• 10 Most Cover 2003

Our Natural Heritage at Risk: California’s 10 Most Threatened Wild Places 2003 The California Wilderness Coalition seeks to protect and restore California’s wild places. CWC works toward a healthy future for Californians and our wild mountains and rivers, coasts and deserts — a future where wilderness, wild lands, Duncan Canyon and biodiversity are core values. For people who Plumas & Lassen National Forests believe that wilderness holds a special place in the human spirit and has intrinsic value, the California Wilderness Coalition is the only state- wide organization that brings together individuals and organizations in the vigorous defense of California’s remaining wildlands. For more information on the California Wilderness Coalition, visit our website at www.calwild.org Cleveland National Forest Panamint Range Our natural heritage at risk California’s 10 Most Threatened Wild Places March 2003 California Wilderness Coalition 2655 Portage Bay East, Suite 5 Davis, CA 95616 (530) 758-0380 www.calwild.org Special Thanks to: Warren Alford, Tim Allyn, Steve Benner, Michelle Berditschevsky, Autumn Bernstein, Barbara Boyle, Tom Budlong, Brooke Byrd, Dave Clendenen, Carla Cloer, Bill Corcoran, Courtney Coyle, Courtney Cuff, Laura Cunningham, Erin Duffy, Peter Elias, Bob Ellis, Jane English, Pat Flanagan, Gene Frick, Chad Hanson, Andrew Harvey, Ryan Henson, Simeon Herskovitz, Vicky Hoover, Elden Hughes, Don Jacobson, Ariana Katovich, Jane Kelly, Laura Kindsvater, Paul McFarland, Mike Lunsford, Tim McKay, Brittany McKee, Sally Miller, John Monsen, Alison Sterling Nichols, Pete Nichols, Ed Pandolfino, Daniel Patterson, Peggy Risch, Jim Rose, Maureen Rose, Dan Smuts, Brenda Stouffer, Michael Summers, Jason Swartz, Craig Thomas, Helen Wagenvoord, Terry Watt, Terry Weiner, Wendell Wood. The following organizations contributed to this report: •American River Wildlands •John Muir Project •California Wild Heritage Campaign •Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center •Center for Biological Diversity •National Parks Conservation Association •Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation •Northcoast Environmental Center •Desert Protective Council •Oregon Natural Resources Council •Desert Survivors •Sierra Club California •Friends of the Panamints •Tejon Working Group •Forest Issues Group •The Wilderness Society •Heart and Soul Coalition Front cover: Klamath River, salmon photo by AP Wide World. Back cover: Algodones Dunes, photos by Andrew M. Harvey, www.visualjourneys.net. i “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence.” — Wallace Stegner, “Wilderness Letter,” 1960 California’s 10 Most Threatened Wild Places Klamath Medicine Lake Highlands River Basin Plumas and Lassen Duncan Canyon National Forests Westside Sierra Corporate Forestlands Panamint Range Tejon Ranch Los Padres National Forest Algodones Cleveland National Forest Dunes ii Table of Contents Executive Summary ........................................................................................................... iv About This Report ............................................................................................................vii California Desert Algodones Sand Dunes....................................................................................................... 2 Panamint Range (Surprise Canyon and Briggs Mine)..................................................... 4 Southern California Cleveland National Forest .................................................................................................. 6 Te jon Ranch ........................................................................................................................ 8 Central Coast Los Padres National Forest ............................................................................................... 10 Sierra Nevada Plumas and Lassen National Forests................................................................................ 12 Duncan Canyon Roadless Area ........................................................................................ 14 Westside Sierra Corporate Forestlands ............................................................................ 16 Northern California Klamath River Basin ......................................................................................................... 18 Medicine Lake Highlands ................................................................................................. 20 Appendix Also In Trouble .................................................................................................................22 Last Year’s 10 Most ............................................................................................................ 22 Table of Contents iii Executive Summary Since the 2002 elections, California has been rocked not by Today the Bush Administration is hitting the Golden State’s earthquakes or El Niño but by a deluge of new federal threats wild public lands harder than any administration in memory, to our state’s wild environment. It is as though a floodgate opening our national monuments to logging, our national opened in Washington, D.C.: Literally dozens of regulatory forests to oil drilling, even our national parks and wilderness rollbacks, decision reversals, and other anti-environmental areas to road-building. Many of California’s proposed policies have gushed forth in just a few months, many targeting wilderness areas are targeted for logging or development. California specifically. Adding to the strain, industrial logging and urban sprawl on privately owned lands threaten to snuff out some of California’s most important wildlife habitat. To choose the ten wild places in the deepest danger was difficult this year, starting from a list more than twice that long. Bush Administration’s Unprecedented Rollbacks Fully half these areas are threatened because the Bush Administration has refused to enforce one key policy: the Forest Service’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This landmark conservation measure, adopted by the Forest Service in 2000 but suspended by the current administration, protects the last wild national forest lands — 58.5 million acres in the U.S. and 4.4 million acres in California — from development, The Bush Administration is revising policies to increase logging of old- logging, and road-building. In December 2002, a federal court growth forests in the Sierra Nevada. California’s 10 Most Threatened Wild Places in 2003 are: Algodones Sand Dunes — Bush Administration’s extreme Duncan Canyon — Salvage logging would ruin old-growth off-road plan would overturn protection of endangered forest, roadless areas and proposed wilderness. wildlife and wilderness. Westside Sierra Corporate Forestlands — Company’s plan Panamint Range (Briggs Mine and Surprise Canyon) — to clearcut 1,000,000 acres would degrade water and drive Open-pit mining and extreme ORV use would devastate Sierra Nevada wildlife toward extinction. natural landscapes, sacred lands, and wilderness. Plumas and Lassen National Forests — Bush Cleveland National Forest — Proposed freeways, dams, Administration’s massive logging “experiment” would cut and, power lines threaten region’s last unprotected wild old-growth forests and spotted owl habitat. forests. Medicine Lake Highlands — Development of geothermal Tejon Ranch — Sprawl and industrial development power plants would lay waste to wild forests and sacred threaten key habitat on California’s largest private lands. landholding. Klamath River Basin — Excessive water diversion is killing Los Padres National Forest — Proposed oil and gas thousands of salmon and hurting farmers, fishermen, development puts wild forest lands and endangered species tribes, and endangered wildlife. habitat at risk. iv Executive Summary reinstated the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, sweeping away a judicial challenge. Now the Bush Administration is expected to dismantle the rule administratively. If enforced, the rule will save the threatened roadless areas of the Los Padres National Forest, the Cleveland National Forest, and Duncan Canyon (Tahoe National Forest), plus threatened portions of the Plumas National Forest (Humboldt Summit Roadless Area), and the Medicine Lake Highlands (Mount Hoffman Roadless Area on the Modoc and Klamath National Forests). Without the rule, all these areas are in imminent danger of development or logging. “The Bush Administration is issuing a shocking series of anti-environmental policies that specifically target California’s wildlands.” The Bush Administration also has reversed many policies specific to California, stripping away hard-won protections and approving harmful projects. It approved industrial power plants in the Medicine Lake Highlands near Mt. Shasta which were denied by the previous administration. Similarly, it reversed the AP WIDE WORLD The Bush Administration diverted Klamath River flows last summer, denial of an open-pit mine in the California Desert Conservation killing more than 34,000 salmon. Area. It is re-opening large areas of the fragile Algodones Dunes, previously closed to vehicles to protect endangered species. Last summer it overruled its own federal scientists and cut back Klamath

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