San Gabriel Mountains News

SOUTH EL MONTE - Officials from the Obama Administration will meet with local environmental and community groups at Whittier Narrows on Wednesday to discuss their concerns about the quality and quantity of outdoor recreation opportunities in the San Gabriel Valley.

The event, open to the public, will cast a national spotlight on the San Gabriel Mountains and River and allow local officials to highlight the need for additional federal resources to provide outdoor opportunities to residents of the park-starved San Gabriel Valley, according to event organizers.

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST - Don Bremner of Pasadena and his fellow Sierra Club hikers have hardly given up their passion for the sport, despite last year's devastating Station Fire.

Since large swaths of the Angeles National Forest were closed last fall, the outdoor and environmental organization has had to cancel, change the location, or alter transportation routes on many of its scheduled hikes in the area.

Local environmental organizations say the San Gabriel Valley will get valuable face time with some of the Obama administration's highest-level environmental policy officials next month to voice concerns about outdoor recreation opportunities here.

If Belinda Faustinos gets her way, President Barack Obama will be sitting in the El Monte Community Center sometime in the coming months learning about local endeavors to protect open spaces and reconnect kids with the great outdoors.

Faustinos, the executive officer of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, knows her wish is a long shot, so she also has a more realistic, but still challenging, goal: getting high level officials from the Obama administration here.

Environmentalists, cities, scientists and hikers want a larger portion of the mountain range and its rivers shielded from pollution and population woes with strong federal protections.

The river ripples cold around his waders as Bill Reeves casts a dry fly onto a pool edged with alders on the bottom of a canyon deep in the San Gabriel Mountains.

http://www.latimes.com/videobeta/a81a27fb-1afb-4896-ae55-ce10e14b2637/Ne...

EVERY time I step outside the San Gabriel Valley I'm reminded how much better they have it than we do when it comes to federal funding.

I've got a local chip on my shoulder the size of Mount Wilson. When I get all riled up as I did this past weekend, it can be a parochial whine that resembles a full case of sour grapes.
But I don't care if people call me a homer. Because this is where I've lived for nearly 30 years, where I bought my first home, where I've raised my children, where I've worked as an indefatigable advocate.

WITH its plate full on issues of health care, climate change and war funding, Congress can be excused for putting wilderness protection on the back burner.

But there's a growing movement among local clergy, city councils and environmental groups to seek added congressional protection to portions of the Angeles National Forest, its rivers, habitat and wild animal species.

Enjoying God's creation.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/10/san-gabriel-mountains...
An activist religious group has joined the effort to designate the San Gabriel Mountains as a national recreational area eligible for additional federal resources including law enforcement personnel, interpretive signs and hiking trails.
The group, Progressive Christians Uniting, is touting the proposal to congregants of dozens of San Gabriel Valley churches near the 650,000-acre range that constitutes about 70% of Los Angeles County's open space.

http://the818now.com/2009/11/03/la-canada-city-council-throws-support-be...

The La Cañada Flintridge City Council voted unanimously Monday in favor of a resolution supporting wilderness and wild river designations for the San Gabriel Mountains.
The resolution was authored and placed before the council by the San Gabriel Mountains Forever conservation group, a consortium of local business owners, recreation groups and social service providers dedicated to preserving the local mountain ranges.