Sponsors (4)
The bill secures large areas of California public lands for long‑term conservation, recreation, tribal access, and active forest health management while restricting extractive and motorized uses—benefiting recreationists, tribes, and ecosystems but imposing costs, administrative burdens, and lost development opportunities for some local economies and permittees.
Residents and visitors near the designated lands (rural communities and local governments) gain long‑term federal wilderness, river, and other conservation protections that preserve scenic, ecological, and recreational values on tens of thousands of acres.
Hikers, bikers, campers and other outdoor recreation users gain new and improved trail access (including potential continuous scenic trails and connecting routes), expanding low‑impact recreational opportunities and scenic tourism draws.
Indigenous tribal communities gain explicit protections to access wilderness and scenic areas for traditional cultural and religious practices and can seek limited temporary closures to reduce public disturbance; tribes also can enter cooperative management agreements.
Small businesses, energy and mining interests, and local governments lose the ability to pursue new mining, geothermal, transmission, or other extractive projects on designated lands, reducing future jobs and revenue opportunities.
Residents and recreation users will face broad restrictions on motorized access, new roads, permanent structures, and transmission siting inside designated areas, which limits some recreational activities and can complicate regional infrastructure (energy/broadband) projects.
Federal and state agencies, local governments, and taxpayers face increased planning, management, and administrative costs and burdens from new designations, required plans, studies, cooperative agreements, and ongoing management obligations.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Designates new wilderness and scenic areas and Wild and Scenic River segments in Central California, creates a special management area, and directs studies to improve trail connections and recreation access.
Introduced August 5, 2025 by Salud Carbajal · Last progress August 5, 2025
Designates multiple federal lands in coastal Central California as new wilderness areas and additions to existing wildernesses, creates two scenic areas and a special management area, adds segments to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and directs several feasibility/study requirements to improve recreation access and trail connections. It requires management plans, preserves tribal access for traditional uses (including limited temporary closures for privacy), limits certain uses (mining, new permanent roads, some motorized access), and directs federal agencies to file maps and descriptions and to manage the new areas under existing Forest Service and BLM law.