Freedom of Information in Britain is more like a candle flame than the sunshine laws familiar to Americans. Yet despite this country’s late arrival to open government legislation, the British Press are ditching their traditional skepticism and banding together to save our nascent FOI law from imminent destruction. Perhaps we might even start our own "Candle Week."

Britain was one of the last parliamentary societies to pass an FOI law and had the longest lead-in time of any country (five years) before it came into force on Jan. 1, 2005. This country does not have open public records or open meetings laws that mandate the transparent operation of government, so Freedom of Information is one of the only ways to uncover what public officials are doing with public money. In addition, court records are not considered "public" despite being paid for by the taxpayer, so that stream of information – so essential to the American reporter – is restricted. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair has lost his enthusiasm for open government after 10 years in power. Under the guise of "cost savings+ our 2-year-old law is about to be gutted.

A consultation ended last week on government proposals that would radically alter the way costs for answering FOI requests are calculated. If approved, they will make the Act virtually useless for all but the most superficial request. The government has blithely admitted it wants to obstruct requestors, particularly journalists and campaigners – precisely the people that in the U.S. quality for a fee waiver because their work in the public interest. In the U.K., these organizations will be grouped and aggregated by type – so any media group will be limited to just two requests a quarter to a particular public body, effectively blocking their ability to do any meaningful specialist investigations. For a corporation like the BBC with tens of thousands of employees this will be the death of FOI usage.

In addition, officials will be able to include in their cost calculations not only the time spent finding and collecting information but also reading, consulting and "thinking" time thus creating an incentive for inefficient bureaucracy.

Leaving aside the ludicrous impracticality of these changes (how will bureaucrats decide the employer of a freelancer?), there is something bizarre about a government putting an axe to its own legislation just two years after it came into force.

So what great disclosures have prompted this U-turn? So far some of the great exposés include restaurant inspections, public officials’ expenses, the amounts spent on consultants, the number of police officers on full-time sick leave, and the number of parolees who have absconded. But centuries of feudal rule have created a civil service and ruling elite deeply opposed to the idea that the "masses" should have any say over what they do, even if it is with public money in the name of public service.

In Scotland, where there’s a tougher FOI law and a tougher enforcement regime, it’s a different story. Leading politician David McLetchie was the first head to roll from FOI when full disclosure of politicians’ expenses revealed "anomalies" in his taxi claims. Perhaps it is to avoid such scrutiny that MPs in our own House of Commons have introduced a bill to exempt themselves entirely from the FOIA. This is currently moving through the House.

The biggest FOI disclosure to date has been publication of E.U. farm subsidies that revealed it wasn’t the small Welsh hill farmer benefiting from tax subsidies but the massive agribusinesses such as Unilever and Nestle, as well as aristocratic landholders such as the Queen, Prince Charles and the Duke of Westminster.

FOI is also useful to counter the massive propaganda machine of government. It is noteworthy that while the government claims the £35 million ($70 million) spent implementing FOI is a waste, it has no trouble justifying £300 million ($600 million) for the Central Office of Communication, a government PR section. The Guardian newspaper used FOI and discovered that despite the Health minister claiming that our National Health Service is "better than ever," more than 13 trusts are bankrupt and many more in dire financial straits. I recently won a case for the minutes of a BBC management meeting where the director was dismissed after a journalist claimed the government had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability. The claim was true, but the minutes reveal a BBC management in blind panic after government attacks.

It isn’t just "quality" papers such as the Guardian and the Times who are using the law. Even tabloids such as the News of the World (nicknamed "News of the Screws" for its sordid investigations) has used FOI most recently to uncover the number of registered sex offenders whom the police have "lost."

But FOI has perhaps been most beneficial to local reporters and local people. British local authorities operate in near Soviet-style secrecy. Decisions are made behind closed doors by mostly one-party Cabinets. Mayors have virtually unchecked power and the public have little access or influence apart from cosmetic public consultations that are rigidly controlled by officials. The sort of open meetings Americans take for granted, where citizens give public testimony, are the stuff of our dreams. Yet we fork over more of our taxes on public services than our American counterparts.

