Natural History Wanderings

We’ve secured a legal agreement that protects more than one million acres of public lands in central California from oil drilling and fracking.

The agreement—signed by ForestWatch and several partners, the State of California, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management—suspends all new federal oil and gas leasing in Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, and Kern counties and beyond, safeguarding some of our region’s most cherished open spaces and our communities.

We are so thrilled with this outcome and honored to share it with you, our members and supporters. You make victories like this possible. Thank you.

Since 2005, our small but mighty organization has spearheaded local efforts to make the Bureau more accountable to communities and the environment and less beholden to the fossil fuel industry. We were first to uncover the sheer outrageousness of the Bureau’s drilling and fracking plan, obtaining the Bureau’s mapping data, highlighting the places at stake, and generating thousands of public comments.

The plan would have allowed fossil fuel development to occur on or next to schools, neighborhoods, reservoirs, places of high value to Native American tribes, state beaches and parks, county open spaces, trails, and our national parks, forests, and monuments. There were no limits to where the Bureau would allow the fossil fuel industry to drill and frack.

So we took them to court, and just days ago, the ink dried on an agreement that protects these special landmarks. It was approved on Monday by a federal judge.