TWS Magazine 2011-2012

Migratory birds tell climate change story

Backcountry skiing in wilderness

Threat of oil drilling off the coast of Alaska

Wilderness THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY 2011-2012

Tackling Radical Ideas that Threaten Your Land

© A. Vedder

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

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All of us who believe in protecting our natural heritage were dismayed when the third-ranking Congressman in the House leadership introduced a bill that came to be known as “the Great Outdoors Giveaway.”

It would rescind policies that currently protect more than 60 million acres of national forest and other undeveloped public lands. At a hearing, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt testified that H.R. 1581 was “the most radical, overreaching attempt to dismantle the architecture of our public land laws that has been proposed in my lifetime.”

A second major attack on our natural legacy was an effort to dramatically reduce the already modest funding for the protection of our air, water, land, and wildlife. Those pushing for these deep cuts simultaneously fought to retain the more than $4 billion in annual subsidies enjoyed by the oil industry.

Meanwhile, Shell is moving closer to federal authorization to drill in marine mammal-rich waters of the Arctic Ocean.

With so much focus on the economy, the upheaval in the Middle East, and other compelling stories, I suspect that very few Americans realize just how far outside the mainstream the House of Representatives has moved. The hard truth is that by the time it recessed in August, the House already had voted 110 times to undermine environmental protections. It has earned a reputation as the most anti-environmental House in congressional history and will be pushing this agenda through the end of 2012.

We are responding with a strategic campaign that will help citizens deliver a message to Congress about their opposition to these anti-environmental legislative initiatives.

Joining with sportsmen, business people, the recreation community, and others, we are playing a leading role in mobilizing Americans. We are marshaling evidence that investing in public land conservation is smart economic policy, paying off in stronger local economies and jobs. For example, during the August recess, we organized volunteers in some of the

nation’s most conservative congressional districts. At meetings with their representatives, they spoke forcefully about how much they value the natural treasures in their backyards.

Perhaps the most important resource we provide is fierce determination. The Wilderness Society’s founders had that 77 years ago, and it has remained a part of our gene pool.

Certainly there are days that can be discouraging, but then there are days when I see unmistakable evidence of progress.

During the summer I was in Utah and Idaho with county commissioners who traditionally have opposed our efforts to protect wilderness. On those trips, I found that they were open to working with us on positive conservation proposals, including those designating wilderness areas.

How did this happen? It happened because these conservative political leaders and their constituents really do care deeply about the land near where they live. It was the natural product of years of one-on-one contact by members of our staff to build trust. When they realized The Wilderness Society genuinely wanted to work with them, and not against them, and that together we could preserve beautiful areas they knew and loved, their attitudes began to change.

I hope you will enjoy this issue of Wilderness. You’ll find stories about a man on Cape Cod who sold his land to the National Park Service instead of to a developer and about what migratory birds are telling us about climate change.

You’ll meet five up-and-coming environmental leaders and find out what’s going on in the regions where we are most active. New this year is a crossword puzzle. We welcome your reactions to any of these features.

WILDERNESS, winner last year of awards from the International Academy of the Visual Arts and Communications Concepts, is published annually by The Wilderness Society. Members also receive a newsletter three times a year.

Founded in 1935, The Wilderness Society’s mission is to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places.

Editor: Bennett H. Beach (ben_beach@tws.org) Photo Editor: Lisa Dare Design: Studio Grafik Proofreader: Connie Quinley

William H. Meadows P.S. I can’t thank you enough for your commitment to helping us protect the lands that belong to all Americans. Without your support, this work would be impossible, and we will need to count on you as the fights intensify this fall and into 2012.

© 2011 by The Wilderness Society, 1615 M St., NW, Washington, DC 20036 www.wilderness.org COVER PHOTO © Tim Fitzharris.com

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Table of Contents 17 The Final Frontier

What is at stake if Shell drills off Alaska’s northern coast?

By Marilyn Berlin Snell

© Steven Kazlowski/AlaskaStock.com

12 “My Favorite Place”

42 Building an Army of Young Conservation Leaders

Five citizens tell us about theirs

We are training a corps for the future

By Hannah Nordhaus

13 Harbingers of Climate Change

Bird migration patterns changing with climate change

By Mel White

22 Why I Sold My Land to the American People

44 Too Wild to Drill

Will rigs, roads and pipelines sprout south of Yellowstone?

By Dave Showalter

On Cape Cod, a campground operator put the public first

By Kathy Shorr

47 Wilderness Investors with a Long-Term View

26 Skiing in Wilderness Wonderlands

48 Everyone in the Car!

As winter nears, here are ten backcountry skiing gems

By David Goodman

30 The Bob and I, Under the Big Sky

How those summertime national park trips shaped our views

By Susan Rugh

52 On Safari in the Bodie Hills

An essay by Ivan Doig

32 Does Nature Affect Your Behavior?

A Q&A with Dr. Frances E. Kuo

This California treasure is this year’s “great place to visit”

By David Page

58 my wilderness

32 Wilderness At Risk

A photo essay features eight treasures that are in jeopardy

This magazine was printed on 30-percent-postconsumer-waste-recycled, elemental chlorine-free paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. As a result, we used 196 fewer trees than we would have if printing on virgin paper. We also reduced our electricity consumption by 79 million BTUs, water use by 88,854 gallons, solid waste by 5,632 pounds, and greenhouse gas emissions by 19,704 pounds. (Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator. For more information, visit http://www.edf.org/papercalculator/

Barbara and Bert Cohn are philanthropic champions

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Frontier Airlines and its spokesanimals have taken up the cause

By Tashia Tucker

DEPARTMENTS 4 Past Year’s Achievements 6 News from the Regions 51 Poetry 60 Wilderness Heroes

The Wilderness Society meets all standards as set forth by the Better Business Bureau/Wise Giving Alliance.

61 Crossword Puzzle

© Dave Showalter

www.wilderness.org

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Achievements

© USFWS/Gary Kramer

ALASKA: The 9.34 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is now protected, once again, by the Roadless Rule…We were able to celebrate completion of a successful decadelong restoration of damaged salmon habitat in the Tongass’s Harris River watershed… Our coalition continued to fend off efforts to allow drilling in the biological heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s new draft management plan for the refuge has opened the door to considering a wilderness recommendation for the coastal plain.

FORESTS: The government agreed with our contention that a BLM plan calling for excessive logging in the Pacific Northwest forests should be shelved, and is now determining the best way to proceed… Proposed changes in rules governing the 193-million-acre National Forest System would result in cleaner drinking water, greater recreational opportunities, improved wildlife habitat, and, for the first time, consideration of climate change… A ten-year effort paid off at Colorado’s White River National Forest in a plan that will minimize the impact of snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles and will eliminate unnecessary roads... Thanks to settlement of our coalition’s lawsuit, 900,000 acres

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Working with a broad array of partners over the past 12 months, we have succeeded in protecting many important natural areas.

As always, the support provided by members of The Wilderness Society was invaluable. The success stories include: of roadless land in four Southern California national forests will receive greater protection… The U.S. Forest Service launched an initiative to substantially scale back its immense and decaying road system.

© Fred Hanselmann/hanselmannphotography.com

WILDLIFE: Ruling in our favor, a federal court put the West Virginia northern flying squirrel back on the Endangered Species List, improving our prospects for preventing a large-scale logging project in the Monongahela National Forest… We played an active role in a state-andfederal decision to shelve a plan to allow the killing of wolves in a Unimak Island wilderness area in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

Our forest accomplishments included watershed restoration in the Tongass (below) and motorized vehicle regulation in the White River National Forest (right).

© Sheila Jacobson/USFS

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ENERGY: We secured greater protection of water quality and other environmental safeguards in settling our lawsuit challenging oil shale development policy for public lands in the Rockies…The Interior Department moved closer to developing a national Smart from the Start renewable energy framework for development of solar energy on public and private lands, in part due to coalition efforts to bring diverse stakeholders together in support of these efforts.… The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a rule on planning and financing new transmission lines that, if implemented properly, should reduce impacts on important natural areas and should facilitate renewable energy production.

OFF-ROAD VEHICLES: We helped defeat an attempt to overturn a Forest Service plan to protect the Badger-Two Medicine, near Glacier National Park, from off-road vehicle damage... We won our lawsuit challenging a plan for Idaho’s Salmon-Challis National Forest that we believe allowed too much offroad vehicle traffic.

OTHER VICTORIES: We played a leading role in defeat of an amendment that would have significantly weakened the Antiquities Act, used by 15 presidents to protect places such as Grand Teton and Acadia national parks… President Obama issued an America’s Great Outdoors report recommending a number of valuable ways to promote outdoor recreation and protect natural areas…

We helped secure congressional appropriations from the Land and Water Conservation Fund that will enable the protection of high-quality—but threatened—natural areas in dozens of states. The places that will benefit include Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument… We helped defeat an amendment that would have defunded the National Landscape Conservation System.