In such a sea of secrecy, FOIA is salvation. Suddenly local people are finding out what poor value they are getting from contracts signed by their elected representatives. The Norwich Evening News used FOI to uncover how local police spent about £70,000 ($140,000) on away days and conferences despite moving into a new £52.3 million ($104 million) headquarters just a few years before. Local reporters have begun digging into local schools to find out the number of pupils expelled for drugs and discipline problems; into local hospitals to find out the amounts paid out in compensation for botched operations; into local councils to find out how much is spent on consultants and travel expenses, and local police and prosecution services to see how many criminals are caught and successfully prosecuted.

Now all this could be in danger. The government will announce in the next month whether it will go ahead with the changes. Why should Americans care what happens in Britain? Two reasons. Our governments have a number of reciprocal information sharing agreements and U.K. reporters often use this to squirrel out information from America that their own government refuses to disclose. If the U.K. were more open, then this tactic could be used by American journalists. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the U.K. still influences many of its former colonies. As such, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative has protested against the government’s moves to curtail FOIA: “It is imperative that the U.K. implement best practice and set a good example for other Commonwealth member states.”

The United States and U.K. should be standing as beacons for democratic government yet too often it seems our leaders are taking lessons from the worst dictators. We must put our own houses in order and ensure our leaders operate with the same levels of transparency that they demand of others.

Heather Brooke is a freelance journalist and author of "Your Right to Know – A Citizen’s Guide to the Freedom of Information Act," published by Pluto Press. She runs the www.yrtk.org Web site and can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I had just turned 13 when I learned that the government in my native country of Cuba had imprisoned more than 15,000 men and women for political reasons. The majority of them were in jail because of their ideas. Others were detained for "conspiracy against the government," and many more for attempting to leave the island, which at that time – as now – was considered treason.

I did not hear the truth about the prisoners through the government's disclosure or from the Cuban press. I learned about it in May of 1977, because in the midst of political overtures to President Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro decided to offer an interview to American journalist Barbara Walters.

To the surprise of Cuban people accustomed to covert behavior by their government, the interview was broadcast. "What about the political prisoners?" Walters asked. This single inquiry – something I had never before heard asked in Cuba – alerted me to the importance of asking questions that demand precise answers from our leaders.

Walters' pointed question had such a strong impact on me that it sparked my passion to become a journalist. Twenty years after starting my career at The Miami Herald, that passion still guides my pen and my career choices.

On several occasions, I have attempted to return to Cuba to report stories. For example, in 1999 I applied for a visa to interview Cuban government officials about racial conflicts on the island. My visa was denied. The Cuban authorities in Washington D.C said there were no racial issues on the island.

In 2003, I asked for permission to travel to Havana to research information for my book about the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when more than 125,000 Cubans left the island within a five-month period. I was refused again. This time, I was told that the topic was not of interest to Cubans. Even so, my book, "Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus," was published. It was well received by literary critics and readers alike despite the Cuban government's refusal to tell its side of the story.

Where I work now, teaching journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, there is a sign at the entrance hall that I often read in the mornings. It is a quote from Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the School of Journalism. It says: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery."

In these uncertain times when governments – including the U.S. government – persistently obscure the facts, Pulitzer's statement echoes even louder.

The public has the need to understand; indeed, the right to know, how their elected leaders exercise the powers vested in government by the electorate. Citizens expect their leaders to treat their power with humility and a sense of mission, to honor the voter's confidence, not to abuse it.

Transparent governments empower and educate their electorate, essential elements for true democracy to function and flourish.

Mirta Ojito is an author and professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York.

These are strange times for people who advocate for open government. On one hand, technological changes appear to make information about government more easily available than ever before. We live in a radically changed media environment, in which news about government misconduct seems to reach our televisions instantaneously. And if we look around the world, we see an extraordinary spread of laws like the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Over 70 countries now have FOI laws, most adopted in the last decade.

And yet we seem to be more concerned with government secrecy than ever before. Indeed, some people claim that secrecy today is the worst in decades. How can both of these stories be true?

It might help to recognize that we are in the middle of an intense, global battle over the principle of governmental openness. In the heat of battle, there's a temptation to employ overheated rhetoric. The truth is that the idea of transparency has gained a lot of ground over the last 20 years. This is evident in the spread of FOI laws, and the number of citizens who say that open government is an important value.

Nonetheless, there are serious challenges to openness. One is executive pushback – the determination of political leaders to reverse laws or policies that guarantee openness. As pressure for openness mounts, this countervailing pressure also intensifies. Of course, we've seen a classic case of pushback in United States, where the Bush administration waged a campaign against openness even before the 9/11 attacks. The administration tightened rules governing the Freedom of Information Act and policies on access to presidential records, among other measures.

