Title: | NELA Gets Lucky, but It Takes More Than Luck to Protect the Environment |
Subtitle: | Environmental Roulette |
Date: | 2017-10-01 |
Summary: | <b>October 2017</b> - It appears that the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument will be spared. The Boulevard Sentinel quotes Tim Brick on the benefits the monument provides for local residents. |
Author: | T.A. Hendrickson |
Publication: | Boulevard Sentinel |
Content: | ![](\"https://www.arroyoseco.org/images/BoulevardSentinel1710map.jpg\") The San Gabriel Mountains will keep their status as a federally protected national monument- for now, at least. The mountain range is one of 27 national monuments that have been under review by the Trump administration _to decide if they should be scaled back or opened to commercial uses. In a memo to President Trump written last August and leaked to the Washington Post in September, Ryan Zinke, the Interior Secretary, recommended no change to 17 of the monuments, including the San Gabriel Mountains. The reprieve is important to NELA as well, because as long as the mountains are protected, the Arroyo Seco, which abuts the monument, also receives much needed extra attention from the United States Forest Service (USFS). The USFS·is working with the Arroyo Seco Foundation, a local environmental nonprofit, to improve conditions in the upper Los Angeles River watershed and to restore native trout to the Arroyo Seco. \'\'The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument offers an additional layer of protection to the natural resources found in our local mountains,\" said Tim Brick, managing director of the Arroyo Seco Foundation, adding that, ideally, the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument would be expanded. Neither the memo nor the White House has given a reason for sparing the San Gabriel Mountains. Other monuments were not so lucky. The memo recommends reducing or redrawing the boundaries of four monuments: two in Utah, one in Nevada and one that lies mostly in Oregon and spills over into California. The memo also recommends opening six monuments -in Maine, New Mexico, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean - to commercial uses, including logging, road building, Defense Department activities, commercial fishing and, possibly, oil exploration. |
Url: | Link |
Arroyo Seco Foundation, PO Box 91622, Pasadena, CA 91109-1622 (323) 405-7326 info@arroyoseco.org