National Monument status splits Angeles National Forest in two; creates inequities, confusion

King Solomon

In Solomon-like fashion, President Barack Obama split the heavily used Angeles National Forest in two, placing one half inside a brand-new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument while leaving out the other half. Exactly three months after the historic designation, some are questioning the president’s wisdom as nonprofits, environmental groups, federal, state and local agencies grapple with a confusing arrangement that baffles even proponents and leaves an inequitable division of haves and have-nots. For example, when asked to state the size of the monument, three heads of nonprofit groups working in the 700,000-acre Angeles — which stretches from the San Fernando Valley to Mt. Baldy — each gave wildly different answers. Just locating the boundary when driving rock-pitted fire roads or trekking up 5,000-foot elevation trails overgrown with poisonous weeds became a difficult task. “From my perspective, we consider it an invisible line,” said Eagle Rock resident Steve Messer, president of the Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association and a member of the national monument collaborative committee. Groups such as CORBA, the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps and the National Forests Foundation say the monument is a positive effort that will stoke the donor community but won’t affect their work. They will continue to repair trails, rip out invasive weeds and plant trees both within the monument and non-monument area, saying they can deal with whatever new bureaucracy is thrust upon them by the presidential designation. Those representing areas left out of the monument are not as sanguine. They feel slighted and are calling for an expansion of the monument boundaries by Congress or the president. These include the collective of environmentalists, ethnic minority groups, labor and clergy called the San Gabriel Mountains Forever and Rep. Judy Chu, D-El Monte, the lead legislator in the monument effort, who behind the scenes are working to expand the boundary. But the strongest voice for expanding what the White House web site describes as a 346,177-acre monument mostly situated in the eastern portion of the Angeles is the Arroyo Seco Foundation Managing Director Timothy Brick. Brick has written the president and the mayor of Los Angeles for help. “The areas cut out are at least as important or more important than the areas included in the monument,” Brick said Wednesday during an interview...more