However, pushback isn't unique to the United States. The British government led by Tony Blair was elected on a promise to introduce a Freedom of Information Act in 1997, but took eight years to put it into force. The new law was in operation for little more than a year when the Blair government announced substantial fee hikes that could gut the law. The Indian government also adopted a Freedom of Information law in 2005, but within months senior officials were pushing for restrictions. A wave of protests – and hunger strikes – deterred Indian leaders from introducing new limits.

Such struggles will continue in the years ahead. Some advocates argue that FOI laws eventually introduce a "culture of openness" in government – but the evidence tends to support a more hardheaded view. As a Canadian politician once said, the struggle over access to information is ultimately a struggle for political power. A well-organized community of stakeholders, including journalists and public interest groups, is essential to make rules about openness stick in the long run.

Executive pushback isn't the only challenge. The very structure of government is also being transformed, often in ways that undermine openness. One obvious example is the growing role of contractors in performing government functions. A 2006 study estimated that almost 8 million people work for federal government contractors – four times the size of the regular government workforce. As we've seen in Iraq, contractors now perform defense and intelligence tasks that we once thought belonged to government alone.

The problem? Most often, contractors aren't affected by FOI laws, so that internal documents about the use of money or power can't be accessed. Indeed, it may be difficult to obtain even the contract itself, which explains what contractors have promised to do, and how much they will be paid. Around the world, battles for access to government contracts are commonplace.

The structure of government is also being changed in more subtle ways. Since 9/11, we've all been reminded of the need to make difficult tradeoffs between security and openness. Less easily seen are the changes in the defense, intelligence, and policing sectors. Government agencies in different states (and different countries) are linking together more tightly, forming networks aimed at improving collective security. This is an admirable goal. But governments often agree to information-sharing agreements that allow inter-governmental confidentiality to trump FOI laws. OK as long as the network performs well – but bad news when the network fouls up, and journalists or citizens try to find out why.

Another subtle but important change: the growing role of international organizations. We live in a globalized economy, superintended by important institutions such as the World Trade Organization (which referees trade disputes), the International Monetary Fund (which monitors governments' economy policies), or the lesser-known ICANN (which rules the internet). Decisions made by organizations such as these affect the well-being of millions of citizens – but they are not required to comply with the transparency rules that we've imposed on national, state and local governments.

Are we making headway on governmental transparency? Frankly, it's too early to tell. The idea of transparency had gained ground. But it's not yet clear whether we will find ways of tailoring openness rules (like FOI laws) to fit new structures of governance. And we can expect political leaders to continue pushing back, especially as their capacity to control the outflow of government information is challenged more directly.

It's a long road ahead. But it's a road we must follow, if we want to protect the ideal of an open, vibrant democracy.

Alasdair Roberts is a professor of public administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His 2006 book, "Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age," recently won awards from the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Society for Public Administration. His Web site is www.aroberts.us.

In reporters' role as the eyes and ears of their readers and as citizens seeking information from the government to improve or make more sense of their lives, there is a constant effort to acquire and process information from the government. Although that may be an easy task in some circumstances, it can be daunting in others. When there is a question, legal tools, particularly laws granting public access to government information often known as sunshine, Freedom of Information (FOI) or open meetings laws, can be especially useful. But how do you use them in the best way possible?

FOI Laws

Requesting Records: In many instances, you simply pick up the phone or walk into government offices and ask for the records of your interest. Often that is enough to gain access. If that fails, before getting off the phone or leaving the office, it is suggested that you might say something like "Well, I guess I'll have to submit a FOI request." Sometimes the suggestion that a FOI request may be made is enough to free up the records. If that fails, you submit your FOI request in writing.

How to Request Records: First, the title of the law, Freedom of Information, may be somewhat misleading. It is not a vehicle that requires government officials to answer your questions. While they may and often do so, there is no legal obligation to provide responses to your questions. An FOI law generally deals with existing records and does not require that a government agency prepare a new record in response to a request for information.

When making a request, FOI usually requires that you provide sufficient information to enable staff to locate the records of your interest. Whether a request reasonably describes the records may be dependent on the nature of an agency's filing or record-keeping system. If you are unsure of what you want or how the records are kept (i.e., by name, street address, or perhaps chronologically), ask. Often agency staff must assist in enabling you to make a proper request.

