Wilderness Blog
Outdoors & Conservation
Fewer Hunters = Less ConservationThe Cascadia Score Card blog has interested connect-the-dots editorial on the decline of hunting and fishing in Oregon (and nationally), stories in The Oregonian and some magazines, and what this means for the future of conservation. One dilemma: Progressive, liberal folks see hunting and fishing as "retrograde," but hunters and fishermen pay high special taxes which fund conservation efforts. Traditionally more liberal outdoorsfolks — hikers, birdwatchers — pay bupkis (those damn Northwest Forest passes notwithstanding)...and by turning their nose up at "Red-Staters" who hunt and fish, may be adding to the problem.
(Speaking of which, The Atlantic Monthly's current issue argues that the whole Red State-Blue State divide is something of a myth, conjured up by politicians and a small core of die-hard culture warriors on either side.)
Drilling Down
Gas Pains In Colorado’s ForestsThe ramp up in natural gas drilling in the White River National Forest is forcing those in charge of caring for the national parks near Rifle to ask for more help.
"There's no way we'll be able to keep up with it and keep up with your expectations for caring for the land…" forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson told Pitkin County Commissioners this week. “"I don't believe we'll be able to say 'stop.'"
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The Wilderness Blog
The American Mind and the Big Bad WolfEverywhere you turn these days, there seem to be headlines about wolves. “Idaho to Take Over Managing Wolves in January,� read an AP story in yesterday’s Idaho Statesman. “Wolfless Nevada,� declared another AP piece, in the Casper Star-Tribune. (That fascinating story was about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejecting a petition to delist wolves in Nevada, despite the fact that the species was completely wiped out in Nevada several decades ago.) Across the West, states are grappling with the question of how to manage wolves: whether or not they should be listed, what should happen when they interfere with ranching, how many is too many, who should be allowed to decide.
If the headlines are any indication, it seems like the anti-wolf faction may be winning – though their victories are hidden behind a veil of dispassionate policymaking. For all the wolf’s success at making a comeback, the talk still seems to be about just how many it’s okay to off.
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The Wilderness Blog
Wilderness is a State of MindI just returned from two weeks in New York City, where “wild� refers to the crazy all-night party you went to last night. There are pockets of wildness in the city, like the High Line: the remnant sections of elevated rail tracks in downtown Manhattan that were abandoned decades ago and now teem with their own grassland ecosystem (and which are in the process, after a long campaign to save them, of being turned into a greenway). But otherwise New York City is a highly unnatural place, one that I can now—after three years of living elsewhere—see in a way I never could before. I love the city, and would consider moving back if I had $10 million in the bank to buy a few floors with a garden in a West Village brownstone. But it’s sort of sad there, nature-wise: lone trees planted in little fenced-off dirt islands amid the concrete, dogs quietly coveting them as they dutifully pee on lamp posts instead. [more]
MOUNT HOOD WILDERNESS
Bipartisan wilderness meeting set for Hood RiverOn Saturday, Dec. 3, you could help decide the fate of Mount Hood.
Congressmen Greg Walden (R-Oregon) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) will host Mt. Hood wilderness summits in Portland and Hood River to get the public's comments on the proposed expansion of federally designated wilderness areas around Mt. Hood and in the nearby Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The summits follow-up a blueprint offered by the two Congressmen on Tuesday the third and most modest proposal for adding to the mountain's wilderness areas in the past year.
The Hood River summit will be at the Best Western Hood River Inn, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. 1108 E. Marina Way, Hood River, Oregon. From I-84 take exit 64. The Congressmen will accept written comments as well at either of their web sites. Residents are encouraged to offer their thoughts and opinions on the wilderness proposal. Oral statements are limited to two minutes, and speaker should bring two written copies for the record.
The Walden-Blumenauer plan would increase the wilderness area around Mt. Hood by roughly 40 percent, by adding 75,000 new acres permanently off limits to development. But theirs is far less ambitious than an earlier proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), which called for 177,000 acres. That plan failed in the GOP-controlled Congress last year, but the Walden-Blumenauer compromise has as one of its proponents longtime Republican Walden, of Hood River.
