SNOQUALMIE, Wash. - At this time a year ago, Washington gained its newest wilderness acreage when President Obama signed a bill expanding the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. For the town of Snoqualmie, one of the closest to the Alpine Lakes area, the wilderness addition has capped off a big year.

Money magazine named the town one of the nation's "five best" to live in, in part for its abundance of outdoor recreation options. Mayor Matt Larson, who was among the early backers of the expansion, said the city's vision is paying off.

"We want to focus on economic development but we certainly don't want to go the route of big-box retail and that sort of thing, and so our focus is really marketing and branding around this being a recreation and tourist destination," he said. "There's tremendous growth pressures around the entire region, and any efforts that can preserve those recreational experiences for people is a real win for us."

Larson said companies such as Spacelabs Healthcare, a major employer in town, tell him the outdoorsy lifestyle is a selling point when competing with bigger companies for workers. He added that it's also a nice amenity for a busy mayor who needs an occasional day off.

Advocates for the Alpine Lakes expansion made their case to Congress for adding low-elevation land that's easier to access than 9,400-foot Mount Stuart and the other lofty peaks in the original wilderness designation from 1976. It took a few years to make the case, and Tom Uniack, conservation director for Washington Wild, said it happened not a minute too soon.

"In the last year, a timber sale was approved by the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest just outside the new wilderness boundary," Uniack said. "So, those protections were actually timely and necessary, from our perspective."

The legislation included protections for portions of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie and Pratt rivers, adding about 20 percent to the state's inventory of Wild and Scenic rivers. Next year, improvements to an access road near the wilderness area will be finished to make it easier to get to the Middle Fork Snoqualmie.


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The White House announced two new national monuments in California on Tuesday, one just east of Palm Springs and the other near Shasta Lake.

A signing ceremony will take place next week, as the unveiling event was postponed due to high winds.

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., whose district includes parts of the new 624,000 acre Chuckwalla National Monument, said the lands will now be protected from mining, drilling and development.

"This is one of these unique examples where you have both the conservation and tribal leaders, as well as the renewable energy and utility companies all endorsing this enormous monument," Ruiz explained.

The area south of Joshua Tree National Park is crucial habitat for the Chuckwalla lizard, bighorn sheep and the endangered desert tortoise.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said although President-elect Trump rescinded protections for some monument lands during his first administration, he hopes the two new monuments will endure.

"If the President-elect talks to the parties who really span the spectrum of interests, he will learn how this was a really well-thought-out effort to conserve this land but also make it possible to generate energy," Schiff asserted. "It's a win-win."

Thomas Tortez, former chairman of the Torres Martinez Tribe, noted his ancestral lands will now gain protections.

"The next step is to strategically develop a co-stewardship plan, put all those resources together and then, start to protect the land," Tortez added.

The White House also intends to designate the new Sátíttla Highlands National Monument, which covers 224,000 acres near Shasta Lake in northern California and contains the headwaters for California's entire watershed.

Brandy McDaniels, a member of the Pit River Tribe, said they have been fighting development in the area for decades.

"As social, economically suppressed communities, having to fight against people with deep pockets and have all the money in the world to come in and destroy our lands," McDaniels observed. "That's what we've been fighting to protect for a very long time."


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The 640-acre Kelly parcel has been in limbo for decades. It sits within the bounds of Grand Teton National Park but has long been owned by the state of Wyoming.

Now, $100 million and years of work later, the parcel now belongs to the park. The sale, which closed Dec. 27, was a slow process because the parcel was part of state-owned school trust lands which, according to the state Constitution, must benefit Wyoming students.

A 2003 law made it possible for the sale of such lands to count. Monies came from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Grand Teton National Park Foundation.

Leslie Mattson, president of the foundation, said the deal has huge benefits.

"It's kind of a 'twofer' property," Mattson explained. "Not only are we benefiting future students here in Wyoming but this property is a very, very important wildlife habitat and has migration corridors for a number of species on it."

The parcel nearly went to auction in 2023, she said, when it could have gone to private developers. Its protection also conserves critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors for elk, pronghorn and mule deer, including the longest land migration corridor in the lower 48, according to the National Park Service.

Mattson pointed out donations came from people across 46 states, and more 10,000 Wyomingites wrote letters or attended public meetings to prevent the parcel from being sold to developers.

"There was a period of time we were getting dozens of gifts a day with emails saying, 'the wildlife need to be preserved,'" Mattson recounted. "It was amazing to see just the interest across the country in this project."

The parcel was the final state-owned school trust inholding in the park, following the purchase of Antelope Flats for $46 million in 2016.


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The Biden-Harris administration is taking another step to protect northeast Nevada's Ruby Mountains - by putting them temporarily off-limits to oil, gas and geothermal development.

The U.S. Forest Service submitted the petition and application to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

If approved, it would initiate a two-year halt on new oil, gas and geothermal development on about 264,000 acres. Mining and commercial operations would continue.

Russell Kuhlman, executive director of the Nevada Wildlife Federation, said this mandatory pause would help researchers determine why wildlife populations - like mule deer, bighorn sheep, and sage grouse - have been declining in the region.

"That is what, in my opinion, is textbook sound scientific wildlife management," said Kuhlman. "The first step you need to do is limit variables - and one of those variables, over the last five or 10 years, has been the threat of oil and gas companies wanting to do exploratory drilling."

When the petition is approved and published in the Federal Register, it will initiate the two-year moratorium in what's called Nevada's Swiss Alps.

A 90 day public comment period will then follow on a proposed longer withdrawal.

Federal agencies will consult with Tribes on an environmental analysis to decide if the moratorium should be extended up to 20 years.

Kuhlman said the state does a good job of not only hearing everyone's concerns, but building coalitions and rallying behind solutions to protect public lands for future generations.

But he said those who may not know much about the state's oil and gas history could hold misconceptions.

"When I talk to people not engaged in this space, they believe that just because oil and gas is banned somewhere that there is a motherlode of oil and gas ready to be tapped, and then someone is not allowing that to happen," said Kuhlman. "That is not the case for the Ruby Mountains. It's really trying to find water in sand."

Kuhlman added that putting a stop to oil and gas development in the Rubies can help determine how it's affecting the ecosystem, and whether it should be part of the "multiple use" doctrine for public lands.



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