Yosemite Announces Biggest Expansion In 70 Years, Adds Meadows, Forest

"In its biggest expansion in decades, Yosemite National Park on Wednesday broadened its western boundary by adding 400 acres of lush meadowlands edged with cedars and ponderosa pines that provide habitat for some of California’s most threatened wildlife.

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land purchased Ackerson Meadow from private owners for $2.3 million this year and donated it Wednesday to the National Park Service, marking Yosemite National Park’s largest addition of untrammeled wilderness in seven decades. Yosemite now stands at roughly 750,000 acres.

The meadows, home to the federally endangered southwestern willow flycatcher and a geographically isolated and genetically distinct clan of roughly 200 great gray owls, were spared by the Rim fire that scorched a huge swath of the surrounding Sierra Nevada forests in 2013."

Louis Sahagun reports for the Los Angeles Times September 7, 2016.