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The Wilderness Blog
ANWR, Mining, Dumping, and Old BroadsWilderness was over the news this week, from the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to a plan to open as much as 20 million acres of public lands to mineral leasing. The U.S. House of Representatives decided this week to remove the ANWR provision—which would have opened the refuge to oil drilling—from the controversial budget bill, now stalled until at least next week. But another provision still in the bill would overturn a ban on buying up mining claims--meaning that mineral companies might soon be able to buy public land, including in national parks, at wholesale prices if they think it could contain mineral deposits.
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Lolo Peak
A Push for More WildernessWilderness advocates will gather Thursday at Missoula’s Wilma Theater for a talk by a retired Lolo National Forest supervisor, and ardent opponent of a proposed destination ski resort on Lolo Peak.
Orville Daniels, who was supervisor on the Lolo the last time the conceptual idea for a resort was proposed, will give a talk entitled “The Spirit of the Valley, Protect it or Lose it Forever.�
The forest management plan on the Lolo is up for revision, and some think more wilderness ought to be part of the discussion. Specifically, the group Friends of Lolo wants key parts of Carlton Ridge, east of Lolo Peak, added in to the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness, or at least designated as a wilderness study area. That would all but stymie plans for a resort, though any expansion of wilderness itself takes an administrative order from higher up, or an act of Congress.
The event runs from 6 to 8:30 PM, parkside at the Wilma (formerly Marianne's).
The Wilderness Blog
Which Wheels Are Wildest?I've been meaning for a while now to call attention to an interesting op-ed piece that ran in the Christian Science Monitor earlier this month. It was written by Erik Schultz, a "paraplegic wilderness advocate" and director of the ABS Foundation, which supports both wildlands conservation and mobility for the disabled—as well as the intersection of those two issues, wilderness access for the disabled. Schultz, who lost the use of his legs in a backcountry skiing accident, wrote about the bill that would designate a wilderness area in Idaho's Boulder-White Clouds mountains; the bill contains a provision to construct two primitive-access trails to accommodate wheelchairs.
As Schulz points out, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990, contains a section explicitly exempting wheelchairs from the prohibition on "mechanical transport" in the Wilderness Act of 1964. The ADA provision sparked a mini-controversy when the bill was passed, particularly among mountain bikers.
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The Rattlesnake Wilderness
Cause for a Celebration; Wilderness turns 25The Rattlesnake Wilderness is turning 25 this Wednesday, and several stories over the weekend, including this one in the Missoulian and a photo spread in the Independent have showcased our little backyard gem’s history.
The Snake’s 61,000 wilderness acres and adjoining 28,000 acres of protected recreation land, is undoubtedly the closest wilderness area to a sizable urban center in America.
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The Wilderness Blog
Wild Salvation at the Wilderness CongressThe power of religion to shape environmental views and policy is getting a lot of ink of late, particularly the growing divide between the pro-environment Creation Care movement and the anti-environment forces of the Christian right (increasingly under attack from within their own community) holding fast to the archaic view that God made Earth for humans to plunder.
At the World Wilderness Congress, which wrapped up Thursday in Anchorage, John C. Nagle, a law professor at Notre Dame University, put an interesting spin on the popular subject of wilderness’s spiritual values. Nagle pored over transcripts of the early ‘60s testimony leading up to the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, and he was struck by how often those who testified mentioned spirituality. Housewives, ranchers, oil executives, members of Congress—they all, Nagle said, hit the same themes. They described wilderness as a place of encountering God, a place of spiritual renewal, a place of solitude and escape. They described wilderness as land the way God created it. While the spiritual language didn’t make it into the text of the law, it was clearly a powerful tool for gaining support—something that’s particularly interesting today when the most evangelical American Christians tend also to be those most opposed to wilderness preservation.
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