New rules will increase protection of our national forests (top), and we had a hand in a decision that will limit future off-road vehicle damage in the Badger TwoMedicine (below).

© Bill Hodge

© Jared White

www.wilderness.org

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notes from the field Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska is one of the most prodigious salmon fisheries in the world, contributing more than $500 million a year to the commercial fishing industry alone. Feeding this economic powerhouse is a large watershed, where Native communities have caught and smoked salmon for generations. But two mining corporations have combined to propose what could become North America’s largest open pit mine. The two billion tons of toxic pollutants from this 15-squaremile gold and copper operation would threaten not only the Bay’s famous salmon, king salmon, and rainbow trout, but humpback, finback, and minke whales.

Lydia Olympic is leading our efforts to prevent mining in this special area. A Yupik/Sugpiaq from Igiugig, a village in the watershed, Olympic has become such a fervent opponent of the mine that she is sometimes called “the Pebble Rebel with a Cause.” On October 4 the residents of Lake and Peninsula Borough will be able to vote on the Save Our Salmon initiative, which aims to block the project.

Nicole Whittington-Evans 907-272-9453 nicole_whittington-evans@tws.org We are working with many allies to prevent an open pit mine from being developed in the rich fisheries of the Bristol Bay watershed.

© Flickr/toddraden

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PACIFIC NORTHWEST

The Wilderness Society and the Methow Valley Ranger District of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest are working with the community to restore the health of the Chewuch River basin by reducing the environmental impacts of the 608-mile road network.

This watershed provides precious cold water to a number of vital fish species and to working farms. It also is a magnet for those who enjoy hiking, camping, cross-country skiing, wildlife viewing, biking, firewood gathering, horseback riding, snowmobiling, or hunting. Such activities are the lifeblood of the local economy.

After our team spent eight months gathering public views on this top-priority North Cascades watershed, it became clear that area residents want a road and trail system that: 1) provides outstanding and diverse recreational opportunities; 2) represents sound fiscal and forest management by the U.S. Forest Service; 3) is environmentally sound and supports salmon recovery efforts in the Methow basin; and 4) uses partnerships to achieve these goals.

Guided by these findings, the Forest Service will draft a plan for revising and managing the system. That draft is expected this fall.

Peter Dykstra 206-624-6430 pdykstra@twsnw.org

© Flickr/ripkas

CALIFORNIA-NEVADA Los Padres National Forest is home to the Big Sur Coast, mountains as high as 8,800 feet, and the headwaters of many California rivers. Visitors enjoy chaparral-covered slopes, expansive grasslands, rolling badlands, and deep, winding river canyons. Featuring

1,200 plant species, the forest provides habitat for 468 species of wildlife, including the San Joaquin kit fox, southern steelhead, bald eagle (above), and the California condor. Of the state’s 19 national forests, the Los Padres is the secondlargest and is a major destination for those who enjoy outdoor recreation.

But this special forest faces significant threats, including oil and gas development and uncontrolled off-road vehicle use. So we have helped create the Southern Los Padres Wild Heritage Campaign to identify wildlands and rivers suitable for permanent protection and to build public support for legislation that would preserve them.

We hope to see a bill introduced this year. Our coalition includes many businesses in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, a number of which depend on the $24 million generated annually by visitor spending.

Dan Smuts 415-398-1111 dan_smuts@tws.org

Restoring the North Cascades’ Chewuch River basin is a major priority.

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© William Kramer/USFWS

ALASKA

IDAHO

In 2009, climaxing an eight-year effort by a diverse coalition of Idahoans, Congress permanently protected a half million acres of the Owyhee Canyonlands by adding them to the National Wilderness Preservation System. But due to private tracts sprinkled through the wilderness, public access is sometimes a challenge. We are working with The Wilderness Land Trust and Back Country Horsemen of Idaho to solve this problem, and The Trust recently purchased three properties and donated them to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the canyonlands. One parcel, adjacent to a campground, offers spectacular scenery in the heart of the Owyhees and contains more than a mile of the North Fork Owyhee River. The other two properties border Shoo Fly Creek in the Little Jacks Creek Wilderness. They feature wide-open vistas, stunning canyons, and abundant wildlife. Totaling 1,100 acres, the three tracts are the first in a series of planned acquisitions.

Craig Gehrke 208-343-8153 craig_gehrke@tws.org

NORTHERN ROCKIES

Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, affectionately known as “the Bob” and named for a Wilderness Society founder, is one of the nation’s outstanding wilderness areas. Under the

proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, it would grow by 67,000 acres. The proposal also would protect adjacent public lands from expanding motorized use through a 208,000-acre custom-tailored conservation management area and would help control noxious weeds, considered one of the greatest threats to this extraordinary ecosystem.

The front, where the Great Plains meet the Rockies, features some of the continent’s most spec© Gene Sentz tacular wildlife habitat and still has all the major species observed by Lewis and Clark as A proposed bill to protect the Rocky Mountain Front (above) would expand they traveled through two centuries Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. ago, including grizzlies, wolverines, and lynx. To maintain the front’s natural qualities and area residents’ way of life, The Wilderness Society and other UTAH members of the broad Coalition to Operators of Coal Hollow Mine, Protect the Rocky Mountain Front are the state’s only strip mine, want to urging Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) expand it onto 3,500 acres of adjato introduce the act drawn up by the cent public land ten miles southwest coalition. In August more than 450 of Bryce Canyon National Park. This Montanans attended public meetcould extend the life of the mining ings with the senator to convey their operation about 20 years. Such a step strong support for this initiative. Go would increase water and air pollution, to www.savethefront.org to learn raise noise levels, reduce the darkmore and to help. ness of night skies, undercut tourism Peter Aengst 406-586-1600 and recreation, and damage habitat peter_aengst@tws.org vital to sage grouse, bald eagles, and

We are part of an effort to improve public access to Owyhee Canyonlands wilderness in Idaho. © John McCarthy

www.wilderness.org

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ARIZONA

© Flickr/mharrsch

other wildlife—all on the doorstep of a prized national park.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees the land, is finalizing a draft EIS and then will conduct public meetings in Alton, Panguitch, Cedar City, Kanab, and Salt Lake City to hear citizens’ reactions. The Wilderness Society is working to defeat this proposal. We believe it would be wiser to promote development of the energy sources of the future. For example, three solar energy zones on BLM lands are under consideration in Utah, and they are near the Coal Hollow Mine, in Iron and Beaver counties. To express your views, visit www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.html.

Julie Mack 801-355-0070 julie_mack@tws.org

We are working with a broad coalition to protect significant public lands in western Maricopa County. Most of the acreage in the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal is within a short driving distance of Greater Phoenix, providing hikers, hunters, campers, and others with easy access to spectacular scenery and solitude. The area features striking variety: iconic Sonoran desert uplands along the Gila River, black basalt fields formed by ancient volcanic eruptions, jagged mountain ranges, and desert basins thick with creosote and brightgreen palo verde. The wildlife there includes bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, Gila monsters (photo at left), bobcats, and hundreds of bird species.

The land also has a colorful and diverse history, created by the prehistoric Hohokam and Patayan peoples, Spanish explorers, U.S. Army expeditions, hard-riding cowboys, ranchers, and miners. The rapid growth of the region gives urgency to this conservation initiative, and we intend to finalize the proposal by the end of the year with a hope of introduction and consideration

by Congress in 2012. The wide array of supporters includes the Fighter Country Partnership, dedicated to protecting the air space needed by Luke Air Force Base and other nearby military installations. To learn more, visit www. sonoranheritage.org.

Mike Quigley 520-334-8741 mike_quigley@tws.org

COLORADO

Environmentalists cheered when their campaign paid off in a Colorado law requiring the state’s larger utilities to obtain 30 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. As the second-strongest law of its kind in the nation, it made Colorado the face of the “new energy economy.” But the law was challenged in court by a businessman and two anti-environmental groups who said they “wanted to put wind energy on trial.” They claimed it would force up electricity costs and violate the Constitution by imposing burdens on the interstate market for electricity.

We have asked the U.S. District Court to dismiss the suit, arguing that the plaintiffs could not show they had been injured—a prerequisite to going to court. We believe that the nation must move quickly toward use of renewable energy to reduce reliance on climatechanging fossil fuels, improve our air and water, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil. Colorado has become a leader in clean energy, and the financial and environmental benefits are significant. For example, the state’s solar energy economy already features 230 companies and employs more than 2,500 people.

Suzanne Jones 303-650-5818 suzanne_jones@tws.org New Mexico’s Organ Mountains would be protected under a bill now being considered by the U.S. Senate.

In Utah, the Coal Hollow Mine (left) might expand onto public lands outside Bryce Canyon National Park, while Colorado’s progressive law promoting renewable energy is being challenged in court.

