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Help Protect California Central Coast and Southern Diablo Range
The public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along California’s Central Coast and Southern Diablo Range are home to more than 100 species of rare plants and animals including the San Joaquin kit fox. Possessing sweeping vistas, soaring cliffs, Native American cultural sites, unique wildlife species, and increasingly rare opportunities for solitude, these lands are priceless.
Their future is being decided right now, in a long-term management plan being prepared by the BLM. Your help is needed to ensure that the region’s incredible resources, such as the Joaquin Rocks and Panoche Hills, are not degraded or lost.
Please take a moment to tell the BLM to make conservation of these areas its highest priority. The deadline for comments is January 26th.
Photo: Kit fox. Courtesy BLM.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Comments on the Hollister Field Office RMP
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft Hollister Resource Management Plan. This important region contains unique, irreplaceable resources which are increasingly threatened by human alteration of the landscape, including rare wildlife species such as the San Joaquin kit fox and blunt-nosed leopard lizard. BLM lands provide some of the best remaining opportunities to conserve these resources. I appeal to you to choose alternatives which maximize resource conservation including the preservation of wilderness values.
I am encouraged by the proposed management measures in Alternative B including those calling for the expansion of the existing Panoche-Coalinga Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), and creation of new ACECs at Fort Ord, Coast Dairies, and Joaquin Rocks. I ask that you designate the maximum acreage of ACEC considered in the RMP.
In addition, I urge you to:
- Protect all of the wilderness quality lands in the Joaquin Rocks area by expanding the size of the proposed ACEC from 19,250 Acres (Alternative B) to 26,000 acres and prohibiting motorized recreation.
- Include the entire Panoche Hills Wilderness Study Areas in the Panoche-Coalinga ACEC.
- Prohibit energy and mineral development in all of the ACECs.
- Close and restore all existing roads within the Panoche Hills North and South Wilderness Study Areas and the proposed Joaquin Rocks ACEC.
- Retain the large contiguous habitat areas in the Williams Hill, Sierra de Salinas, Call Mountain and San Benito areas.
Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on this important plan.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
January 19, 2006
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has issued a plan that will guide the management of over 274,000 acres of publicly-owned land in Alameda, Contra Costa, Monterey, Fresno, Merced, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties. This plan, which is referred to as the Hollister Resource Management Plan (RMP), will decide the fate of over 49,000 acres of wilderness-quality lands, including the Panoche Hills and Joaquin Rocks on the west side of the Central Valley.
The BLM outlined several possible management alternatives in the draft RMP. It chose Alternative A as the “preferred Alternative.” But this alternative would allow unacceptable levels of resource extraction, including energy and mining in sensitive habitat and potential wilderness. It designates new conservation areas, known as Areas of Environmental Concern (ACECs), but they are too small to protect rare species or lands with wilderness character. Alternative C also calls for the sale of large blocks of BLM land occupied by rare plant and animal species.
In the draft RMP, the BLM also considered a conservation-oriented alternative, Alternative B. When the plan is finalized, the BLM can and should choose management Alternative B and add additional conservation measures, to ensure the protection of wilderness quality lands, wildlife habitat, and rare species.
Send the BLM a Letter Now
Please take action to protect these important resources by telling the BLM to Adopt Alternative B and other conservation measures, including retaining lands currently slated for sale, preventing oil and mineral entry in ACECs, and increasing the size of the Joaquin Rocks ACEC to 26,000 acres to protect its wilderness character.
You can send that letter now from the previous page.
Or, for maximum effect, you can send your own letter to:
Mr. Sky Murphy
Environmental Coordinator
Bureau of Land Management
Attn: Hollister RMP
20 Hamilton Court
Hollister, CA 95023
EMAIL: Sky_Murphy@ca.blm.gov
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