President Obama signed legislation today protecting about 2 million acres of wilderness, including 700,000 acres in California — a total that comes close to the amount of land George Bush conserved during his entire presidency.

So the new administration is on course to far exceed the meager wildlands preservation of the last president, a most vital change of course.

Too bad Obama isn’t (so far) proving very green on two other vital scores, namely the Endangered Species Act (continuing the old Bush policy of using delaying tactics and legal technicalities to allow dying species to go extinct, as it just did with the yellow-billed loon) and proposing fuel economy standards that are actually weaker than Bush’s departing proposals.

That’s really not the change most enviros were hoping for.