Monumental Problem

PIACINES — Pinnacles National Monument is a place of rare beauty and unrivaled violence.

Recognizing the uniqueness of the craggy land forms that are the shattered remnants of a once mighty volcano, President Clinton used his executive authority in January to expand the size of the monument by 7,900 acres.

“This is not about locking lands up,” Clinton said when he announced the expansion of the park south of San Jose, as well as several other new monuments. “It is about freeing them up--from the pressures of development and the threat of sprawl--for all Americans, for all time.”

He may have spoken too soon. Although some of the land here will involve a simple trade-off between federal agencies, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, some of the most important land--2,000 acres in private hands--was not included, and negotiations to purchase those parcels are at a standstill.

Now owners have decided not to wait for the government. They have put the land on the open market, heightening the fears of officials that, despite Clinton’s action, houses could go up just outside the park gates, disrupting the golden eagles and prairie falcons that nest in the hills above.

“The idea of residential development on the doorstep of wilderness is not something I want to contemplate,” said Steve Shackleton, the park superintendent.

The landowners agree. “This is all the property in the valley that leads to the park,” said Stu Kingman, one of three partners. “They really ought to have it. Politics got in the way.”

Shackleton said money to buy the land was removed by Congress from the appropriations bill this year. “Many of the monument line items were taken out of the appropriations bill. . . . The federal share fell out at the last minute.”

He said the land was appraised at $3 million in 1997, but Kingman said the owners are looking for $5 million. The failure to find common ground on price is part of the problem, said Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel). “I’m troubled that we couldn’t agree to a price. Can we get this done? I think it’s getting tougher,” he said.

He was referring to more than the problems at Pinnacles. He said prices for sensitive lands around the state are rising higher and higher, making it harder for the government to come up with the money.

Once 8,000 feet high, Pinnacles now rises only 1,200 feet above the valley floor, but its jagged rocks pierce the sky like the broken teeth of a beast trying to shoulder its way out of the earth. What is special about this place tucked away off lightly traveled California 25 in San Benito County is that it is only a part of the original volcano.

The other part lies in rubble outside Lancaster--195 miles south. The volcano, located on the fault zone between the Earth’s Pacific and North American plates, was fractured as the two plates ground past each other millions of years ago.

“It’s a terrific little park,” Shackleton said. “You are looking at the skeleton of a volcano.”

But that’s not all that makes the 16,265-acre park important. Shackleton said it has the largest diversity of bees in North America, with 410 species. There are 56 species of butterflies.

President Theodore Roosevelt named it a national monument in 1908. In January, against the backdrop of the Tuweep Valley’s Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rock layers, Clinton expanded it by nearly half and created three other national monuments in the West. The most notable was more than 1 million acres on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, an area of rugged cliffs and ponderosa pines. The new Grand Canyon monument is larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Clinton also designated for protection as a national monument the thousands of small, federally owned islands, rocks and exposed reefs along California’s 840-mile coastline. He also expanded Pinnacles at that time to protect habitat and watershed zones.

Clinton now has designated more land as national monuments in the continental United States than any other president. He has created 11 national monuments and expanded two. Some critics were not impressed, particularly in Arizona, where Republican Gov. Jane Hulland and much of the state’s congressional delegation denounced the move as a federal land grab that ignored local concerns.

On Friday, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recommended five more areas for inclusion as monuments, including the Carrizo Plain between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield. The plain is 204,000 acres of rolling grasslands that are home to endangered species, American Indian sacred sites and a portion of the San Andreas Fault.

Although Shackleton and Kingman blamed Washington politics for the failure to allocate the money to buy the private land at Pinnacles and elsewhere, Farr said the problem is a failure to agree on a price.

Whatever the root of the problem, Shackleton said, he is trying to find partners to help in the purchase. The owners, he said, are “terrific people” who want to sell to the government. “But they need to look to their own affairs. They’ve been patient for eight years.”

“We’re all of an age that we feel it’s time to break up the partnership and dispose of the land,” said Kingman. He is the youngest at 67. He fears that when the partners die, a struggle could be set off among dozens of heirs. Some of the land is now developed as a campground, with 125 spaces.

“It’s disappointing,” he said of the situation. “Basically, we’ve said, ‘Good luck, if you can get any money before we sell on the open market’ ” they’ll consider it.

Asked if he has any buyers yet, he said, “We’re talking to some people.”