Читать книгу The Atlas of California - Suresh K. Lodha - Страница 19

Public Lands & Parks

Half of California’s land is in public ownership, and much of that is protected in the most extensive system of national, state, and local parks in the United States.

Large areas of California are in public ownership, mostly federal lands administered by the US Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management. Public lands occupy over 47 million acres—almost half of the state’s 100 million acres. Only Alaska and Nevada have more acreage in public lands. California has more units of the National Parks system (monuments, historic sites, seashores, reserves, recreation areas) than any other state (32), covering 7.5 million acres. Yosemite and Sequoia were two of the earliest national parks, and Yosemite Valley is arguably the oldest in the country (given to the state to administer in 1864). The National Park Service (1916) was the brainchild of Stephen Mather, the first of several Californians to serve as its director. National forests began to be set aside in 1884 after most of the west had been sold into private hands. Almost 2 million acres of redwood forests were disposed of before the country woke up to the devastation of uncontrolled logging. California now has the second highest national forest area of any state: 20.7 million acres. Californians led the fight for the National Wilderness Preservation System (1964) and the state has more wilderness areas than any other, lying mostly in national forests. Desert lands were long thought of as useless, except for military purposes, but large tracts have recently been set aside in parks, such as the Mojave National Preserve. California has the largest state park system in the country: 278 units encompassing 1.4 million acres, including parks, historic sites, natural reserves, and recreation areas. Most are smaller than national parks, but they attract almost twice the number of visitors. The first historic site was marked in 1889 and the first park created in 1902, but a state parks system was not organized and financed until 1928, growing rapidly thereafter. Today, the state’s perennial budget crisis has hit the parks hard, with few new units added and many closed to regular use. California’s urban areas are packed with city, county and regional parks and open spaces, adding up to more than 1.5 million acres. Offshore, the state has thousands of square miles covered by four federal marine sanctuaries. The state has also designated over 100 state marine protected areas, and development along the 1,000-mile coastline has been tightly regulated since 1972. San Francisco Bay has been protected from further incursions since 1965 and includes five of the over 50 national wildlife refuges in the state. Californians have been leaders in national and global conservation for over a century. The movement has been inspired by the state’s magnificent landscape and by the devastation of the land by mining, logging, and urbanization. Since the days of John Muir, its momentum has never slowed, taking on new threats to the land and waters as they arose, such as large dams, ski resorts, suburban sprawl, bay fill, and coastal development. Today’s conservationists focus on climate change, energy conservation, and rethinking cities.

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