House passes preservation bill
Measure includes conserving over 1M acres, much in L.A. County
A bill protecting more than 1 million acres of public lands and 500 miles of rivers in the state — including more than 400,000 acres in three counties in Southern California — was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday in a bipartisan vote.
Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, or House Resolution 803, was adopted by a vote of 227200, with eight Republicans voting “yes” along with 219 Democrats. Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, was the lone Republican in the state to vote in favor of the measure.
“It shows that there is bipartisan support. And someone such as Congressman Garcia breaks party lines when you have members who understand the issue, and you have local support,” said Daniel Rossman, California deputy director of The Wilderness Society, who said there is a lot of support in Santa Clarita for nearby forest land protection.
The bill package includes 1.5 million acres of wilderness and 1,000 miles of rivers incorporated into the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers System in California, Colorado and Washington.
Though this is the third time these bills were approved by the
U.S. House, they’ve never received approval in the Senate. With 50% of the Senate now composed of Democrats, some say that Vice President Kamala Harris can push the bill forward in a tie-breaking vote.
The Senate is scheduled to take up the bill as early as April 1.
“I would hope there isn’t a need for a tie-breaker,” said Thomas Wong, board chairman of Nature For All, a nonprofit group working for access to parks and federal lands for recreation. “There is among the Republican caucus support for land protection. I am hopeful we will see that (in the Senate),” said Wong, a resident of Monterey Park.
On Tuesday, President Joseph Biden said in a statement he “strongly supports” the bill. “The Administration calls for restoring balance to the management of our public lands and waters, creating jobs, confronting the ongoing decline of nature, and aligning the management of America’s public lands and waters with our nation’s climate, conservation, and clean energy goals,” read a White House statement.
HR 803 incorporates two local measures:
• The San Gabriel Mountains Foothills and Rivers Protection Act, authored by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, an effort that started in 2002 by then Rep. Hilda Solis, now a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Under this provision, the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument established by President Barack Obama in 2014 will be expanded by 109,143 acres, going from 346,177 acres to 455,320 acres to include western, front-facing portions of the Angeles National Forest located north of Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Arcadia.
Under former President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reviewed 22 land and five water national monuments designated by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama for possible reduction or elimination. “We were on the list,” Chu said, adding she is delighted to received Biden’s support.
Also, Chu’s act would add 31,069 acres of wilderness, including an expansion of Sheep Mountain Wilderness near Wrightwood to help the threatened breed, and 8,417 acres of the western Angeles National Forest near Ventura County as a wilderness area to protect the California condor. Also in the Angeles, 45.5 miles of wild and scenic rivers would be designated, including the East Fork of the San Gabriel River where the Santa Ana sucker fish is struggling to survive.
Secondly, Chu’s provision creates a 51,107-acre San Gabriel Mountains National Recreation Area, or NRA, a swath of nonforest land that hugs the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers from the mountains through El Monte and Pico Rivera, which also run eastwest parallel to the 60 Freeway from Whittier to Rowland Heights along the Puente-Chino Hills.
The new NRA would be in the National Park Service budget. “You can have a line item in the National Park Service budget that will allow you to do projects within the boundaries of the NRA. It can only provide more resources, and it does not take away anybody’s private property rights,” Chu said Friday.
• The Rim of the Valley Corridor Preservation Act, authored by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, more than doubles the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area by adding 191,000 acres in a ring of wild lands surrounding the San Fernando Valley. The long-established SMMNRA — home to trails and an isolated population of mountain lions — would now include wildlife corridors between the Santa Monica Mountains in the west and the San Gabriel Mountains in the east.
The addition includes a narrow stretch along the Los Angeles River, the Verdugo Mountains above Glendale; the San Rafael Hills, the Simi Hills and the Santa Susana and Conejo mountains in Ventura County.
The overall bill includes 40,000 acres of wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest in Ventura County.
Schiff’s Rim of the Valley portion doesn’t just protect wild parts of the mountains in the San Fernando Valley. It includes urban parks and historical sites, dipping southeast to envelop Griffith Park, Hansen Dam Recreation Area, Sepulveda Basin, Ernest Debs Regional Park, El Pueblo De Los Angeles Historical Monument in downtown Los Angeles and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
His proposal also ran into a roadblock during the Trump administration in 2018 when Zinke and Paul Daniel Smith, then acting chief of the National Park Service, testified in a Senate committee “the Department does not support enacting this proposed expansion at this time.” Smith said the NPS budget had $11.6 billion in deferred maintenance and was focusing on more urgent needs.
“Yeah, we’ve had the wind in our face, now we have the wind at our back. We have a majority in the Senate and the Biden Administration has taken a position in support,” Schiff said Friday.
In addition to Chu and Schiff’s measures, the omnibus bill included an amendment from Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, for a study to further expand the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area from Santa Monica Bay to Will Rogers State Beach and to Torrance Beach, including the Ballona Wetlands and Baldwin Hills.
The measure includes 250,000 acres of forest land redesignated as wilderness in Central California — including Santa Barbara County — and adds protections to wide swaths of land and rivers from Mendocino County to Siskiyou County.
It designates Colorado’s Camp Hale as the nation’s first National Historic Landscape to honor World War II veterans. One million acres around the Grand Canyon National Park would receive permanent protection from new mining claims.