Sierra Club Plans Next Wilderness Battle : Environment: Off-road vehicle enthusiasts say they feel cheated out of their own brand of experience in the wilds by the curbs in new Los Padres Condor Range and River Protection Act.

Members of the Sierra Club are taking a breather after a successful five-year fight to win wilderness protection for much of Los Padres National Forest and its rivers and streams.

But the respite will be short-lived as members gear up for a new battle to secure wilderness status for thousands of acres left out of the Los Padres Condor Range and River Protection Act, previously called the Los Padres Wilderness Act.

The act, which became immediately effective when President Bush signed it into law on June 19, designates more than 400,450 acres as wilderness and 84 miles of rivers and streams as wild and scenic, and sets aside another 109 miles of waterways for study for possible wild and scenic status in the future.

The new designations nearly double the number of acres now in wilderness area status, bringing a total of 46% of the 1.7-million-acre Los Padres National Forest under protection from all future development.

The wilderness designations also forbid the use of mechanized vehicles of any kind--mountain bicycles as well as motorcycles and four-wheel-drive trucks.

Of the total, 287,450 acres of new wilderness are in Ventura County, with the centerpiece of the legislation, the Sespe Wilderness, claiming 219,700 acres. The act also created the 38,150-acre Chumash Wilderness and the 29,600-acre Matilija Wilderness in Ventura County.

But Sally Reid, a former national vice president of the Sierra Club who coordinated the environmental community’s efforts on the wilderness bill, said there are another 13,000 acres in the county that should have been protected as well.

“We’ve got a lot of people just waiting to get at it again,” said Reid, a retired high school biology teacher who lives near Frazier Park and shuttled back and forth to Washington numerous times over the last five years.

“We had to fight for what we got every inch of the way, and I think we can all be very pleased with the results,” she said.

While the Sierra Club gears up for a renewed battle, members of the California Off-Road Vehicle Assn. said they feel cheated out of their own brand of wilderness experience on four-wheel-drive vehicles or motorcycles.

“Our people are now seeing that we have to become more politically active to protect their rights to enjoy public land,” said Kurt Hathaway, secretary of the statewide club and a Culver City firefighter.

“The extreme environmentalists are just creating recreational activities for themselves at the expense of a lot of other people. But what’s done is done.”

Descendants of the Chumash Indians, however, were delighted with the outcome of the act. Many artifacts, ancestral villages, meeting areas, cave drawings and rock art are now protected within the Chumash Wilderness, said Patrick Tumamait, a descendant who now acts as a cultural monitor during excavations of Indian sites in Ventura County.

“This helps us preserve our culture for our children,” Tumamait said. Tumamait’s 72-year-old father, Vince, who is seven-eighths Chumash, said the area should be protected because it is part of “Mother Earth” that is sacred to the Chumash.

“People meditated there and talked to the great spirit,” he said. “Now we can feel proud that something was named after our ancestors to give them credit for what they were and what we are.”

Bush’s signing of the bill culminated a five-year debate among preservationists, off-road enthusiasts and water development interests.

The wilderness designation prevents new mining, building or other development, although it allows the few working mines in the wilderness areas to continue operating.

It also prevents most helicopter flights into the area, although private property owners are still allowed to use helicopters or motor vehicles to get to their land, said Don Trammell, recreation supervisor for the Mount Pinos District of the forest.

But, Trammell said, no helicopter concessions to carry in tourists are allowed in a wilderness area.

Over the past five years, much of the debate focused on the Sespe Creek in Ventura County.

The act designates 31.5 miles of the creek as a wild and scenic river and sets 10.5 miles aside for future study.

That wiped out options for dams at two proposed sites, but left open the possibility of a future dam at Oat Mountain, just south of the national forest boundary about five miles north of Fillmore.

Water development interests wanted to keep more options open for future dams on the Sespe, and preservationists wanted more of the river permanently protected. Alisdair Coyne, conservation director of Keep the Sespe Wild Committee, has vowed to continue his battle to protect more of the river.

Another major battleground in the legislation was the Johnson Ridge Trail, a popular off-road vehicle path that dissects part of the Sespe Wilderness. Off-road enthusiasts wanted the trail cut out of the wilderness to continue to allow off-road vehicles.

But the trail, in part through Reid’s persistence, was included in the wilderness and all access to off-road riders will be halted. Although the legislation took immediate effect, Trammell said enforcement would be lenient for the first few months while riders learn the new rules.

He said the Forest Service would begin next week removing existing signs that designate the trail as an authorized path for off-road riders, replacing them with signs stating the area is a wilderness and now off-limits to all but hikers and horseback riders.

“We’re not going to start writing tickets right off,” he said. “But if we find repeat offenders, that’s another story.”

Trammell said he understands why the trail is so popular.

“One of the unique features about it is that when you get to the bottom, you have both a hot springs and a cold river,” he said, referring to the point where the trail ends at Sespe Creek.

Off-road enthusiasts were more successful keeping another trail open.

Toad Spring Trail, which cuts through the northern corner of the Chumash Wilderness, will remain open to off-road vehicles while the Forest Service builds a new path connecting the area to the Hungry Valley Recreation State Vehicular Recreation Area in the northeast area of the forest.

With funding in question and at least six months of studies needed on the new route, Trammell said the new path could be a long time coming.

“Toad Spring probably won’t close for a couple of years unless for some reason it gets fast-tracked and we drop other things.”

Hathaway said the Toad Spring solution is far more reasonable than the immediate closure of the Johnson Ridge Trail.

“The positive aspect to all this is that it will stay open until a new trail is built,” he said.

But Reid said the trail should have been closed as part of the wilderness, just as the Johnson Ridge Trail was closed.

“It’s really too bad,” she said. “They make a wilderness area and then they leave trails open to invade it.”

Los Padres Wilderness Act

Sespe, Chumash and Matilija in Ventura County are three of five new wilderness areas created in the new act. The act also added acreage to two existing wilderness areas, bringing 46% of the forest under protection.