Ventana Wilderness Alliance
Protecting the Northern Santa Lucia

F/A-18 Hornet Fighter-Jet Bombers

VWA Board Member Tom Hopkins confronting Interior Secretary Gail Norton during a condor release in Big Sur, California, on April 5, 2001. Even as the birds were taking wing, the Navy was moving ahead with plans to fly 3,000 jet-fighter bombing sorties a year within miles of the release site.

Tom was quoted in an April 6, 2001 San Jose Mercury News story by Paul Rogers:

"If she fails to oppose the Navy's plan, then her presence here is hypocritical." said Tom Hopkins, a spokesman for the Ventana Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group. "The birds she released today would be right in the flight paths of fighter jets."

Looking across Nacimiento-Fergusson Road up Stony Valley.
Photo ©1994 by Phil Williamson