Iraq War veteran Steve Dunwoody was hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains when he asked his hiking buddy and fellow veteran for a one-word description of his experience.
“‘Serenity,’ he said, as he looked out over the mountains,” remembered Dunwoody, 42, a Hollywood resident and volunteer with Military Outdoors, who leads veterans struggling with PTSD on hikes through chaparral-covered slopes and gurgling streams of the Angeles National Forest.
“It was good for him to reconnect, for the stress,” he explained. “I could feel him letting all that go as he was out on the trails.”
Dunwoody, who ran financial logistics for the Air Force in Iraq and Kuwait in 2005, often dodging enemy fire on helicopter runs between bases, has teamed up with Vet Voice Foundation and Nature For All to lobby the Biden Administration to add 109,167 acres of federal forest land to the 346,177-acre San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The monument includes 342,177 acres of the Angeles National Forest and 4,002 acres of the neighboring San Bernardino National Forest.
“Spending time in the outdoors brings such a benefit for us,” he said. “It helps us to improve physical and mental health, especially for those with PTSD.” And bring needed moments of serenity to war veterans.
Vet Voice represents 1.5 million military families and supporters in the United States. The group held a virtual roundtable discussion on monument expansion earlier this month and has spoken with Biden Administration officials about the importance of national monuments for veterans.
A new report released Feb. 14 by Vet Voice highlights proposals for five monuments in California; two of which are in line for expansions. At the top of the list is the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, followed by the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Northern California that’s an hour away from Travis Air Force Base. A 13,753-acre expansion of this monument “would provide opportunities for the thousands of people who live and work on the base to relax and recreate outdoors,” the report noted.
The group also supports creation of the Chuckwalla National Monument made up of 660,000 acres of federal land in Riverside and Imperial counties. This monument would include World War II training sites used by General George Patton to train the military for desert warfare in North Africa. Vet Voice also supports designation of 390,000 acres for the Kw’tsán National Monument in Imperial County and a 200,000-acre Medicine Lake Highlands monument near Mount Shasta.
“We see protecting these places as an extension of our service to this country and the duty of anyone who thinks of themselves as a patriot,” said Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of Vet Voice and a Marine Corps veteran who lives in San Diego.
“For veterans with PTSD, being outside with nature has been proven as a way to heal or reconnect with yourself,” Goldbeck added.
The veteran group joins legislators, cities, tribal and environmental groups in support of adding forest land to the San Gabriel Mountains monument. The proposed addition borders the cities of Santa Clarita, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Arcadia as well as Los Angeles communities of Sunland, Tujunga and Sylmar.
Twin bills from Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. propose an expansion that would grow the monument by one-third. The bills also would designate more than 30,000 acres of protected wilderness and add 45.5 miles to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
But with the bills stalled in Congress, supporters are asking President Joe Biden to execute the addition by presidential proclamation. The power is given to the president by The Antiquities Act of 1906, first used by President Theodore Roosevelt for wilderness preservation. Since passage, 18 presidents from both parties have used this authority to create 120 national monuments, with 17 in California.
President Barack Obama came to the San Gabriel Mountains in October 2014 to establish the San Gabriel Mountains monument. However, the southwesterly portion of the Angeles, often called “the gateway to the forest,” was omitted, prompting a near 10-year movement to include it within the monument.
The expansion area contains some of the most iconic sites in the Angeles, as well as closer-in areas heavily used by visitors. These areas have sustained damage from fires and floods and have remained closed for several years due to lack of funding for repairs.
The front-facing areas include camps, trails and waterfalls named after Great Hiking Era pioneers, such as Wilbur Sturtevant. Sturtevant Camp, established in 1893, is four miles from the Chantry Flat parking lot, and trails also lead to nearby Sturtevant Falls.
Many today say Biden should complete the monument in order to protect more forest historic sites as well as tribal artifacts from native Americans. For example, the site of the historic Mount Lowe Railway that once roared above Pasadena, as well as the Upper Arroyo Seco, Switzer’s Camp, Millard Canyon, Eaton Canyon and hiking trails leading to Mount Wilson would be included in the expansion.
The expansion would include trails that lead to popular Placerita Canyon near Santa Clarita.
Dunwoody’s favorite hike is up to Echo Mountain, where the rusty wheels of the railway to the sky built by Thaddeus Lowe can still be seen at the crest of the trail. Here, riders of the roller-coaster-like railway would disembark to enjoy a picnic or baked goods from a mountaintop restaurant during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Echo Mountain is a good place I like to go,” Dunwoody said, saying the added protections to this area would be welcomed. “But it is being out in nature in general, that opportunity to just be there and see everything is irreplaceable.”
Supporters hope that a new presidential designation that would essentially do the same thing as the Padilla-Chu legislation: Attract badly needed funding and resources to the open-space monument and the Angeles National Forest.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality supports the expansion, said Belén Bernal, executive director of Nature for All. On Nov. 7, about 250 people attended a public hearing in Azusa at the invitation of the president, who sent Homer Wilkes, under secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for natural resources and environment, to listen and report back to the president.
An overwhelming majority of the speakers favored the expansion. A handful preferred to see Congress provide more direct funding to the U.S. Forest Service, a part of the USDA, which manages the monument and the larger Angeles National Forest.
“The national monument (in the San Gabriel Mountains) created a better management plan. To expand it to the front country would create a better management plan for that area. There needs to be resources, so there is enough trash cans and enough signs,” said Roberto Morales, campaign manager for Outdoors For All, during the Vet Voice-led roundtable earlier this month.
While there’s no money attached to a presidential declaration of expansion, the original monument designation attracted attention from private investors.
Soon after Obama signed the monument into existence, donations of about $3 million flowed to the National Forest Foundation. It also received $500,000 in a combined total from the Annenberg Foundation, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and the California Endowment. A year later, Coca-Cola made a $900,000 donation.
Morales said a presidential expansion could funnel more resources to help Southern California communities of color access the monument. The San Gabriel Mountains account for 70% of LA County’s open space.
The expansion would help close “the nature gap,” which describes the disproportionate lack of access to the mountains and other green spaces for people of color and low-income communities, according to the Vet Voice report.
Economic benefits of national monuments and public lands in general include a foundation for the $54.7 billion outdoor recreation industry, which also supports 517,000 jobs for Californians, the report said.
“Our fingers are crossed we will see the expansion happen before November,” said Goldbeck.