© Tim Wagner, Resilient Habitats Campaign, Sierra Club

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© istockphoto.com/kokophoto

© Flickr/Dolor Ipsum

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© Bill Hodge

© Erin Paul Donovan

Our coalition is opposing a logging project proposed for White Mountain National Forest (above). In Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest (right), we are part of an initiative to improve wilderness management.

NEW MEXICO

The Organ Mountains are named for the needle-like extrusions of granite that resemble organ pipes. Ranging up to 9,012 feet, their outline ripples the horizon just east of the fast-growing city of Las Cruces in Doña Ana County.

The Organ Mountains are home to 870 species of vascular plants, pronghorn, mule deer, quail, golden eagles, and many other species. Migrating duck and threatened grassland songbirds depend on the Organ Mountains during their long journeys.

We are building public support for S. 1024, which would permanently protect more than 241,000 acres of wilderness and create 159,000 acres of national conservation areas in the Organs and elsewhere in southern New Mexico. For example, the bill would protect the gorgeous volcanic cliffs and buttes of Broad Canyon and the grasslands banking up against the cinder-cone and mantled basalt upthrust of the Potrillos Mountains.

Included are seeps and springs of clean water feeding into the Rio Grande. Please urge your representatives in Congress to support this legislation, introduced by the state’s senators, Jeff Bingaman (D) and Tom Udall (D).

Michael Casaus 505-247-0834 michael_casaus@tws.org

www.wilderness.org

NORTHEAST

The Table Mountain Roadless Area inside New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest would be logged— and in some locations clear-cut—under the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed “Northeast Swift” timber project. The land is visible to the north from the famous Kancamagus Scenic Highway.

This is the eighth timber project proposed in the forest’s roadless areas since 2005, and we have submitted comments outlining our strong opposition. Standing trees in large blocks of mature forest store carbon that otherwise would exacerbate global warming, and they provide highquality wildlife habitat. In northern New England, the federal government is the landowner best able to create and sustain mature forest conditions, so that should be the management priority rather than creating additional early successional habitat. Timbering makes sense in some locations, but not in roadless areas, which feature mature forest. Moreover, this proposal does not make economic sense.

Pristine national forest land supports recreation and tourism, the region’s largest revenue generators Timbering produces much less revenue. To read our comments, go to: www.wilderness. org/NH-Roadless.

Ben Rose 802-222-7068 ben_rose@tws.org

SOUTHEAST

In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act in 2014, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service created the Chief’s Challenge, with a goal of having all wilderness areas in national forests achieve certain management standards by that date. To help the agency in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest, we assigned David Cohen, a ranger in our new Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS) program. He is surveying visitors on their use of five wilderness areas: Blood Mountain, Raven Cliffs, Tray Mountain, Mark Trail, and Cohutta, which adjoins Tennessee’s Big Frog Wilderness. He also provides visitors with information, including the Leave No Trace principles. Funding from the National Forest Foundation has made David’s work possible.

We also have been active in Arkansas’ Ouachita National Forest, where an April tornado had forced closure of the popular Ouachita National Recreation Trail. We assembled a crew to spend a week helping Friends of the Ouachita Trail reopen the route, which was blocked by 30 fallen trees.

Because we were inside a wilderness area, power tools were not permitted, so we used cross-cut saws and axes.

SAWS has been teaching this type of non-mechanized tool use to southeastern trail clubs’ volunteers, introducing a new generation to stewardship of wilderness trails.

Brent Martin 828- 587-9453 brent_martin@tws.org

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“My Favorite Place”

Most of us can name a place that is our idea of paradise. Its allure may stem from the memories, the scenery, the wildlife, the things we do, the sounds and smells, or some combination of ingredients. We asked a number of people to tell us about their favorite places, and here are five of the answers.

© Megan Quinn

My favorite place is the scenic Black Hills area of western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. The Black Hills are a Great Plains anomaly: They resemble an island of ponderosa pine rising out of a sea of short-grass prairie. This area is home to mountain lions, mule deer, elk, American bison, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and other wildlife often associated with the Rockies or environs farther west. Mountain lakes and streams offer great trout fishing. I learned to fly-fish on Spearfish Creek near Spearfish, S.D., in 1989 and have made the eight-hour trek from Omaha nearly every year since.

Glacier National Park and the rest of northwestern Montana’s pristine “Crown of the Continent” is number one for me.

Soaring eagles, snowcapped 10,000-foot peaks, and worldrenowned fly-fishing create a breathtaking outdoor paradise that has it all. Large elk, bighorn sheep, moose, and grizzly bear populations prove that this isn’t just human habitat. I also like the snowy, not-toobitterly-cold winters; warm, dry, sunny summers; and folks that make you feel right at home.

Sasha Goldstein Reporter New London, Connecticut

© Steve Goldstein

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My favorite wild place is Mesa Verde National Park in western Colorado, where I can see the comprehension of nature and history come alive on children’s faces. Life in the open air, in the sun, in nature, and the wilderness are so precious to the body, mind and spirit of children. Honor the sacred. Honor the Earth, our Mother...so we teach at Escuela Tlatelolco in the inner city of Denver.

Nita Gonzalez Educator/activist Denver

© Camille Brightsmith

Aaron Quinn Engineer Omaha, Nebraska

I’m not sure if it’s the arid desolation, raggedy peaks of perfection, or the gal I chased after to get there, but my favorite place in the world is the Sierra Nevada. Two seasons working on public lands out there is enough to convince anyone to be a conservationist. From chasing bears out of campgrounds to filming cowboys in the backcountry, or even just drinking fresh, cold spring water, my experiences there make me think about the Sierra every day and wonder when I’ll ever get back there.

The John Day Wild and Scenic River in central Oregon (Clarno to Cottonwood stretch) with bighorn sheep, smallmouth bass, Native American pictographs, and swallows and raptors in the basalt cliffs is extra special. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed by the beauty paddling down this beautiful, remote river that I tear up. Multi-day river trips with friends are my favorite mode of travel; since my canoe carries my gear, it’s much easier to escape into roadless areas than backpacking!

Jeff Chen Co-founder of Pick Up America Columbia, Maryland

Lana Lindstrom Retired finance manager Eugene, Oregon

© Paul Zink

© Gail Patrick

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Harbingers of Climate Change

By Mel White

A

creek runs just below my house in Little Rock, and from the trees along it I often hear the buzzy call of an Eastern Phoebe. Despite its drab gray plumage, this small flycatcher is popular even among casual birdwatchers, both for its propensity to nest near (and even on) our houses and for its helpful habit of constantly identifying itself with its call: a scratchy, insistent fee-bee.

In the past, I would have expected to hear the phoebe less and less frequently as fall progressed.

Most birds in the flycatcher family flee our winter for the tropics, where the invertebrates they eat aren’t stilled by cold weather.

Something has changed, though. Now, even in winter, I often hear that buzzy fee-bee in the woods. To confirm my anecdotal experience, I checked the past five decades of records of the Little Rock

The Blackthroated Blue Warbler is expected to lose a significant amount of its prime habitat.

ion strat

avid

by D

y

Sible

Christmas Bird Count (CBC), one of a series of midwinter censuses held across the continent. Sure enough, from typical Eastern Phoebe counts of zero or one in the 1960s and 1970s, the most recent decade has seen an average count of seven, including a high of 13.

Our lingering phoebes hardly rank as an aberration. A 2009 report from the National Audubon Society analyzed four decades of CBC data and determined that 58 percent of bird species had shifted their winter ranges northward; more than 60 species were found to be wintering more than 100 miles north of their historical ranges. While factors such as increased bird feeding may play a part, sunflower seeds alone can’t explain this phenomenon.

Something has changed, all right: We’re experiencing a long-term trend of higher temperatures, and birds are reflecting that fact in their practical responses.

Migration requires energy and brings multiple dangers.

If a bird can travel south in fall only 500 miles instead of 800 and still find the food, habitat, and survivable climate it needs, why should it go farther? If earlier-warming spring temperatures stir a Gray Catbird wintering on the Gulf Coast, why shouldn’t it fly north toward its Ontario home and get a head start on nesting?

With so much else to worry about regarding climate change, some might look at birds and ask: Is there a problem here? Carolina Wrens now nest in upstate New York, where they once weren’t found. People in Alabama will see fewer Purple Finches in winter, but people in Michigan will see more. Species get in the elevator, move up a floor, and live happily ever after. Right?

Illu

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© Larry Master/masterimages.org

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© Mary Curtis

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© Flickr/Kelly Colgan Azar

© Larry Master/masterimages.org

© Andreas Kanon

On the highest mountains in the Northeast, summer hikers might hear an oddly beautiful song that seems to combine harsh chattering with echoing flute-like trills. Those lucky enough to spot the singer will see a dull brownish bird a little smaller than an American Robin, skulking in dense growth of balsam fir. This high-elevation environment is home to the Bicknell’s Thrush, one of the rarest birds in the United States and quite possibly the avian species in this country most at risk from global climate change.

