July 10, 2025
It’s been 10 years since the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was created, preserving around 345,000 acres of wilderness habitat for plants and animals across five counties.
And this week, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors celebrated the achievement which was itself was nearly a decade in the making.
“In honor of this recognition … we’re celebrating this decade of progress in celebrating one of California’s most ecologically rich and culturally significant landscapes,” said Supervisor Lucas Frerich Tuesday during a formal presentation.
He noted the area contains critical habitat and ecosystems and ranks in the top 5% of U.S. public lands for biodiversity and ecological integrity,” protecting not just bald eagles but tule elk, mountain lions and “rare endemic plant species.”
The resolution also stated the wilderness area “plays a vital role in climate resilience by protecting intact ecosystems, carbon sinks, and fire-dependent habitats that benefit from traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous burning practices. (It’s also the) ancestral homeland of numerous Native American tribes and contains sacred sites, ceremonial spaces,
and a deep cultural and linguistic heritage reflecting over 20,000 years of continuous Native American occupation.”
But the wilderness area’s origins date back even further to 2007 when the Northern California Heritage Wilderness Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush. This legislation, authored by Representative Mike Thompson, designated 272,000 acres of public land as wilderness, including 27,000 acres at Cache Creek.
That legislation, creating the Cache Creek Wilderness, was itself the culmination of more than three decades of citizen efforts.
It was in the late 1950s when a group of UC Davis students formed Active Conservation Tactics, according to information from Jim Eaton of Tuleyome, a Woodland-based nonprofit, working to protect both wild heritage and the agricultural heritage for future generations, authored in 2007.
“We began working on a proposed Snow Mountain wilderness, a wild area in the nearby Mendocino National Forest,” Eaton wrote. “Back then, access to Cache Creek was difficult. Due to surrounding private ranches, there were few places to legally reach the BLM lands.”
In 1976, Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Prior to this law, BLM primarily was a land disposal agency. Now BLM was instructed to retain and management the public lands, much like the U.S. Forest Service. This legislation also mandated that BLM inventory all of its lands for those areas that met the minimum requirements of wilderness areas, complete a study of these areas, and recommend to Congress whether these areas were suitable or not to become designated wilderness.
Locally, BLM identified Cache Creek and Cedar Roughs (Napa County) as wilderness study areas. The California Wilderness Coalition urged that Blue Ridge and Berryessa Peak also be considered, but BLM chose not to do so.
Fast forward to the summer of 1998 when Andrew Fulks, Lois Wolk (then a Yolo County supervisor), and Eaton “sat around my dining room table and discussed what it would take to permanently preserve the wild lands in our western mountains.
“This resulted in the formation of Cache Creek Wild (now part of Tuleyome) and the Capay Valley Hiking Club,” Eaton stated. “Through these and other organizations, many people got involved in the effort to protect the Cache Creek area.”
Then in 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the California Wild Heritage Act, which would have protected 2.5 million acres of wilderness in 81 areas, including a 38,960-acre Cache Creek Wilderness. But the bill languished.
Later, Rep. Thompson introduced a bill with areas only in his Congressional District. With support from senators Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, this is the legislation that finally passed. Since it only included the portion of Cache Creek in Lake County.
As time went on still more acreage was added to encompass Yolo, Solano, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties, until 2015 when a resolution urging President Obama to create the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument passed the Senate and made its way to the president’s desk.
“The passage of this resolution sends a clear message to the president that the protection of this unique wilderness is important to both our region and our entire state,” said then- Assemblyman Bill Dodd, D-Napa, who went on to serve in the state Senate. He sponsored the resolution. “Preserving the region’s natural splendor for future generations is critical, and I want to thank all of those who have been working so hard towards that goal.”
The region’s other legislative representatives also joined Dodd in supporting the resolution, which passed the legislature with bipartisan support.
Today the Berryessa Snow Mountain region includes nearly 345,000 acres of existing public lands in close proximity to the Bay Area and Sacramento, making it easily accessible for millions of Californians.
Each year tens of millions of Californians participate in outdoor recreation. A study commissioned by the Winters Chamber of Commerce in 2015 projected the national monument designation would result in $50 million of new economic activity over five years.
Speaking before Yolo supervisors on Tuesday, longtime proponent of the Wilderness Area Bob Schneider said, “the American people recognize the importance of our treasured and sacred public lands.
Schneider – a geologist who regularly hikes the hills and mountains throughout the region – had been advocating creating the Snow Mountain area as a National Monument for more than seven years before the legislation was finally signed.
“When we undertook the campaign to protect these federal public lands of the BSMNM region we consciencely stated that this must be a very inclusive campaign,” he told supervisors. “If people care about our public lands, they are welcome and should be a part of this campaign.
“I am grateful for the user groups- hikers, bike riders, backpackers, horse riders, legal OHV users, botanists, geologists, conservation groups, Tribes, landowners, farmers and ranchers, businesses, elected office holders at the local, state and national level and the thousands of individuals that joined in this campaign,” he continued.
The campaign to add Molok Luyuk – sacred lands of the ancestral Hill Patwin to the monument was spearheaded by Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.
“In the resolution it mentions the national precedent for co-stewardship of these lands,” Schneider stated. “They are telling their story of persistence and resilience. Thank you.
“Americans love and treasure their public lands, and they are united and care about protecting them,” he concluded after thanking supervisors as well as members of the state Assembly and Senate for creating the wilderness preserve.
Schneider also offered thank to the Bureau of Land Management which is now protecting the land.