America the Beautiful:
The bipartisan history of conserving our land, rivers and oceans
After 40 years of detailed planning, tireless negotiations and relentless hard work, the Backbone Trail has not only become a reality, but more importantly, California’s latest conservation success story.
The trail, stretching from Will Rogers State Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu in Ventura County, officially opened to the public last Saturday and offers Californians a 67-mile route through one of the region’s largest remaining tracts of undeveloped landscape. The Backbone Trail preserves some of the state’s most beautiful chaparral-covered hillsides, oak woodlands and rocky outcrop spires. The preservation embodies what is possible when landowners, state and federal government officials, and politicians from both parties put conservation and the environment above politics.
I am proud that my friend, Arnold Schwarzenegger, donated 40 acres of his own personal property in Zuma Canyon outside Malibu to the National Park Service’s Backbone Trail project. This gift is one more example of his longstanding efforts to protect California’s environment. When he served as governor, Schwarzenegger preserved more land than any other gubernatorial administration in California’s history. He established the Sierra Nevada Conservancy that oversees more than 25 million acres of land in Northern California, reached an agreement to preserve Hearst Ranch with its 13 miles of pristine coastline in Central California and brokered the Tejon Ranch Conservation Agreement that permanently preserved 90 percent of the 270,000-acre ranch in Southern California.
Schwarzenegger strongly believes that conservation and environmental protection should rise above political partisanship. As he often says, the people of California are not interested in Democrat air or Republican air, but instead simply want clean air, land and water. Schwarzenegger built the most bi-partisan — or as we called it, post-partisan — administration in California history to address such issues. I am saddened that conservation and environmental protection seem to currently be divided along partisan lines, especially since this has not been true through out nation’s history.
I am a lifelong Democrat who proudly served in Schwarzenegger’s administration alongside many lifelong Republicans. Initially, our post-partisanship approach baffled the establishment in Sacramento. Likewise, environmental leaders in California struggled to understand that a Republican governor would be committed to conserving the environment as an end in itself, but I was not surprised by Schwarzenegger’s environmental convictions.
I remember discussing Teddy Roosevelt with Schwarzenegger in the early 1990s on a cross-country flight. Schwarzenegger loved the story of how, even after being shot in the chest during a campaign event in Wisconsin, the 26th president was determined to deliver his speech before heading to the hospital. What action star wouldn’t be inspired by this true-life tale of heroism? Schwarzenegger was equally impressed with Roosevelt’s stewardship of the environment, both establishing the U.S. Forest Service and creating five National Parks to preserve the American wilderness for future generations.
“Of all the great questions which can come before the nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation,” Roosevelt famously declared while dedicating a state park in Kansas.
Schwarzenegger often turns to that Roosevelt quotation for inspiration. I know that he had it in mind in 2004 when he signed the bill establishing the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. At that event, he was flanked by his California EPA Secretary, a Democrat, his Resources Secretary, a Republican and the bi-partisan legislative authors of the bill. I know that he was thinking of the quotation again in 2006 when he signed the Global Warming Solutions Act on a hillside in Malibu overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean, again surrounded by Republicans and Democrats sharing a common goal. There is no doubt he also thought of it during the dedication of the Backbone Trail on Saturday.
If history offers insight and hope for future generations, perhaps more people will be inspired by Teddy Roosevelt and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s actions and recognize that being a political conservative should also mean protecting our natural resources for generations to come.