Deep Creek proposed in Wilderness Bill

Latino leaders back wilderness bill

PROTECTION: More than 400,000 acres in the Inland area would ban mechanized equipment.

01:35 AM PST on Friday, January 9, 2004

By JENNIFER BOWLES / The Press-Enterprise

LATINO INVOLVEMENT

To get more information on the National Hispanic Environmental Council and the wilderness bill:

Call: 703-683-3956

Log on: www.nheec.org

When Louie Lujan was 8, his father took him on his first ride to the California desert.

Somewhere along a darkened road, near the San Bernardino-Riverside county line, his father pulled over and told his son to get out.

"I was scared. I thought some animal would attack me," he recalled. "I heard nothing but silence and then my dad told me to look up, and I saw the Milky Way."

"It was the closest I ever felt to a god," he said. "It's moments like those that really change your life."

Lujan, who went on to study planetary geology in college and is now vice mayor of La Puente, joined a group of Southern California Latino leaders Thursday in supporting a wilderness bill sponsored by Rep. Hilda Solis, D-El Monte. If passed, the bill would set aside 1.7 million acres of public land as wilderness and protect more than 300 miles of rivers across the region.

In the Inland area, the rivers include stretches of Deep Creek in the San Be
rnardino Mountains and the south fork of the San Jacinto River near Hemet. The land includes more than 400,000 acres of the two-county Inland area, primarily in the desert and mountain ranges.

Considered the most stringent of land protections, wilderness designations ban any mechanized equipment, including off-road vehicles and bicycles. Hiking and horseback riding are allowed.

The event, held at a park in Duarte with the snow-capped Mount Baldy as a backdrop, was aimed at courting Hispanic support for the bill. Members of the National Hispanic Environmental Council, co-founded in 1995 by Manuel Hernandez, a Riverside engineer, said they would launch an educational campaign to get the word out.

Ed Navarro, a former state parks superintendent who now manages Olvera Street, the historical monument in downtown Los Angeles, said Latinos support the environment more than is recognized.

A statewide poll conducted in 2002 by Bendixen and Association, a Florida-based polling firm, showed that 81 percent of Latinos support wilderness protections, compared to 72 percent of Californians overall.

"We support the bill because of the recreational opportunities, the quality of life issues with clean air and clean water," said Navarro, a board member of the Hispanic council.

"But the biggest thing is we have a strong sense of family and of protecting something for the future generations," he said."

Solis, the bill's author, said as a child her family couldn't afford to travel to places like Yosemite National Park, so they went to the Angeles National Forest for weekend outings.

She said it is important for everyone to leave behind the smoggy, concrete urban areas to get closer to nature.

"If we don't fight for this now," she said, "we will lose it."

The bill, introduced in late October, is being circulated for discussion in subcommittees of the House Resources Committee.

Nicol Andrews, spokeswoman for the resources committee, chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said Pombo would take a close look at the bill before setting it on the main committee's calendar.

"Wilderness protection is the most extreme of protections," she said by telephone from Washington, D.C. "It essentially locks it up and throws away the key."

She said Pombo would want to make sure the local residents support such designations and that there aren't other ways of protecting the land.

Reach Jennifer Bowles at 909-368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com