洛杉磯又添保護區 聖蓋博山升格國家紀念區

President Barack Obama has used his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish 540 square miles of national forest land in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California as a national monument.

With this designation, President Obama has now protected more than 260 million acres of land and water, nearly three times more than any other President since the Antiquities Act became law in 1906.

The peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains frame the Los Angeles skyline and offer hundreds of miles of hiking, mountain biking, motorized, and equestrian trails as well as campgrounds to the area’s diverse residents. In addition to providing drinking water, the San Gabriels’ rivers support rare populations of native fish, while the vegetation found in the monument supports native wildlife and insect species, including pollinators important to farmers.

More than 15 million people live within 90 minutes of the San Gabriel Mountains, which provides 70 percent of the open space for Angeleños and 30 percent of their drinking water.

Building on the monument designation, charitable donors are announcing commitments to help jump-start public involvement and restoration of high-priority projects in Los Angeles County and the new San Gabriel National Monument.

The National Forest Foundation announced a donation of $3 million for the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument Fund to respond to community priorities and support restoration and stewardship of the new national monument.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the U.S. Forest Service are investing more than a million dollars in additional education staff and maintenance work on the monument’s trails and picnic areas.

The site contains high-quality wilderness areas, habitat for many endangered and sensitive plants and animals including the Nelson’s Bighorn sheep, California condor, mountain lion, spotted owl and the mountain yellow-legged frog. It also defends against climate change, retaining polluting geenhouse gases from the air.

The new monument area overlays about half of the Angeles National Forest, which hosts more than four million visits each year. Based on 2012 data, the U.S. Forest Service estimates that the Angeles National Forest alone contributes more than $39 million to the local economy each year.

President Obama has previously used his authority under the Antiquities Act to create or expand 12 other National Monuments across the country, including the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in the south-central Pacific Ocean last month – the largest marine reserve in the world that is completely off limits to commercial resource extraction.

All of these efforts support an annual outdoor economy that includes approximately nine million jobs and $1 trillion in economic activity, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

A recent study by the independent and nonpartisan research group, Headwaters Economics analyzing the impacts of over a dozen monuments found that, without exception, local economies grew following the monument’s designation.