As the climate warms, vegetation zones move up mountain slopes, with hardwoods replacing conifers, the composition of coniferous forests changing, and the tree line rising. “The future doesn’t look good for Bicknell’s Thrush,” Wellesley College ecologist Dr. Nicholas L. Rodenhouse says. “It’s a bird of high-elevation forest in the United States, and that forest is expected to basically disappear with climate change.”

Rodenhouse headed a 2006 study that showed that even under best-case scenarios of global warming, habitat for Bicknell’s Thrush would be reduced at least 50 percent in the United States, and the species could disappear as a breeder in New York and Vermont. Though Bicknell’s Thrush nests at lower elevations in Canada, the climate elevator offers no more stops for this bird in the United States; it’s already on the top floor.

The Rodenhouse study also looked at the Blackthroated Blue Warbler, a small songbird that nests across much of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Less demanding in its habitat requirements than Bicknell’s Thrush, the warbler would seem to be safe for now from serious climate-change threats.

But this warbler thrives best in areas where a mix of hardwoods and understory shrubs provides high levels of invertebrate prey. The Rodenhouse study showed that a warmer climate would result in a loss of a significant amount of prime habitat, leading to lower populations over much of the warbler’s range. Black-throated Blue Warbler was chosen for the study because it is considered representative of the region’s birds, and after examining various predictions for climate change, the report ominously concluded: “[W]e are unaware of any scenarios in which the effects of such interacting disturbances on the biological communities of the Northeast will promote the stability and viability of bird populations.”

Conservation planning for migratory birds must consider more than just nesting ranges. “If you want to understand how climate change might influence birds in the future, you need to understand their exposure throughout the annual cycle, whether it’s in the tropics, during migration, or on the breeding grounds,” says Dr. Peter Marra, a scientist with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

The Search for Solutions Can anything be done to help birds—and other wildlife—survive climate change? The Wilderness Society has hired Dr. Peter McKinley, an ecologist and ornithologist, to help answer that question. “We should try to buy time,” he says, “by identifying, and then protecting, landscapes that will change more slowly and that have high biological diversity.

That would at least present the future with an opportunity to reassemble ecological systems.”

McKinley points to populations of Bicknell’s Thrush that use small, regenerating spruce and fir farther down the mountain in some parts of their range in addition to the alpine spruce and fir predicted to disappear under warmer conditions.

“Biological variability, especially genetic variation, is a wonderful thing,” he says, “and maintaining it as long as possible in as many places as possible is an important part of the research program we are building at The

Wilderness Society.” We have scientists tackling this work from Maine, where McKinley is based, to Alaska.

In addition, we are leaders in efforts to restore national forests and other lands damaged by industrial activities such as logging.

Once restored, these places can provide better wildlife habitat and store more climate-changing carbon. Public education is another high priority for our climate team because an aroused citizenry is

necessary to enact strong laws and change behavior. For example, we are producing reports on the best carbon-storing public forests in each state.

Of course, the work we have been doing every day since 1935 to protect land pays important dividends by limiting climate change and offering plants and wildlife a better chance to adapt. For more on The Wilderness Society’s effort, visit: http://wilderness.org/campaigns/global-warming.

Among the many species of birds that may suffer as the climate changes are, clockwise from top left, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Bicknell’s Thrush, Gray Jay, Common Loon, and young American Redstart.

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© Courtesy of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies

“Change the temperature and that changes everything. It doesn’t do it instantaneously. It’s going to do it in fits and starts: ice storms in the Northeast, fires in the Southeast, drought in many areas.”

Bicknell’s thrush migration routes

Both Bicknell’s Thrush and Black-throated Blue Warbler winter primarily in the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean, where climate change brings a different set of environmental concerns. “Change is happening in the tropics, and there it’s not just temperature; it’s also the influence of precipitation,” Marra says. “Major droughts are occurring in the Caribbean, and are predicted to continue over the next 30 to 50 years.” Marra’s studies on wintering American Redstarts in the Caribbean have shown that the amount of winter precipitation directly influences the birds’ physical condition when departing in the spring for North America. “The abundance of redstarts throughout their breeding range is influenced more by winter climate than it is by breeding climate,” Marra says.

Climate change threatens birds in ways that few could have predicted. The Gray Jay, a bird of the boreal forests of North America, depends for winter survival on food cached in fall. Warmer autumn temperatures cause this stored food to rot, diminishing breeding success the following spring. The Common Loon, an iconic waterbird of the North, has evolved to leave the freshwater lakes where it nests before a winter molt that leaves it flightless; warmer temperatures cause loons to delay their migration, so that when freezing weather does come they are trapped, unable to fly or find food.

Though it’s probably true that it will be decades before significant numbers of bird species become endangered or suffer wide-scale extirpation as a direct result

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of global climate change, it seems increasingly likely that serious impacts reducing biodiversity will show up long before that point. Populations of vulnerable species will decline, in some cases substantially. Species composition of birds and other organisms will change, as will complex ecological interactions, with unknown environmental consequences.

“We’re changing the basic way the climate works on the planet,” Rodenhouse says. “Change the temperature and that changes everything. It doesn’t do it instantaneously. It’s going to do it in fits and starts: ice storms in the Northeast, fires in the Southeast, drought in many areas. There’s going to be a period of tremendous variability as all these changes occur. What’s going to come out at the other end is going to be so dramatically different that we can’t even speculate.”

David Moulton is The Wilderness Society’s director of climate change policy and a life-long birder. “In the past,” he points out, “a lone canary could issue a clear warning of dangerous gases by dropping dead in a mine shaft. When will we heed the warning of entire species facing extinction due to greenhouse gases?”

The phoebes wintering near my home are sending us a clear message, as are the Carolina Wrens nesting in New York and the waterfowl that no longer fly so far south in the fall. Our climate is changing with a speed that could strain or snap vital strands in the web of planetary life—the relationships that sustain all of Earth’s organisms, including ourselves.

Mel White is a freelance writer in Little Rock, Arkansas, and specializes in travel and natural history. He has written for National Geographic, Audubon, Living Bird, and Outside, and his books include National Geographic Complete National Parks of the United States.

© Hope Coulter

1-800-THE-WILD

The Final Frontier

By Marilyn Berlin Snell

Š Kevin Smith/AlaskaStock.com

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Long before Alaska became a state in 1959, the territory’s vast resources—including gold, whales, fish, and sea otter pelts— had lured prospectors into vast and spectacular terrain.

Today’s booty is even farther north, in the federal waters of the Arctic Ocean’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), which begins three miles offshore. Beneath the icy, turbulent, and fog-bound Chukchi and Beaufort seas lie potentially rich oil and gas deposits.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) calls it America’s “last great frontier” and is a vocal advocate for development. Conservation groups and Native communities dependent on the ocean for sustenance have fought to keep drilling at bay. The region is vital to orca and beluga whales, ringed and bearded seals, and walrus. It’s a key migratory route for the endangered bowhead whale. All of the nation’s polar bears, already threatened by melting ice, live there, too.

Unless The Wilderness Society and its partners can secure a victory before all the decisions to allow drilling are finalized, Royal Dutch Shell will begin drilling exploratory wells in the Beaufort in 2012 and in the Chukchi in 2013.

“Even if you think it’s okay to drill for oil and gas when the planet’s climate already is changing at a frightening pace,” said Lois Epstein, The Wilderness Society’s Arctic program director, “these projects raise two fundamental questions. First, what would the drilling do to the marine mammals, sea and bird life, and Native communities that depend on this fragile ecosystem?

Second, when there is a major spill, what will the damage be? We just don’t have the answers.” Epstein also pointed to a need to update scientific surveys done a quarter century ago because “we need, at a minimum, a baseline understanding of the biology and ecology of the Arctic Ocean.”

The health of marine mammals and other sea life is of paramount importance in the Inupiat village of Point Hope.

“We are on a spit and have the Chukchi on the north, west, and south sides of us,” said Mae Hank. “During the summer we fish. Wintertime, the men hunt seals off the point on the west side. Spring they hunt whales and walrus.” The grandmother of eight added, “Energy companies have no legitimate way to clean up a spill.”

Since the 1968 discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, energy companies, including BP, have worked in state waters near shore in the Beaufort Sea. Dr. Dana Wetzel has been studying the area for 11 years through grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of Alaska, and the North Slope Borough, made up of eight Native villages. Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist from Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory, has focused on oil accumulation in marine mammals and fish near Prudhoe Bay. Thus far, she has found “very little,” she said.

But, Wetzel added, “I think anybody would say that there is a danger to a lot of different sea life” from oil exploration and production. “The question is: What strategies are in place to deal with a spill or, even before that, what regulations are in place to ensure that a spill doesn’t happen?” In the event of an accident, Wetzel said, “I’m not sure how you’d clean oil off ice, for starters. There are just a lot of unknowns. It becomes very scary to even contemplate that sort of scenario.”

