A proposal to provide new protections for more than 1.7 million acres of public land in California now includes hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the Tri-Counties.
A bill proposed initially by Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal of Santa Barbara has been incorporated into a larger piece of legislation by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California.
As a part of the merged plan, about 250,000 acres of land in the Los Padres National Forest and the Carrizo Plain National Monument would be designated as wilderness. The designation is the highest level of protection possible, and would prevent future oil or gas projects on the federal property.
Carbajal says it’s critical that the land be protected now, in light of the Trump Administration’s efforts to expand the development of natural resources on federal property.
The legislation faces an uphill battle, given a Republican-controlled Congress.
