Proposed Wilderness Areas II Los Padres National Forest

Black Mountain to the sky

It’s a high value simply knowing there are wild places. It’s somewhere different and something different where human attempts at control are missing and landscaping is on a huge scale that captures light and darkness, color and motion in ways our yards and parks cannot.  Architecture is wonderful and I admire those who use nature most, but they fail to achieve the same inspiration as the best of nature gone wild. It is unique. While those places exist we still have a home where we all started and we need it now and more each day.

Invasive Star Thisle

Jeff Jones Lumnos.com 

This preamble is to introduce the accompanying photos from a few days with Wilderness Landscape Photographer, Jeff Jones on a photo-shoot to document new proposed wilderness areas in the Los Padres National Forest. Jeff was contracted by Los Padres Forest Watch (LPFW) to provide photos to support a proposal to be set before Congress land parcels for consideration of inclusion in the Wilderness Act of 1964. All photos presented here are mine and not to be confused in any way with the exacting photographic skill and magic applied by Jeff to his images. You can visit Lumnos.com for examples of his fine works.

Fraser Canyon across Pozo Rd from Wilderness

Wilson Trail on Black Mountain

There are more than 300,000 acres of existing Forest Land to consider for inclusion (called Proposed Wilderness Additions, PWA) with 864,000 acres of existing LP wilderness (http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/other-resources/featured-wilderness-los-padres-national-forest-85899385405)  in a stretch of nearly 220 miles of LP Forest on and near the California central coast overlapping into arid lands. This map provides a view of Proposed Wilderness Areas (PWA): http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/calwild/pages/28/attachments/original/1377618775/Central_Coast_Wild_Heritage_Map_2013_DRAFT.pdf?1377618775

Yerba Santa, Chemise, Sage on Black Mountain PWA

While at UCSB I surveyed students about their personal thoughts on what could exist in wilderness and found they would include roads, gas stations, power lines and fast food stops in many of their definitions. By their lights, I live in deep, primitive backwoods far from the edge of civilization, undoubtedly what they consider the wilderness. 

Baldy in Santa Lucia Wilderness

We have varying definitions and yet the Wilderness Act is specific about un-trammeled lands, free of roads and human structures; motor and wheel free. It’s like the Latin name for plant species, precise and the same whether administered in National Parks, National Forest, Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service . Finding suitable new areas in the 21^st Century is a challenge. Lands might be re-wilded after other use and roads abandoned so suitable habitats could be included. The process is daunting and requires sustained good efforts.

Blue Oak Woodland on Fraser Canyon PWA

 We hit the high country in the Santa Lucia High Moutain PWA near Pozo road. Pozo, Panza and Padres figure large in the area names of roads, ranges, canyons and more. I didn’t see a trail in this unit and it has the look of a low-density recreation use. Today I learned a condor monitoring station resides on one of the small peaks and birders consider this prime country.

 The High Mountain Camp provided deep solitude among aging oaks and long views reaching the San Andreas Fault. I literally hung out in the trees from a hammock/tent I’ve used the last eight years. Unfortunately, the trees were not cooperating with appropriate spacing. I need more than 10 feet and less than 16 between trees AND the trees need to be less than 20 inches in circumference. Maybe that doesn’t sound demanding, but I hung in less comfort than usual resulting in early slump of energy.

Nearby, the Garcia PWA to the east is a small addition with a blue oak forest and many toyon bearing ripe red fruit attracting many birds. Like most PWAs, roads create boundaries and were probably, the reason they weren’t included in the larger parcel earlier. This quilting process should add more land to the habitat and stitch together a more protected viable landscape of size enough to support the wildlife and plant communities. The area needed for one bear is sizeable, approximately 4 square miles in this area, much more than in the Pacific Northwest. The same is true of mountain lions.