Noise is another concern. Marine mammals and fish rely on sounds to find food and mates, to avoid predators, and to communicate. Dr. John A. Hildebrand studies marine bioacoustics at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Since 2006 he has been conducting studies for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in the Chukchi Sea.

“We have extremely limited Arctic response capabilities,” Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr., testified... “We do not have any infrastructure on the North Slope to hangar our aircraft, moor our boats or sustain our crews. I have only one operational icebreaker.”

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Detail

Arctic Ocean Barrow Chukchi Sea

Wainwright

Prudhoe Bay

National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska

N O R T H Point Hope

© Patrick J. Endres/AlaskaPhotoGraphics.com

“It gets much noisier when seismic exploration is taking place,” said Hildebrand. Humans need ear protection for sound above 80 decibels (dB), and Hildebrand’s group detected sounds of 250 dB when the air guns used for seismic exploration were fired. “You can’t go out and put ear protection on whales.”

Hildebrand’s group has confirmed, however, that the Chukchi’s seabed in the area targeted for exploration is both shallow and flat. “Because of that flat continental shelf, when you make sounds like the air guns it propagates a long way. That means that you could be 100 miles away and you’d still hear it.”

Just how difficult would it be to drill in these waters? Drill rigs and wells would be subject to the Arctic Ocean’s ice, high winds, and strong currents. During the approximately 100 summer days of open water, when exploratory drilling would occur, ice floes and icebergs pose a danger. Moving ice four miles wide has been seen in the Beaufort. In the Chukchi, Hank has seen two-story ice ridges—formed when currents smash ice floes into each other. How an offshore platform and its pipelines would fare in an encounter with what scientists call “an extreme ice feature” is still not fully known.

And if a spill occurred? The Beaufort lies north of the North Slope’s Prudhoe Bay, which has basic infrastructure and could serve as a rudimentary staging area. However, much of the Beaufort coastline does not. The Chukchi,

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ALASKA

Beaufort Sea

S L O P E

Colville River

Pacific Ocean

Trans Alaska Pipeline

Kaktovik

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

ALASKA

© Joel Garlich-Miller/USFWS

The entire U.S. population of polar bears, already facing grave challenges as the ice pack shrinks, is found along Alaska’s northern coast and would be in greater jeopardy if drilling occurs in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Among other species that could be harmed is the walrus.

off Alaska’s northwest coast, is remote, essentially undeveloped, and lacks basic infrastructure. (If oil is extracted from the Chukchi, it probably would run through a proposed 280-mile pipeline crossing the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which contains biologically sensitive wilderness, and hook up to the Trans Alaska Pipeline.)

The U.S. Coast Guard would be responsible for cleanup in the Arctic Ocean, and its base nearest to the drilling sites is in Kodiak, more than 1,000 miles away.

“We have extremely limited Arctic response capabilities,” Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in August. “We do not have any infrastructure on the North Slope to hangar our aircraft, moor our boats or sustain our crews. I have only one operational icebreaker.”

Brenda Pierce, program coordinator of the Energy Resources Program at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), co-authored a report on oil spill preparedness if drilling were allowed in the Arctic Ocean. The survey of 400 scientific publications and science policy documents on the

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© Lincoln Else

On shore, the Arctic Refuge remains at risk

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The Beaufort Sea lies perilously close to the biological heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—the coastal plain that is the calving ground of the 170,000-member caribou herd that migrates there each spring. This area also is vital to grizzlies, polar bears, wolves, muskoxen (an animal that dates back to the Ice Age), and millions of migratory songbirds and waterfowl that nest there.

The oil industry has been lobbying for decades for the chance to drill the coastal plain, and the industry’s political allies have pushed hard in Congress for such authorization.

Working with many partners, The Wilderness Society has been able to turn aside every bill.

We are supporting S. 33 and H.R. 139, which would add the coastal plain to the National Wilderness Preservation System—and thus bar drilling in this unique place. In August the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s new draft management plan for the refuge opened the door to considering a wilderness recommendation for the coastal plain. This is a positive step, but the decision to actually designate the land as wilderness rests with Congress.

Arctic found a lot of “really good studies” but also some “still-glaring holes,” she said in an interview.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith criticized the USGS report. “We think it falls far short of acknowledging the data and expertise that exists today,” he said, adding that Shell is ready to move forward safely in the Arctic. “In the unlikely event of an oil spill, what we saw in the Gulf (of Mexico) is not something we’d ever want to pursue: a number of small vessels chasing ribbons of oil. That’s why our oil spill response plan is predicated on being on site immediately.”

Smith acknowledged that the Arctic is a “very harsh, remote” environment and that if Shell had a spill it couldn’t just call the Coast Guard. “You have to bring everything with you. That’s been our plan all along.” A fleet of 16 to 20 large oil-spill responders would circle the drill ship 24/7, Smith said.

He pointed out that BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling at 5,000 feet under high pressure in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell would be drilling in 120 to 150 feet of water on the Arctic’s shallow OCS. “The wells we want to drill in Alaska are considered very straightforward,” Smith said.

But Epstein, an engineer who has been appointed to a federal advisory committee on offshore drilling, pointed to a 2009 shallow-water blowout in Australia that gushed for ten weeks. Attempts to cap the well, at a depth of 240

feet, failed, and millions of gallons of oil spewed into the ocean. Another red flag was the August 2011 offshore pipeline spill near Scotland in the North Sea. That was a Shell operation, and the company’s response was widely viewed as sub-par.

Ultimately, Epstein contended, the decisions on whether to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi may say something about society’s values. Are we more focused on the long term, or the short term? Is the oil worth the risk of potentially undermining the traditional ways of Native communities like Point Hope? Are we prepared to take on the challenges posed by climate change? The Wilderness Society, Hank, and others are determined to defend northern Alaska, but they face equally determined opponents.

Marilyn Berlin Snell is a San Franciscobased journalist. Her work has appeared in Discover, The New Republic, and The New York Times. In 2004, she teamed with ABC’s “Primetime” to produce a TV version of her investigation of a U.S.-based company’s payments to terrorists in the Philippines. The program was nominated for an Emmy.

© A.S. Hamrah

1-800-THE-WILD

© Steven Kazlowski/AlaskaStock.com

Native communities along Alaska’s northern coast depend on whales and other sea life.

“Not worth the risk” Point Hope, population 674, lies on a gravel spit that juts several miles into the Chukchi Sea. One of the oldest continuously occupied Inupiat Eskimo areas in Alaska, its residents (Tikeraqmuit Inupiat Eskimos) depend on fishing and whaling for survival.

Mayor George Kingik says that anything that threatens his constituents’ way of life is not worth the risk. “The whole community depends on our ocean, so that’s what we need to protect. I’m just going to tell you: We go against the drilling issue here.”

The Inupiat have learned over thousands of years how to hunt in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, but Kingik does not believe drilling companies under-

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stand the challenges. “The Arctic is different than the Lower 48,” he said. “We have strong currents, it’s always pretty rough up here.”

The village of Point Hope is part of the North Slope Borough, which covers the entire North Slope region of Alaska and has its own governing body.

Though Point Hope remains unwaveringly opposed to drilling, Curtis Smith noted that Shell has successfully built “partnerships” with others, including the North Slope Borough. Some Natives have concluded that potential economic gains outweigh the risks to the natural world.

—Marilyn Berlin Snell

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Why I Sold My Land to the American People

Š Cheryl Currier

Steve Currier wanted his family’s campground on Cape Cod to be there for future campers.

by kathy shorr In 1953, when Steve Currier was seven, his father bought 57 acres of land in Truro, Massachusetts, near the tip of Cape Cod. Land was plentiful and cheap then. The scrubby pitch pines were the size of small bushes, and the dirt road was so rutted you needed a dune buggy to make it out to the beach.

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Currier’s uncle spent the winter creating paths says CCNS Superintendent George Price. In and tent sites, and in 1954 the family opened fact, Park Service land managers had identified the North of Highland Camping Area. “We’d it as the highest priority for the Northeast.

Unfortunately, park superintendents do not get 40 people packed in there on a hot day in July,” remembers Currier. “We had a little cab- have money in their budgets to take advantage of such opportunities. Instead, the Park Service, in, and the office was in a separate building.”

Today, the pine trees have outgrown the U.S. Forest Service, and other federal agencies telephone poles; the rutted buggy track is that manage the public’s property rely on the smooth asphalt; and an air-conditioned build- Land and Water Conservation Fund. Created ing holds both Currier’s house and office. But by Congress in 1965, LWCF receives $900 milthe campground is remarkably unchanged. lion a year from the royalties that oil companies Families still arrive each year to pitch tents, pay for the chance to drill in offshore waters. cook their meals on small charcoal grills, and When Congress makes its annual appropriawalk a narrow dirt path four-tenths of a mile to tions, it decides which proposed land acquisithe wide, sandy beach and rolling surf of the tions will be funded.

To make the case for the campground, Atlantic Ocean.

