Obama to expand protections along Calif. coast

E&E News
By Phil Taylor
March 8, 2014

President Obama tomorrow will add 1,665 acres of public lands to the California Coastal National Monument, a signal that the White House is seeking to protect more lands as conservation bills stall in Congress.

The Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands will be the first onshore addition to the Clinton-era monument, which consists of more than 20,000 small islands and pinnacles between Mexico and Oregon.

The expansion, made possible under the 1906 Antiquities Act, will protect coastal bluffs, tide pools, inland dunes, coastal prairies, and the mouth and estuary of the Garcia River, a White House official said.

The monument will be managed by the Bureau of Land Management and should offer an economic jolt to communities along the Mendocino County coast, including the city of Point Arena just to the south.

Obama will sign the monument proclamation tomorrow, and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will visit with community members Wednesday to celebrate the designation. It comes weeks after Obama pledged in his State of the Union address to "protect more of our pristine federal lands for future generations" (E&E Daily, Jan. 29).

Conservationists praised the move, saying it sends a powerful message to Congress to pass more locally supported, bipartisan conservation bills -- or the president will do so with his pen.

"This action is as important for the protection it gives California's coastline as it is for the message it sends to Congress: The president is determined to act on his commitment to protecting America's public lands for future generations," said Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and a former Interior Department aide during Obama's first term. "With dozens of parks and wilderness bills stalled for years in Congress, the president is right to use his authority to help communities protect the lands and waters they love."

The House last July did pass Rep. Jared Huffman's (D-Calif.) H.R. 1411 to add 1,255 acres of public lands to the coastal monument, but its companion bill, S. 61 by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), has yet to have a hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee (E&E Daily, July 23, 2013).

Huffman in a Saturday post on Twitter said he was "very proud of this news" of Obama's designation, saying "my first bill in Congress was to protect this land."

In a letter one year ago, Huffman, Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) asked Obama to do what Congress couldn't in designating the monument.

The lands, about three hours' drive north of San Francisco, are home to the endangered Point Arena mountain beaver, wetlands and wildlife.

The 112th Congress became the first in many decades not to protect a single new acre of public lands from energy development, mining or roads.

The current Congress was headed for a similar fate until last week when the House by voice vote passed S. 23, a bill to designate more than 30,000 acres of wilderness at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan, sending it to Obama's desk (E&E Daily, March 5).

While Congress could pass additional standalone conservation bills -- a House committee recently advanced a pair of wilderness bills in Nevada -- moving sizable public lands packages in an election year could be a political tall task.

Lee-Ashley said approximately 2.9 million acres have been permanently protected during the Obama administration, compared to 7.3 million acres leased for oil and gas companies.

Obama has declared or expanded 10 monuments encompassing just under 300,000 acres. Clinton designated 19 monuments and expanded three more, protecting more than 6 million acres -- not including the California Coastal monument -- according to federal records.

Conservation groups are hopeful that Obama will designate more landscape-scale monuments in his second term, including the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico, the Boulder-White Clouds in Idaho and the Greater Canyonlands in Utah.