Delays: Many are familiar with the old adage, "Access delayed is access denied." Although an FOI law does not require that agencies jump in response to a request, it is generally intended to require that government agencies make records available whenever and wherever feasible. If you walk into the clerk's office and request the minutes of last month's meeting, often the clerk will simply say, "Sure, they're over there." When an instant response cannot be given, FOI laws usually require that agencies respond in some manner within a certain number of days.

When a request is denied, most often you have the right to appeal to the head or governing body of the agency or the person designated to determine appeals.

Going to Court: If an appeal is denied, you can challenge the denial in court, and FOI laws usually require that the government prove that the records were withheld with justification. NOTE: FOI laws are generally based upon a presumption of access and require that all agency records be disclosed, except those records or portions of records that fall within a series of exceptions to rights of access. Most of those exceptions are based upon the potential harm that would arise if the records are disclosed. When agencies are sued, they often must prove that the harmful effects of disclosure would indeed arise. (That means that they should invoke the Aretha Franklin principle: not "R-E-S-P-E-C-T", but rather "You better think!" before denying access).

If agencies do not meet their burden of proof and you substantially prevail, a judge under many FOI laws may award attorney's fees to you, payable by the agency.

Myths: How many of you have heard something like, "This is a personnel matter. We can’t disclose," or "It's in litigation. We can't discuss it," or "It's under investigation. Sorry, you can't see anything!" None of those statements is true. What they are really saying is, "We don’t want to talk about it." Sometimes it's laziness, and in others, it's the possibility of embarrassment that underlie those statements. Remember: embarrassment is not one of the grounds for withholding records under an FOI law, and it's not one of the grounds for closing meetings under an open meetings law.

Personnel Records: Some aspects of personnel records may justifiably be withheld (i.e., public employees' Social Security numbers, medical information and other items that are unrelated to the performance of their duties). However, other items concerning public employees are typically accessible, including their salaries, overtime pay, gross wages, attendance records, qualifications for the position that they hold, general educational background and, in most cases, disciplinary actions taken against them. You should always challenge a denial of access when you are told that the materials are being denied because they are personnel records. Some aspects of those records are public; others are not.

Litigation: Records indicating legal advice given by a government attorney to government officials may be privileged. However, when litigation has commenced, anyone can walk into the courthouse and usually obtain any of the records that have been filed with the court. Although FOI laws often do not apply to courts, most court records are typically available under other provisions of law.

Investigations: When a crime is committed, portions of records might justifiably be withheld, but others typically must be disclosed. We don't have secret arrests in this country, and the items contained within booking records are usually available. If no arrest has yet been made and the matter is under investigation, records can be withheld insofar as disclosure would interfere with an investigation, deprive a person of a right to a fair trial, or, for example, identify a confidential source. But the fact that a crime has been committed usually requires the disclosure of some portions of law enforcement records.

Open Meetings Laws

What is a Meeting? Everyone has heard the phrase "a rose is a rose is a rose." In most states, a meeting is a meeting is a meeting. When a majority of a government body, such as a town board, a board of education, a planning board, or a city council, gathers for the purpose of conducting public business, that gathering is a "meeting" that falls within the coverage of an open meetings law. It usually doesn't matter whether there is intent to take action or what the gathering is called. A "work session" or "workshop" conducted by a government body is a meeting.

Executive Sessions: An executive session or its equivalent is most often a portion of an open meeting during which the public may be excluded. Most open meetings laws specify and limit the grounds for entry into executive session.

Personnel: When speaking before the National Association of School boards, I asked the crowd: "What is your favorite word for entering into a closed session?" The resounding response was "personnel!" Nevertheless, often that term is a catchall. It's a trap. It's a word that should be eliminated from everyone's vocabulary.

Some personnel matters may be discussed in private, but many others must be discussed publicly. Often the language of the law is precise and authorizes a government body to conduct an executive session to discuss certain matters as they may relate to a particular person, rather than staff generally.

If a board is discussing the budget and whether positions should be retained or eliminated, the focus would not pertain to any particular person. Even though it may be a personnel matter, there would be no basis for going into executive session, for the issue would involve issues of policy (how public money should be allocated, or whether a position is needed).