The campground sits inside the Cape Cod Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA), who National Seashore, authorized by Congress represented the Cape at that time, teamed up eight years after the Curriers bought the land with the late Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA). and now one of the National Park System’s “Part of what the National Seashore was about most-visited parks. About four million people was creating public access for recreation,” says come to this narrow peninsula each year, but Delahunt, who now has a public policy consultcampgrounds are increasingly hard to find. ing firm. “You’re on some of the most expenRising land values and real estate taxes have led many owners to sell for development; even in a real estate recession, a typical house lot in Truro runs $350,000.

Steve Currier is not your typical landowner. Now 65, he still operates the campground his father started. “Seventy-five to 80% of our campers are repeat customers,” says Currier. “One woman I played with when I was nine—she’s only missed two years in 56 years.”

It was people like her that made Currier determined to keep the campground going— even though impending retirement and lack of interest from © Cheryl Currier © Jerry and Marcy Monkman family members in taking over the business were pressuring him to sell. The line of potential buyers for such a choice location was long. “We’ve sive real estate, right by the ocean. But this is been really good neighbors with the national about continuing a tradition that goes back to park for some time, and they were the first ones the 1600s, a connection to people living on the I called,” says Currier, who placed that call in land. Generations of people slept under the 2004. “I really did not want to see everything stars here 400 years ago. To cut some wood, make a fire, walk the beaches, you experience we’d done for 50 years end up in house lots.”

The Park Service was eager to deal. “The the full measure of human history. To lose that long-term protection of this large parcel for a would be tragic.”

Obtaining the appropriations usually takes combination of camping and conservation pur- poses made this our highest priority acquisition,” time—a lot of time, in many cases. To ensure

www.wilderness.org

Sen. Ted Kennedy (seated) and U.S. Rep. Delahunt (to Kennedy’s left) championed the funding needed to save the campground from potential development. It has been a fixture on the Cape for more than half a century.

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LWCF Funds and Offshore Energy Revenue FY00−FY10 20,000 LWCF Funds

18,000

18,045

Offshore Energy Revenue

16,000

12,000

7,607

5,819

5,254 366

180

155

138

5,348

6,325 259

5,934 413

144

0

563

2,000

459

4,000

4,546

6,000

272

7,498

8,000

7,019

10,000

573 4,136

In millions ($)

14,000

FY00 FY01 FY02 FY03 FY04 FY05 FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10

In 2010, the Department of the Interior collected approximately $5.2 billion from offshore energy production, but only $306 million, or about seven percent of that revenue, was set aside to protect America’s land and water.

that the campground wouldn’t be sold for development in the meantime, The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a nonprofit, provided some funds, legal guidance, and other assistance. “The park’s original intent was to purchase the land outright, but ultimately Steve Currier opted to sell a conservation easement, allowing him to continue to operate the campground and to keep the property in the family,” says Darci Schofield, who managed the project for TPL. The terms allow Currier to sell the land someday and the new owner to make upgrades for campers, but the land cannot be developed.

It took six years from the day that Kennedy and Delahunt went to work until Currier sat down to sign the papers, in March 2010. The long grind was due to the usual protracted process on Capitol Hill and to resolution of management issues, including the change to the easement. “Steve Currier needed to be really patient to make this work,” says Schofield. “His

Close to home While the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) focuses on additions to national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other lands owned by all Americans, a portion of it is made available as 50-50 matching grants to enable communities, counties, and states to acquire natural areas and build recreational facilities. More than 41,000 projects—including playgrounds, swimming pools, ball fields, parks, and trails—have resulted. This is the federal government’s primary investment tool for ensuring that kids and their families have close-to-home recreation opportunities.

It is almost impossible to find a county that has not benefited. Projects include: Satellite Beach, Florida: LWCF funds helped acquire Hightower Beach Park, which features a halfmile of ocean beach, an ecologically important dune system, a nature trail, and habitat for nesting green and loggerhead turtles.

LaGrange County, Indiana: Boy Scouts are among those who enjoy the trails that run through woodlands and wetlands at Pine Knob Park, which also has a 3-D archery course.

Battle Ground, Washington: With LWCF help, Clark County was able to acquire 64 acres of uplands and riparian wetlands at the confluence of Salmon and Morgan creeks for the Salmon Creek Greenspace.

North Bass Island, Ottawa County, Ohio: On the last large, undeveloped island in Lake Erie LWCF is making it possible for the public to enjoy camping, picnicking, swimming, boating, hiking, hunting, and fishing across 357 acres.

Each year Congress decides how much of LWCF’s revenue to appropriate for these matching grants, and that total is then allocated to the states on the basis of population. Unfortunately, the appropriations declined from $92.5 million in 2005 to $40 million in 2011. “This is incredibly shortsighted,” says The Wilderness Society’s Alan Rowsome. “With obesity and diabetes at record levels, for adults and children, we should be doing more, not less, to enable our citizens to get outside and exercise.”

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commitment to conservation was outstanding.”

“There’s a constant scramble to find the money—and find it fast enough—to protect places like Cape Cod National Seashore,” says Alan Rowsome, director of conservation funding for The Wilderness Society. Congress has rarely allowed the full amount of the royalties flowing into the LWCF account to be invested as intended, instead diverting the money to other programs. In today’s economy, the situation is even worse. LWCF appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011 were just $301 million, a 37 percent drop from the previous year. The level for FY12 was not known at press time but could well be lower still.

“We’re betraying a legacy of the Teddy Roosevelts of this country, and their recognition of what the wilderness and the connection to the Earth mean in human terms,” says Delahunt. “It’s going to require a different type of Tea Party to understand the meaning of our

Steve Currier, shown with his mother Evelyn, remained patient so that an agreement could be worked out with the National Park Service.

heritage. People like Steve Currier, working with public entities—they are extraordinary people, and what they are doing is so American.”

Rowsome and The Wilderness Society are leaders in the LWCF Coalition, which is fighting to pass a bill (S. 1265) that would permanently fund LWCF at its authorized level. He says that despite the budget battles, LWCF Continued on page 62

Waiting, waiting, still waiting…

Many places around the country have benefitted from purchases made possible by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Below are four high-priority and threatened properties that have been waiting for LWCF funding, in some cases for several years.

Simpsonwood property, Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, Georgia: About three million people a year enjoy this national recreation area near Atlanta, which provides an important green corridor for recreation and protection of the river in a fast-growing metro area.

The 226-acre conference center and retreat has 2,100 feet of riverfront and, if bought by a developer, could be developed into 250 home sites. A National Park Service purchase would protect local drinking water quality while opening the site to the public for walking, biking, horseback riding, and other uses.

www.wilderness.org

Ramirez Canyon, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, California: Ramirez Canyon is a 6.16-acre inholding in the Santa Monica Mountains NRA, just northwest of Los Angeles. A trail connecting it to other areas takes you through shady oak and sycamore woods, home to quail, mule deer, and gray foxes. Despite its lushness, the area features a delicate ecosystem that the state has recommended for protection. It’s also prime L.A. real estate, and a developer has drawn up a proposal for subdivision.

© Flickr/Capt Kodak

Georgia’s Chattahoochee River offers first-rate recreation.

Crooked River Canyon, Crooked Wild and Scenic River Watershed, Oregon: White-water enthusiasts travel long distances for the chance to experience the rapids and incredible scenery of the Crooked River, which rushes through central Oregon’s high desert.

Development around the 101 acres for sale has limited public access to this stretch of river, and acquisition of this property would greatly enhance recreation opportunities.

Wolf Island, Stony Point, Kremer Lake, and Fall Lake, Superior and Chippewa national forests, Minnesota: The 139 acres in these three properties are part of a 12,000-mile system of canoe trails that follow the paths that Native Americans and French Canadian fur traders took centuries ago. The purchase would protect access to some of the Northwoods’ beautiful and secluded lakes throughout the year.

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Skiing In Wilderness Wonderlands

By David Goodman

“On skis, you slide silently into a world that is otherwise inaccessible, a fortunate traveler in a magical frozen landscape.

You forget where you are, and who you are.”

I

learned to ski on family trips to a now-defunct resort in the Catskills of New York. I was motivated by the fun of riding the rope tow between my dad’s legs, and going downhill faster than my parents approved. Getting back to nature was not so important.

By the time I was in college, I had grown disenchanted with the downhill ski scene, which I felt had become industrial, expensive, and boring. That’s when I discovered backcountry skiing. On skis, you slide silently into a world that is otherwise inaccessible, a fortunate traveler in a magical frozen landscape. You forget where you are, and who you are.

There is wilderness—and then there is wilderness in winter. The mundane becomes spectacular, and the

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familiar looks new. I was reminded of this recently when I skied through the Pemigewasset Wilderness in New Hampshire. Not 15 minutes beyond the wilderness boundary, I was suddenly navigating by my wits. Trail blazes vanished, and even the trail seemed to melt away beneath the snowy mantle. I stayed oriented by gliding along a frozen river, a beautiful, meandering passage through the wilds.

