Interior Secretary hears pleas to make Berryessa-Snow Mountain land national monument

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said she would prefer to see Congress grant permanent protection to a 350,000-acre swath of land from Lake Berryessa in Napa County to Snow Mountain in the Mendocino National Forest, but that President Barack Obama’s administration will consider the impassioned pleas she heard Friday for executive action.

“As a visitor to this region, I will say you do have a special place,” Jewell told a crowd of about 250 people at a Napa Valley College auditorium.

“I’m a lover of the landscape myself,” the secretary said, departing early from a public meeting hosted by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena.

Jewell said she would take all the public comments back to Washington and “work with members of Congress to figure out a path forward.”

Earlier in the day, Jewell, Thompson and other officials soaked their boots fording storm-swollen Cache Creek on a hike in the Berryessa Snow Mountain area, which runs through Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Solano and Yolo counties.

“It was great to see water,” the secretary said, acknowledging California’s prolonged drought.

Thompson introduced a bill in 2013 to place the Berryessa Snow Mountain region in a national conservation area, and California Sen. Barbara Boxer offered a companion bill in the Senate.

But the legislation has not come to a vote in either chamber, and local advocates are now focused on urging Obama to declare it a national monument. Either step would accomplish the same objectives, Thompson has said.

An executive order by Obama would parallel the president’s decision in March to add the 1,665-acre Point Arena-Stornetta Lands on the Mendocino County coast to the California Coastal Monument. That decision followed a bill calling for the designation by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and a subsequent visit by Jewell.

An aide to Boxer read a letter from the senator urging Obama to act and saying a national monument designation would put the area “on the map” as a tourist destination.

Thompson opened Friday’s meeting by describing the sprawling lands, home to diverse wildlife, vegetation and topography as “a piece of real estate we all think is pretty incredible.”

His point was emphatically underscored by eight members of a panel seated on a stage to the right of Jewell, and by people who have hiked, mountain biked, camped, hunted, fished and run whitewater rapids in the region that stretches north-to-south for 100 miles, located between Clear Lake and Interstate 5.

The area’s array of mountains, valleys and streams are “not found anywhere else in the world,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, a panelist.

Susan Harrison, a professor of environmental science and policy at UC Davis, said the area’s varied geology, climate and elevation enable it to host “a huge portion of what makes California so biologically special.”

The area hosts 1,700 native plant species, providing a “living laboratory” for scientists studying the processes that create diversity, Harrison said. It’s also a “land of great antiquity,” she said, referring to archaeological sites dating back 7,000 years.

One of six children from Winters, a small Yolo County city east of the area, read a letter to Jewell saying that “from badgers to frogs, all these animals can’t stand up for themselves so we have to stand up for them.”

Jewell shook hands with the kids, and took an envelope holding their letters.

The Winters Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic study that calculated national monument designation would increase annual visitation to the Berryessa Snow Mountain area by 20 to 30 percent, contributing up to $50 million to the local economy over five years.

The boards of supervisors of all five counties have endorsed the designation.

“I’ve looked down on Snow Mountain from 10,000 feet and it is an awesome vision,” said a woman who said she has piloted a nonmotorized hang glider over the area.

Of nearly 100 cards turned in by audience members, 80 expressed support for protecting the area, 11 were opposed and six were “unsure,” a Thompson aide said. Not everyone who spoke was enamored by what some described as a government overreach that threatened existing recreational and commercial activities in the area.

Kirk Wilbur, director of government relations for the California Cattlemen’s Association, said his organization opposes any added protection for the area, asserting that grazing rights have been diminished in other national monuments.”We’ve seen this time and time again,” he said.

Thompson replied that since the area is all federally owned land, regulations could be changed at any time under the current management, shared by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation.

Steve Brink of the California Forestry Association said the national monument status would not provide the vegetation density management he said is needed to reduce wildfire hazards. More than 400,000 acres of national forest land burned in California this year, he said.

A woman who said she camped with her family at Lake Berryessa for years said the lake is now a “ghost town.”

“Our economy tanked, Mike, it breaks my heart,” she said.

Thompson said later in an interview that some Lake Berryessa residents are unhappy with the Bureau of Reclamation’s delay in approving new concessions for the lakeshore.

David Jackson Ingraham of Napa said the land is well-protected under current federal management and that national monument status might preclude what he said was gold mining potential.

“Do not crucify our rights and liberties under the green cross of environmentalism,” he said.

Asked if he had any assurances that the Obama administration would ultimately grant national monument status, Thompson said the White House “sent them (Jewell and other federal officials) out to look at it.”

You can reach Staff Writer ?Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or ?guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.