On the other hand, if the discussion involves whether to promote or fire a specific person, an executive session might properly be held. In that case, the focus would deal with "a particular person" in relation to his or her performance.

Possible Litigation: The courts have held in some states that the litigation exception for entry into executive session is intended to enable a government body to discuss its "litigation strategy" in private so as not to divulge its strategy to its adversary, who may be present at a meeting. They have also held that the threat, the fear, or the possibility of litigation is not enough to justify an executive session. If it were, there would be little left of an open meetings law.

What to Do? What if it doesn't appear that there is a proper basis for going into executive session? What do you do? First, you should have your copy of your state open meetings law with you at all time. And then you invoke the "Tracy Chapman principle of law" (I think she had the best song of the '90s): "Baby just give me one reason, and I'll turn back around." You show the grounds for entry into executive session to the board and ask: "Please tell me where this subject fits." If it doesn’t fit, the board must discuss the issue in public. If you don't raise the question, often nobody else will, and the information may be lost forever.

In some states, there are government agencies created to deal with open government laws, and they are there to be used, and (for those knowledgeable in music trivia) you should invoke the "Bill Withers principle of law": "Use me – until you use me up." They are there to be used. In others, offices of attorneys general or news media associations may be able to offer guidance.

For an idea of what some government "sunshine" agencies do, you can look at the Web site of the New York Committee on Open Government. Just search online for "Committee on Open Government" or "COOG." Last year, in addition to receiving thousands of telephone inquiries and preparing hundreds of legal advisory opinions, the Committee’s Web site (http://www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/coogwww.html) received more than 1.8 million hits from more than 100,000 visitors. For a pretty good sense of what a sunshine agency does, check it out.

Robert J. Freeman is executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government in Albany.

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Suffragist "Mrs. Suffern" holding sign; crowd of boys and men behind, 1914. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

It’s Women’s History Month, and it’s not your fault if you didn’t know that.

The tradition started in 1981, when Congress established the second week of March as Women’s History Week. In 1987 they expanded it to a month and every year since, they’ve passed a resolution on it, and the president has issued a proclamation. And yes, he did so this year.

The only sign of it here was on March 8, when Lake County poet laureate Sandra Wade held a reading for International Women’s Day a Redbud Library and urged teachers to give students credit for attending.

OK, we’re not Sonoma County, where the National Women’s History Project started in 1980 and persuaded Congress to pay attention. Their impetus was noticing that only 3 percent of textbook content was about women.

Three percent. It is to laugh, scornfully. Anyone who’s ever watched Western movies knows the nation’s history, to say nothing of the world, is simply teeming with women.

And so are Lake County’s past and present. We’ve had women county supervisors before Denise Rushing. Louise Nan’s superintendent of Konocti Unified School District. A woman started this publication you’re reading.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of women run our businesses, head political committees, provide health care at all levels, keep volunteer groups running, and lovingly fill that traditional woman’s job, teaching.

Shelby Posada runs the Arts Council, Melissa Fulton runs the Chamber of Commerce. Could you ask for a broader range?

Native women were here when the pioneer families arrived, and today some of them are running things in their tribes. Tracey Avila chairs the Robinson Rancheria Tribal Council. Irenia Quitiquit is Robinson’s environmental director.

(It’s just as well I've only been here four years and don’t know that many people or you’d be getting a very long list of names.)

So – why don’t we celebrate Women’s History Month and the many achievements of our friends and neighbors?

Don’t we care? Or are we just too busy doing today’s work?

Too busy is my guess. So how about we give ourselves a break from how much we are doing to notice what we have done?

And how about sending us a few words on your own favorite piece of women’s history? Mine’s that Mom riveted airplane wings during World War II. Then she made me take typing.

Watch a movie:

– North Country: Based on a real story, stars de-glammed Charlize Theron as one of a handful of women working in the Minnesota iron mines. Forced to labor under sexist conditions, she and her female colleagues fight the relentless harassment of their male co-workers and bring the first class action suit for sexual harassment.

– Iron Jawed Angels (history): From 1912 to 1920, a group of fiery young suffragettes led by Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor) band together to wheedle the United States into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Their efforts incur the wrath of President Woodrow Wilson (Bob Gunton) and anger other suffragette leaders (Anjelica Huston and Lois Smith). Not a pretty picture.

