California Wilderness Act of 1984
| California Wilderness Act of 1984 | |
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| California Wilderness Act of 1984 | |
| Enacted by | Congress of the United States |
| Date enacted | September 12, 1983 |
| Date signed | September 28, 1983 |
| Introduced by | Phillip Burton (D-CA-5th-San Francisco) |
The California Wilderness Act of 1984 is a federal law (Public Law 98-425), passed by the United States Congress on September 28, 1984, that authorized the addition of over 3 million acres (12,000 km2) within the state of California to the National Wilderness Preservation System.
The historic Wilderness Act passed in 1964 provided guidelines and provisions for future wilderness additions, of which this California Act is one of. One key provision called for evaluating roadless areas for future wilderness classification. The US Forest Service began its evaluation in 1967 and was known as the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation or "RARE." Each area had to be at least 5,000 acres (20 km2), have only foot trails, and be undeveloped. The first evaluation and inventory was completed in April 1972 and after public input, a final list of 16 roadless areas came out in 1973. This list had three-quarters of a million acres (4,000 km²) of public land spread across 12 national forests.
A second evaluation (RARE II) was done in 1977 that was more extensive and had more time for public input. It was completed and published in 1978. RARE II guidelines were a bit more relaxed than its predecessor. It allowed slight traces of human impact, such as limited fencing, old fire towers and unimproved roads, as long as these traces did not disturb the "wilderness" ambiance. This second inventory had 69 roadless areas totaling almost 900,000 acres (3,600 km2), 176 non-wildernesss areas of about 2,500,000 acres (10,000 km2) and 118 further planning areas. At this point in history, things got a bit complicated. The state of California sued the US Forest Service charging that the agency's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process was faulty as it only had public comments from northern California and had ignored the remaining 97.5 per cent of the state's population.
In a letter, Regional Forester Smith commented,
"...On balance, I think RARE II was a success...for the first time somebody thought about what the wilderness system ought to look like when it was complete. For the first time somebody took the time to estimate the criteria and characteristics of a complete National Wilderness Preservation System. RARE II ...brought the question of land use, particularly wilderness, to the attention of more people in this country than any other effort."
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