The newly designated Beauty Mountain Wilderness comprises 15,621 acres of Bureau of Land Management lands in Riverside County, California. The area consists of a series of steep mountains, twisted canyons, streams beds and the 5,548 foot Beauty Mountain, overlooking the surrounding wild lands. Beauty Mountain’s Million Dollar Spring is considered by the BLM to be one of the most pristine watersheds in all of southwestern California. The encroaching sprawl of rapidly urbanizing local towns threatens the ecological stability of the area, as well as the endangered coastal sage scrub of the Coast Range to the West. Pam Nelson, a long-time resident of the area, has been one of its most ardent and vocal defenders.
“I’ve been an environmentalist since I was a kid,” Pam, a third generation Californian, says. I was constantly “worrying about who would protect the California wildlife.” As a child, Pam would wander all over the Irvine Ranch near her home, exploring the wild places. “I would find beautiful little creeks and secret places and there I began to worry that all the wildlife was at risk, and no one could help them.” In college at UCLA and UC Irvine, Pam majored in science in order to pursue her interest in conservation, but it was Beauty Mountain’s unique wild lands that captured her attention.
After moving to land adjacent to the Beauty Mountain Wilderness Study Area, Pam’s long-time interest in conservation solidified into grassroots activism. “I have a special love for southern California wilderness because of the diversity, the fragility of it,” she says. After noticing the sprawl of the nearby town of Temecula, she began calling local organizations, asking them how to protect the Beauty Mountain area. Holly Owens, an organizer of the California Wild Heritage Campaign, heard about Pam, and invited her to travel to Washington, DC, to meet with Members of Congress about Beauty Mountain.
Sunset at Beauty Mountain; © Doug Steakley
Pam initially told Holly that she didn’t need to go so far for just another bunch of meetings. She now remarks that, “I was really naïve about the process of saving wildlife habitats!” It was a great experience for Pam, who “loved meeting the people from all over the country and learning about ‘their’ places and promoting our ideas to the lawmakers.”
California Republican Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack also had a deep interest in the lands surrounding Beauty Mountain, and proposed legislation to ensure its permanent protection. Beauty Mountain was part of Bono Mack’s California Desert and Mountain Heritage Act, which was included in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (H.R. 146). This past month, Congress passed the omnibus public lands bill by wide bipartisan margins before it was signed by President Obama, creating wilderness areas in nine states. After years of hard work by Pam Nelson and others, Beauty Mountain has finally been afforded the strongest protection possible by the United States government.
Pam’s enthusiasm for conserving Beauty Mountain is also about the people with whom she works. “I am thrilled there is a dedicated group of people and organizations working on this effort. Meeting and communicating with this group has been fabulous, and given me hope. Surveying new areas has been really enjoyable, and seeing the linking of habitats created is fantastic.”
This enthusiasm goes both ways. “Pam Nelson is a tireless advocate for protecting wilderness near her home in Southern California,” says Sam Goldman, the California Wilderness Coordinator of the Wilderness Society. “She is a dedicated community leader who knows the land, her community, and is passionate about bringing protections to these beautiful landscapes.”
Pam’s motive for working to conserve California’s natural treasures is her love for the land surrounding her. “As a Californian, I have seen these special places graded and covered with houses and strip malls. Those very places I worried about as a child are long gone. I need to stand firm and do my best to help set aside these remaining places so that California will still exist. This is will always be my focus—protecting the California environment.”
