More than 80% of the park is designated as the Pinnacles Wilderness (15,985 acres or 6,469 hectares), which provides even higher protection for the rock spires that give Pinnacles its name, as well as Chalone Peak, the highest peak in the Gabilan Range, and includes the creeks and canyons that are habitat for the endangered red-legged frog. The United States Congress in 1976 enacted Public Law 94-567, adding Pinnacles Wilderness and several others to the National Wilderness Preservation System.
Read more about this topic: Pinnacles National Monument
Famous quotes containing the word wilderness:
“The wilderness experiences a suddent rise of all her streams and lakes. She feels ten thousand vermin gnawing at the base of her noblest trees. Many combining drag them off, jarring over the roots of the survivors, and tumble them into the nearest stream, till, the fairest having fallen, they scamper off to ransack some new wilderness, and all is still again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)