Advocates for the protection of new wilderness
areas have come to rely on the Wilderness Land Trust
to purchase large and small tracts of private land
within wild areas that are promising candidates
for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation
System. The proposed Beauty Mountain Wilderness
Area near Temecula, California, provides an example
of the effectiveness of our efforts.
Beauty Mountain is a 5,243-foot mountain
on some 30,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) land straddling the Riverside-San Diego County
line adjoining Anza Borrego State Park. The expanding
population of Southern California has
brought development pressure to this once-remote
bastion of unspoiled open space. For years the conservation
movement has recognized this area as worthy of permanent
protection.
In October 2004 the Trust purchased 1,360 acres
within the Beauty Mountain Wilderness Study Area.
Two years later the Trust donated this acreage (lime
green parcels on the map) to the BLM. The outcome
of this gift was quick and dramatic: within months
Congresswoman Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) and Senator
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the “California
Desert and Mountain Heritage Act,” which
included legislation to establish a 16,700-acre
wilderness area on Beauty Mountain. If the 1,360
acres had remained in private hands it is very unlikely
that Beauty Mountain would have been included in
the Act.
In 2007 the Trust purchased 962 acres
(purple parcels on the map) in the southern
portion of the Beauty Mountain Unit. This section
is in San Diego County, which is not in Mary Bono’s
district, and so was left out of the recent legislation.
The Trust has already donated these parcels to the
BLM and looks forward to the day when Beauty Mountain
Wilderness extends across the county
line, contributing to a natural corridor linking
Anza Borrego Desert State Wilderness to the east
with Aqua Tibia Wilderness in the Palomar Mountains
to the west.