– Calendar Girls: Based on a true story. These English women are resilient, resourceful and refined. They're also about to shock the residents of their little town. When one of their own discovers her husband has cancer and needs treatment, the group decides to put out their yearly calendar to raise money for the local cancer center. But instead of the usual Yorkshire dales, they'll grace the pages in the nude.

–Little Miss Sunshine is fiction, but has great insight. It gives us pudgy young Olive (Abigail Breslin), obsessed with beauty pageants, a blessedly sane mother (Toni Colette) who tells her it’s OK to be fat, a twitty father (Greg Kinnear) who redeems himself when he’s horrified by the pageant’s other contestants, all tarted up as premature sex objects. Also, it’s very funny, but rated R, in part for the wonderful Alan Arkin’s foul mouth.

Read a book:

– Inés of My Soul, Isabel Allende, 2006. The Chilean author brings her magic realism to an historic novel, the story of Ines Suarez, who left Spain in the 16th century to find her husband and wound up co-founding a New World nation.

– The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892, fiction. What to do with a depressed wife? This doctor husband thinks he knows, but it’s a prescription from hell.

– Writing a Woman’s Life, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, 1988, non-fiction. Great introduction to the historic treatment of women writers, and to rewriting your own life, if it needs that.

– And now for something really light, but crammed with early 20th century history: Laurie R. King’s mystery series based on the premise the retired Sherlock Holmes meets a much, much, younger woman, Mary Russell, who becomes his detecting partner and wife. Start anywhere. You’ll catch up.

E-mail Sophie Annan Jensen at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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A waterfall in the Snow Mountain Wilderness. Photo courtesy of Victoria Brandon.

After more than five years of dialog, persuasion, and inspired cajolerie, advocates of wilderness protection in northwestern California won a stupendous victory last fall with the passage of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act, more commonly and intimately known as the Wilderness Bill.

This far-reaching measure designates 275,830 acres (roughly 431 square miles) of Rep. Mike Thompson’s Congressional District One as federal wilderness, thus giving these special places the most potent conservation protection available in the United States. Among the areas included are the Cedar Roughs near Lake Berryessa, the King Range, Trinity Alps and Yolla Bollys. Here in Lake County, 51,671 acres located primarily in the vicinity of Cache Creek and Snow Mountain have been given wilderness status.

Although Congressman Thompson’s deft handling and persistence deserve the primary credit for making this landmark legislation a reality, many other individuals also played an important role in the result.

It all started early in 2001, when California environmentalists began working with Sen. Barbara Boxer to identify specific tracts of federally-owned land throughout the state that merited Wilderness designation. If public support was strong enough, she promised to sponsor a California Wild Heritage act to protect these remarkable places.

As it happened, those same months also saw the formation of the Sierra Club Lake Group, which took on Wilderness Bill passage as its number one conservation priority, and began the campaign by asking Congressman Thompson to introduce parallel legislation in the House of Representatives.

The Lake Group wrote letters, met with local stakeholders, and worked hard to allay anxieties about any negative consequences wilderness designation might have for our community. Although the positive energy generated by these efforts was muted in January 2002, when the Lake County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 – with Supervisor Ed Robey the lone minority voice – to oppose any local extension of federal wilderness, momentum increased again after a tumultuous Town Hall meeting hosted by Congressman Thompson at Konocti Harbor Resort in April 2002.

By midsummer wilderness legislation was moving through both House and Senate, with lobbying efforts shifting to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose support was essential to passage.

In the meantime, Thompson, Robey and other advocates were working quietly in the background to win over as many different interest groups as possible. Letters and phone calls directed at all levels of government continued, as did petitions, informational tabling and lobbying trips to Washington. When the Board of Supervisors considered the bill again in April 2005 a show of hands in the packed chamber reflected an overwhelming affirmation for wilderness, and this time the Board voted the same way.

So did the United States Senate – but opposition from (then) House Natural Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo prevented the bill from coming up for a floor vote in that branch of the legislature.

It was not until the summer of 2006 that Congressman Thompson, by acquiring the support of every county government in his district (the Del Norte Board of Supervisors being the last to concur) and by accommodating the needs of stakeholders ranging from mountain bikers to surf fishermen, managed to obtain Pombo’s grudging cooperation and break through the Resources Committee bottleneck.

At that point ultimate passage was assured even though the formalities required another few months for completion. President Bush signed the Wilderness Bill into law on October 17, 2006.

