking the time to think first and then act, as the law requires, the Interior Department is sealing the fate of these public lands."

The administration's new policy formalizes a secret deal reached back in April between Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton and Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, now the administration's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The new policy does not require land managers to protect the wilderness character of public lands; instead, it precludes interim protections from being established, and leaves currently protected WSAs vulnerable to the whims of changing land-use plans. This is a stark reversal from the decades-long multiple-use land policy used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

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.