At the end of a long day, I emerged from the wilderness, tired, thrilled, and invigorated by the feeling of skiing utterly alone through “land retaining its primeval character and influence…affected primarily by the forces of nature,” as the Wilderness Act of 1964 declares.

Skiers have unique advantages in wilderness. Snow tells

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© Howie Garber

Mill B-South Fork, Twin Peaks Wilderness in Utah’s UintaWasatch-Cache National Forest

a story: Following fresh tracks in winter has led me to encounter moose, deer, and fox. The leafless forest opens up vistas in winter that may be obscured in summer, while skiing on frozen lakes and rivers can offer easy passage through challenging terrain.

Wilderness skiing poses special challenges and is generally for more advanced intermediate skiers. All of the tours described here require proficiency navigating with minimal or no trail makings, and skiing in ungroomed snow. There are also special hazards: Skiers, especially those in the western U.S., must be trained in avalanche awareness and assessment and carry avalanche rescue equipment if they are venturing into

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slide-prone terrain (which includes a number of the tours noted here).

Following are some of the nation’s best wilderness areas for backcountry skiing.

Each wilderness has unique character, ranging from its views and terrain to the quality of snow. But all share the common bond of being places, as the Act poetically states, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

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Pemigewasset Wilderness, New Hampshire – At 45,818 acres, this is the largest federal wilderness area in the Northeast. It is one of the few places in New England where multiday ski trips can be undertaken without crossing roads.

Highlights include gaining access to high-mountain ponds that are rarely visited in winter, spectacular views of the massive White Mountains, and a sense of isolation that is unusual in this heavily traveled region. One of my favorite day trips follows the Wilderness Trail as it runs alongside the gurgling Pemigewasset River.

For experienced backcountry travelers, the 20-mile Pemi Traverse is an enduring – and beautiful – skiing journey.

Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington – Just a 45-minute drive from Seattle, this 392,000-acre wilderness beckons to skiers with its soaring crags, copious snowfall, and, of course, alpine lakes.

The ski tour into Colchuck Lake, outside Leavenworth, is a classic. (It’s a three-hour drive to the trailhead from Seattle.) This beautiful lake, dwarfed by the towering rock flanks of Dragontail Peak, is also the gateway to the aptly named Enchantment Peaks.

For more of a mountaineering experience, ski up the Colchuck Glacier to Colchuck Peak and enjoy 2,500 vertical feet of beautiful skiing. Lacing turns down through the rock spires “is reminiscent of skiing in Europe,” says local author Andy Dappen.

Twin Peaks Wilderness, Utah – Shoehorned into the heart of Utah’s bustling ski country just above Salt Lake City is this serene 11,396-acre wilderness. It boasts the epic powder and stunning views that draw throngs to ski the Wasatch, sans the buzz of lifts, helicopters, and people.

One of my favorite tours is just across the street from the Alta Ski Area, from where I’ve skied up over Cardiff Pass and Cardiac Ridge, dropping into Mill B South Fork, a broad river drainage flanked by stunning views of Dromedary and Sundial Peaks and Mt. Superior. I love the sensation of skiing away from the crowds and vanishing into the solitude of the wilderness.

John Muir Wilderness, California – The serrated skyline of the Sierra Crest is the backdrop for skiers in this 651,992-acre wilderness.

Named for the wilderness advocate and founder of the Sierra Club, this dramatic landscape ranges from 4,000foot alpine meadows to peaks over 13,000 feet. The easiest entry is from Highway 395 near Tom’s Place, where you can ski on a road groomed

by Rock Creek Lodge (rockcreeklodge.com) to Mosquito Flat. From there, it is about a mile to Mack Lake, which is inside the wilderness.

“You are treated to an amazing view of Little Lakes Valley with Bear Creek Spire crowning the Sierra Crest here,” raves Marcus Libkind, a long-time Sierra skier.

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota – When the last paddlers drift away from northern Minnesota’s endless expanse of lakes known as the Boundary Waters, intrepid skiers glide in to take their place. Skiers can travel across the frozen lakes in this 810,000-acre wilderness, enjoying uninterrupted views to the horizon. Another option is the 28.8-kilometer Banadad Trail (banadad. org), three-fourths of which is within the wilderness area.

The trail is groomed—which is unusual in wilderness—and it makes for fast and pleasant travel, especially when snow conditions are challenging.

Several yurts and lodges lie on short spurs off the Banadad, so skiers can set out for several days carrying only day packs. The Banadad is part of Minnesota’s 200-kilometer Gunflint cross-country ski trail network, which offers many days and styles of skiing.

© Barbara Young, courtesy of the Banadad Trail Association

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© Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

Great wilderness areas for backcountry skiing

A solitary skier takes in the silence of New Hampshire’s Pemigewasset Wilderness, while two skiers sample the Banadad Trail in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

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© © Bradly J. Boner

© Sue Minter

Jedediah Smith Wilderness, Wyoming – This 123,451-acre wilderness is home to some of the best and most accessible backcountry skiing in North America. Teton Pass (where you can park) is a mecca for backcountry skiers and riders, and “The Jed” is home to much of the coveted ski terrain. With its legendary champagne powder (totaling 500 inches per year), spectacular views of the Tetons, broad open slopes, and easy access, The Jed is unrivaled. A classic tour is the descent from the summit of Mount Glory into Cold Creek, which lies in the wilderness.

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Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon – The snowcapped Three Sisters (all exceeding 10,000 feet) crown the eastern side of this 286,708-acre wilderness and are among the most prominent volcanoes in the Cascades. The tour on South Sister, which boasts nearly 5,000 vertical feet of skiing, is a local favorite. It is easiest to reach in late spring and offers skiing into the summer.

Sawtooth Wilderness, Idaho – Hundreds of jagged peaks—42 over 10,000 feet—form the skyline of this aptly named

© Flickr/Olastuen

Skiers and others who enjoy winter recreation love the Jedediah Smith Wilderness on the south slope of the Tetons in Wyoming near Yellowstone National Park. Wildlife found in this wilderness area includes moose and wolverines.

wilderness. Its 217,088 acres feature numerous alpine lakes and remarkable vistas.

A yurt just outside the wilderness (sawtoothguides. com) provides a base for multiday ski tours around Williams Peak.

David Goodman of Waterbury Center, Vermont, is a contributing writer for Mother Jones and the author of eight books, including three national bestsellers covering topics ranging from politics to skiing. His most recent is Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast: 50 Classic Ski Tours in New England and New York.

Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, Colorado – Skiing in this 181,535-acre wilderness just outside Aspen “transports one back to a time when people were just visitors,” says Reid Haughey, president of The Wilderness Land Trust.

Numerous ski huts managed by the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association (huts.org) lie just outside the wilderness, and provide the chance to spend many days in the surrounding peaks by skiing from hut to hut.

The Lindley Hut is perched at 10,480 feet and lies closest to the wilderness.

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The Bob and I, Under the Big Sky

By Ivan Doig

He was a child of privilege who played Lewis and Clark with his brother in Central Park. A neophyte forester who showed up in the West barely knowing how to use an axe. A U.S. Forest Service bureaucrat who fathered wilderness areas as we know them, and for good measure, pitched in as a key creator of The Wilderness Society. A one-of-a-kind explorer of his surroundings who could count like the devil and write like an angel. A marathon high-country hiker whose heart played out when he was 38. He was, lucky for us, Bob Marshall.

Bob Marshall (above) was one of The Wilderness Society’s founders, and the Montana wilderness area named for him is one of the most celebrated.

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This unequaled go-getter on the side of nature’s wild places also became a ghostly guide to a young writer struggling to find reconciliation with his home ground, in my case the scenic but harsh ranch country along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. Throughout my teenage years, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area was practically a neighbor, although an upscale one, to the buffalo-grass benchlands where my family worked on sheep ranches. Just over the craggy horizon lay “The Bob,” the million-acre heart of the northern Rockies. But out of reach to the likes of us, fading remnants of the lariat proletariat; hired hands do not go on hikes nor pricey pack trips.

Writing gave me my escape from that life and territory, and I only accidentally came across Bob Marshall the man when the Forest Service commissioned me to write the history

of its Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. One of early forestry’s old woodsmen recalled him as the big-eared college kid, a summer hire new to Washington’s Cascade mountains and forests, who went at the task of thinning vine maple saplings by belting them as if trying to hit a home run, when all it took was a steady hand on each slender trunk and a quick clip with the axe. We can bet the eastern greenhorn learned in a hurry.