Many of the details surrounding these events, including a number of pithy anecdotes related to the lobbying effort, were recounted at a celebratory party hosted by Congressman Thompson and the California Wilderness Coalition at the Saintsbury Winery in Napa on Feb. 11.

Lake County environmentalists turned out in force, including Supervisors Ed Robey and Denise Rushing, equestrian Bill Knispel, Lake Group founders Peter Windrem, Steve Devoto, and Nina Marino, all three past and present group chairs, as well as other members of the executive committee, Land Trust and Redwood Audubon leaders, and assorted companions. The speeches were mostly brief and often funny, the hors d’oeuvres tempting, and the wines excellent, but now that the cheering is over it’s time to assess what this legislation means for this region.

First and foremost, more than 50,000 acres of pristine federal land within the borders of Lake County has been protected from roads, from logging, from mining, from off-road vehicles, from intrusive development of any sort – forever.

Wilderness designation affirms that the worth of these places for wildlife habitat, for watershed replenishment, and for providing the transcendent beauty that nourishes the spirit takes precedence over any possibility of monetary exploitation. Human intrusion is by definition guaranteed to be temporary, soft-spoken and soft-footed: hikers and horsemen, canoers and kayakers, hunters and anglers are all welcome within wilderness borders, but not wheeled vehicles or any sort of motorized equipment.

Each designated Wilderness Area is special in its own way. Cache Creek offers particularly outstanding and accessible recreational opportunities to county residents and visitors. It is a land of deep canyons and steep ridges graced with oak woodlands, grasslands, chaparral, streamside forest, groves of gray pine, and other important low elevation habitats, with a chaparral ecosystem so pristine that according to the BLM, "There are no other stands of this size that are largely free of man's influence."

The region hosts the second-largest wintering bald eagle population in California, a large herd of tule elk, black bear, beaver, river otter, bobcat, mountain lion, prairie falcons and golden eagles, as well as a profuse display of spring wildflowers, a unique assemblage of rare plants, and nationally significant Native American cultural sites. Wilderness designation also accentuates the special status given to Cache Creek when it was named a State Wild and Scenic River in 2005.

Snow Mountain, which straddles the summit of both the Sacramento and Eel River watersheds, is skirted by deep canyons which compress ecological life zones to create a unique biological sky-island providing habitat to 122 species of wildlife, including confirmed populations of marten, goshawk and northern spotted owl. Areas newly added to the existing Snow Mountain Wilderness include 10 miles of the spectacular Eel River canyon along with ancient forests of Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and incense cedar.

Areas of special value outside Lake County but still well within visiting range include the Cedar Roughs wilderness in Napa County west of Lake Berryessa, which shelters the world’s largest grove of the rare Sargent cypress, and the King Range on the Lost Coast, which is the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States.

The ecological effects of Wilderness designation also reverberate beyond the borders of the protected areas themselves. Provision of a nucleus of sacrosanct habitat allows many species of animals to establish healthy populations on wider ranges throughout surrounding swathes of public land and sometimes on private land too, where access restrictions are less stringent and may not exist at all.

In many of these locations on the margins of wilderness ecotourism facilities can be provided without impinging on the unsullied natural heritage of the wilderness areas themselves. Moreover, the presence of so much wild land of such high quality helps to establish Lake County’s image as a green refuge, a place to find values that have become rare and precious in this asphalt world.

The Wilderness Bill is now the law of the land, but that doesn’t mean that our work is over. Implementation measures include changing maps and posting signs, and sweatier restoration tasks such as demolishing old fence lines and controlling invasive alien plants – work that will provide many rewarding opportunities for volunteers to play a meaningful role in managing and preserving the wild places that we cherish.

While rejoicing in our victory here in Congressional District One, we should not forget that many equally precious gems remain at risk elsewhere in California.

The sweeping California Wild Heritage Act that Senator Barbara Boxer first proposed in 2002 and reintroduced a just a few weeks ago would grant Wilderness status to more than 2.4 million acres of public lands, and give federal Wild and Scenic protection to more than 400 miles of free-flowing rivers – an incredible legacy for future generations of Californians, and for the richly diverse plant and animal life of our state. Helping to make this dream a reality is a worthy objective for the next five years.

Victoria Brandon is chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group. She lives in Lower Lake.

A view of the Cache Creek Wilderness. Photo courtesy of Victoria Brandon.

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