Yesterday, on the fourth floor of the state capitol in Sacramento, the future of California’s state parks received a three hour hearing from legislators on the Budget Conference Committee.

Front and center: the Governor’s proposal to close 220 state parks including Mono Lake and Bodie.

I drove over to join Betsy Reifsnider, the Mono Lake Committee’s Sacramento Policy Associate, to testify and present over 900 public letters in opposition to closing the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve, Bodie State Historic Park, and indeed all state parks.

That’s right: over 900 letters!! Thank you to everyone who wrote a letter so quickly. (If you haven’t done so yet, please do: we’re still gathering letters for the next phase of this campaign). Legislators were curious what the huge stack of paper I was carrying could be, were sympathetic to your concerns, and all your comments are now in the official record.

We also presented Mono County’s letter opposing closure of Bodie and Mono Lake, which the county Supervisors passed in an emergency action that same day. The County made excellent points and was the only (more…)

Thank you to all who have written letters in opposition to the closure of the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve!

In less than 48 hours you’ve generated well over 800 letters and we are printing them now! Tomorrow we will deliver them in Sacramento when the Legislative Budget Conference Committee takes up the park closure proposal for discussion.

Don’t stop now! If you haven’t yet written a letter, please do. Even though it won’t make our printout list today we strongly suspect that additional letters will be needed in the days ahead.

Action Alert summary:

Please take action today

1. Use our website to compose a letter in support of Mono Lake.
2. Consider making a donation to support our work on this urgent threat.
3. Write a second letter in support of all 200+ threatened state parks via the Save Our State Parks coalition.

You can also read the original action alert Mono-logue post