Protecting Big Sur

The Big Sur Coast is awesome at any time. It is particularly so these sunny spring days. Clusters of bright California poppies cling to steep hill slopes, welcoming visitors along Route 1. Offshore, a late-migrating gray whale lazily flaps northward. Ferns seem to float along the shaded floor of Sycamore Canyon, filigreed arms waving in the breeze and flashing an occasional flicker of sunlight through the sycamores and cypresses. That is the bucolic Big Sur. It lulls and enchants.

At the canyon mouth, the creek meets the rough, powerful Big Sur of pure aquamarine Pacific breakers crashing against rock towers. Wind peels the tops of waves off into streams of spindrift. The cliffs march into the haze of the northern and southern horizons. This Big Sur excites and overwhelms.

The 70-mile-long Big Sur Coast south of the Monterey Peninsula remains one of the nation’s longest stretches of wild and undeveloped coast, only rarely interrupted by any intrusive marks of humanity. Today, the 200,000 acres of coast are protected by a stringent new coastal plan adopted by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors that would permit virtually no additional development along the seashore. It is a model of what a coastal protection plan should be.

Now, a law has been proposed in Congress by Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) to reinforce the county plan through creation of a Big Sur National Forest Scenic Area under the U.S. Forest Service. The bill would protect the federal lands from most commercial development, including logging, mining and offshore oil and gas drilling. It establishes a mechanism for buying coastal lands from willing sellers.

A small but well-organized group of area residents is opposing any “federalization” of the area, although the Forest Service now holds 140,000 acres in the area. But it is clear the overwhelming national interest is in protecting Big Sur against further development. The area may, in fact, merit stronger safeguarding than the Wilson bill would provide. Its grandeur and wildness exceed those of many units of the national parks.

The Wilson bill, however, is a constructive starting point for overdue national recognition of the unparalleled features of Big Sur.