An unusual alliance of off-road vehicle enthusiasts, environmentalists and local officials in the Eastern Sierra has crafted a deal to set aside more than 40,000 acres of wilderness near Yosemite National Park, which lawmakers are calling a model of how to build consensus to protect public lands.
The plan would permanently protect an area of the High Sierra one-third larger than San Francisco that is popular with hikers, equestrians and anglers for its jagged 11,000-foot peaks, alpine lakes, lush meadows and conifer forests. The area covers 11 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile scenic path stretching from Canada to Mexico.
In return for giving up access to the new wilderness, snowmobile riders would get an 11,000-acre winter-use snowmobile recreation area centered on Leavitt Bowl near the Sonora Pass.
The deal is in a bill by Rep. Buck McKeon, a Republican from Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), which is expected to get its first House hearing this month. The sponsors, including California's two Democratic senators, believe it could be approved by Congress later this year.
The bill is backed by the Bush administration. At a Senate hearing last month, U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Joel Holtrop said the area is "replete with high mountain meadows, craggy mountain crests and fishable streams."
The only suspense is whether House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who has jurisdiction over all public lands bills, will move the bill this year. So far, he has been coy about his intentions.
The measure would end a 20-year stalemate in Mono County between snowmobilers and conservationists that began when the Forest Service recommended that 50,000 acres of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest directly north of Yosemite be set aside as wilderness, banning off-road vehicles in the area.
Snowmobilers didn't want to give up any of the areas they had been using for decades. Environmentalists believed the area was as spectacular as Yosemite and wanted virtually every acre protected.
The conflict was sparked again in 2002 , when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced a bill that would have designated the 50,000-acre area as wilderness as part of a sweeping plan to set aside 2.5 million acres of wildland across the state.
More than 93 percent of land in Mono County is controlled by government entities -- the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power -- and many locals, especially off-road vehicle enthusiasts, were alarmed at the proposal.
So McKeon, a Republican whose district was vastly expanded after the 2000 census to include Mono and Inyo counties, urged his new constituents to sit down at the table and draw new boundaries for the wilderness area that all sides could support.
"People were very upset. They felt they had no input in it," McKeon said. "What I told them is if they could come together and get consensus on what they wanted to do, we would draft the legislation and carry it and try to put it into law. And that's basically what's happened."
Hard negotiations
For eight months, supervisors from Mono and Inyo counties negotiated with representatives from the Wilderness Society and groups lobbying for more off-road access. They toured the area and traded maps back and forth. More often than not, they disagreed on the boundaries.
"Everyone gave up something," said Mono County Supervisor Duane "Hap" Hazard, a former sheriff's sergeant, who led the negotiations. "I told people, 'If you're not unhappy with something here, then you didn't give up enough. ... But you should also feel like you got something that you couldn't get through any other means.' "
The bill would add 39,680 acres to the Hoover Wilderness north of Yosemite, including 11,755-foot Tower Peak and the headwaters of the West Walker River. The measure also adds 640 acres to the Emigrant Wilderness, including 11,570-foot Leavitt Peak.
But the deal also preserves the area's prime snowmobile territory, creating a recreation area that could boost winter tourism. Local officials hope to eventually build a trail between Leavitt Bowl and the Mono County town of Bridgeport. But some snowmobilers remain upset that they stand to lose areas that were previously accessible.
"I would like to have seen about 5,000 more acres that we should have had," said Dick Noles, co-chairman of Advocates for Access to Public Lands, who represented off-road interests. "But it had to have permanency. ... I said, 'Let's negotiate a legislated area (for off-road recreation) so we don't have to keep having this fight for every damn acre.' "
The agreement also satisfied environmental groups, which are trying to preserve the state's most precious pieces of wilderness. The new areas are prized because they are accessible to nature lovers in the Bay Area and the booming cities of the Central Valley and Southern California.
"The population in California is exploding," said Derek Chernow, a spokesman for the California Wild Heritage Campaign. "People have come to appreciate a lifestyle that is one of outdoor activities, like skiing, snowshoeing and hiking. ... When you have something as special as the Hoover, these are places you want to preserve in perpetuity."
The bill also would add 24 miles of the Amargosa River in Inyo and San Bernardino counties to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, which protects against diverting its flow of water. The Amargosa is the only free-flowing river that runs through Death Valley National Park.
"Having a designated wild and scenic river puts us on the map," said Brian Brown, who owns China Ranch, a 218-acre date farm near the old mining town of Tecopa in Inyo County. "We see it as one little step in the economic recovery of our area."
McKeon said he has talked to Pombo about the bill and got the chairman's approval for a hearing this month. "We're pretty good friends, and I feel pretty good about getting it through the committee," McKeon said.
Pombo declined several requests last week to discuss the bill and its prospects.
'You are crazy'
Boxer said the measure will move easily through the Senate, and she has been urging Pombo to get it done in the House this year. She is also pushing another bill, which has passed the Senate but has yet to get a vote in the House, to designate more than 300,000 acres of wilderness on California's northern coast.
"When I dropped my bill (to set aside 2.5 million acres of wilderness), people said, 'You are crazy. You'll never get an acre of land,' " Boxer said. But she noted that Congress has been quietly setting aside land piece by piece, including a 2002 law that added 54,000 acres of wilderness in Monterey County.
"I'm glad we got everyone to come to the table in Mono and Inyo," she said. "We still believe, along with the environmental organizations, that this compromise protects some of the most precious parts of Mono County as wilderness."San Francisco Chronicle