Sightings of this sort continued as I went my way as a roving young magazine writer committed to the West and its story. In an obscure archival photo album in Missoula, I came across Marshall grinning in jodhpurs during his late 1920’s research station stint in Big Sky country. At the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, I delved into his field notebooks full of boggling counting mania: cusswords heard at a lumber

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© Jeff L. Fox

camp, miles hiked per day, number of pancakes consumed by visiting Forest Service bigwigs, on and on. His was the kind of inspired quirkiness dear to a writer’s heart, so perhaps it was a natural evolution for this curious historic figure who died the year I was born, 1939, to become something of an off-stage fellow compulsive in my own environmentally tilted journalistic life.

...his irrefutable answer whenever asked how many wilderness areas this nation really needs: “How many Brahms symphonies do we need?”

Then came the summer of 1977, when I returned to Montana with a book in mind. I had long stayed away, daunted by the loss of loved ones to that hard life under the shadow of the Rockies, but determined now to tell our family story. First, though, by whatever impulse that had been waiting 20 years, I pointed myself and my unflinching wife Carol into the Bob, the waiting wilderness area.

Those memorable days on the trail, we knew even then, were unrepeatable; we were graced to have one such experience in a lifetime. Knifeedge ridge hiking took our breath in more ways than one, with views of the snowy ranks of the interior Rockies while a gorge with Yosemite-like domes waited below. The Montana sky as big as advertised. Fishing­—and better yet, catching!— at a creek-side campsite. For 40 miles, about a

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day’s walk for Bob Marshall, we cloud-walked back and forth across the Continental Divide. In five days we encountered not another living soul, except nature’s own.

Out of this and much else that adventurous summer came This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, a finalist for the National Book Award and still high among the most popular of my books. But as it turned out, I was not through with Bob Marshall and his namesake country, nor he and it with me. Subsequently my fictional Two Medicine trilogy focused on a Forest Service family in that inspirational neck of the woods, and perhaps inevitably, in a later novel, Mountain Time, as my modern characters hike into the Bob, who do you think shows up in the pages as a lasting presence, tireless as a shadow, on the trail?

I shall always believe that not the least of Bob Marshall’s legacy was his irrefutable answer whenever asked how many wilderness areas this nation really needs: “How many Brahms symphonies do we need?” And now, in a climatestressed world, how many Bob Marshalls, in imagination and actuality, do we need? As many as fate and luck can ever give us.

Ivan Doig is the author of 13 books, including his Two Medicine trilogy of English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana.

The Bob Marshall Wilderness runs along 60 miles of the Continental Divide with elevations ranging from 4,000 to 9,000 feet. There are more than 1,000 miles of trails.

© Carol M. Doig

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Q&A Does Nature Affect Your Behavior?

Does it matter if we are exposed to the natural world? Do trees, flowers, and the sight of wildlife affect our behavior? More and more scientists are trying to answer such questions. One of the hubs of this research is in Urbana-Champaign, at the University of Illinois, home to the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory.

To learn more about the latest findings, Wilderness magazine spoke with Dr. Frances E. (Ming) Kuo, an associate professor who helped start the lab in 1993 and now serves as director.

As a child, she began to wonder how the built world affected behavior, and she pursued this interest during graduate work at the Universities of California (Berkeley) and Michigan.

Q: E. O. Wilson coined the term “biophilia” to capture the theory that because humans evolved in nature we have a natural affinity for it. Is that borne out by your research?

A: Yes, but our work goes beyond that. Our studies document that not only is there an affinity for the natural world, but being in its midst improves our physical and mental health. Because of the benefits, some researchers have taken to calling exposure to nature “Vitamin G,” referring to “green.”

Q: What are these benefits?

A: Consistent with earlier studies involving animals in captivity, scientists have documented less stress, more selfcontrol, more cooperation with others, greater mutual trust, quicker recovery from illness, and other benefits.

Q: Is there really hard evidence of this impact, or is this based primarily on people telling researchers that a walk through a neighborhood park made them feel better?

A: In this field’s early days there was quite a bit of reliance on self-reporting, but since then there have been many, many studies based on objective evidence. Blood pressure and heart rates were among the first things to be measured, and subsequently we tracked immune functioning, blood glucose levels in diabetics, and other physiological data. If you look at the body of evidence, you will find considerable scientific rigor.

Q: What are some practical applications of your findings?

© UI News Bureau: L. Brian Stauffer photo

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A: Developers of public housing projects have taken a big interest. Historically, high-rise projects had trees and grass, but with hundreds of kids using that green space, the grass tended to get trampled and turned into mud, and then developers often paved over those areas rather than pay to continually re-sod. Our work has reminded housing authorities of the importance of these spaces; if you make them livable spaces, then residents use them, and that has important impacts on strength of community.

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Getting people out in these spaces also introduces informal surveillance, which works to deter crime.

Q: Can these principles make a difference in prisons?

A: Yes, there’s some really cool work with prisons. It turns out that inmates with views of fields or forests have substantially fewer sick calls than those inmates looking at mostly barren prison yards. We’re also seeing a surge in gardening programs as a form of therapy for prisoners.

Q: Can you say which natural objects have the most impact?

A: As far as we can tell, it matches up pretty well with people’s intuitive sense of what constitutes nature. The little research we have comparing the effects of different natural features—trees, grass, etc.—suggests that trees have an outsized impact. We know less about flowers, but signs are that they are high on the list, too.

Q: What about wildlife?

A: We have less documentation of this, but it does seem that anything that makes the view more absorbing matters. I think it would be very interesting to look at the effects of bird-watching on older adults.

Q: Do indoor plants play a similar role?

A: We’re not finding that they do. In fact, we more consistently see benefits from a scenic wall calendar or a window view of nature than from an indoor plant.

Q: If an office worker isn’t getting much benefit from her plant, maybe she needs to get outside. True?

A: Yes, there’s a great deal of evidence to suggest that getting outside during the day and absorbing some of the natural world improves our mood and health. As of now, we don’t have a lot of specifics.

Q: There is considerable discussion these days about youngsters failing to get outside much, spending long hours in front of the computer screen and the TV. Do you have any findings about how that might affect them?

A: We have work involving children with ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) that shows that their symptoms are worse when they play indoors versus in greener, outdoor spaces. And there’s work on children in

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the general population linking their access to nature with better concentration and fewer ADHD-like symptoms. I also believe that unstructured time outdoors is important in developing children’s capacity to explore, learn risk management, and become independent.

Q: Are researchers discovering differences based on age, gender, or other demographic factors?

A: At first we were baffled because boys were not showing the same effects as girls. But eventually we realized that the differences might stem from how much time boys spend in and around their homes. Once we took that into account, the difference disappeared. So generally no, we’re not seeing much demographic variance; it looks like everyone benefits from access to nature.

Q: I know you do a lot of work with the United States Conference of Mayors and the City of Chicago. Are urban residents at a serious disadvantage because nature is marginalized in cities?

A: Actually, one of the really important findings in this field is that “nature” doesn’t necessarily mean “not urban.” The evidence on nature and human health is not an argument for sprawl—not at all. It’s an argument for creating a whole hierarchical system of green spaces in our cities. This certainly includes national and state parks and forest preserves, but it also includes green urban environments: tree-lined streets, window boxes, vest pocket parks, green roofs, planters, small squares. What research tells us is that we should weave nature into the urban fabric, and that this will almost certainly lead to a healthier, better-functioning citizenry.

Q: As your knowledge of this field has grown, have you changed your lifestyle at all?

A: Yes, I do pay more attention to how I live my life. I have a walk home that makes it possible to use my iPhone, but now I try not to do that so that I can focus more on the experience of the tree-lined streets. Like most faculty members, I am trying to juggle a lot of things, and at first I felt guilty about not using any available moment to catch up on work, but I’m making that transition. It’s not easy.

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wilderness at risk

Running through southwestern Oregon from the Cascades to the Pacific, the Wild and Scenic Rogue River offers outstanding rafting and wildlife viewing opportunities.

The Wilderness Society wants the Rogue protected from inappropriate logging in an area we believe should be added to the Wilderness System. Š Justin Bailie

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It is now open season on open spaces. The leading edge of this attack is the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act (H.R. 1581, S. 1087), which would open up more than 60 million acres of wild national forest and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands to activities such as oil drilling, dirt bike use, logging, and mining. On the following pages are eight of the landscapes in jeopardy.

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One hour northeast of Las Vegas sits Gold Butte, with its prehistoric dwellings, timeless solitude, wildlife such as desert bighorn sheep and golden eagles. And spectacular geological features (including the“Screaming Beast,” above). Gold Butte needs to be protected from damaging offroad vehicle traffic.

© Isabel Synnatschke

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Aravaipa Canyon in southeastern Arizona features multicolored cliffs, multiple side canyons, and the beautiful, free-flowing and perennial Aravaipa Creek—a rarity in the desert. The canyon is a popular recreation destination and one of the state’s most ecologically intact areas, serving as valuable riparian habitat for peregrine falcons and a wide variety of songbirds. The primary threat to the unprotected canyonlands is poorly regulated off-road vehicle use, particularly in the uplands surrounding the canyon and the creek at canyon ends.

© Howard Paley

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Tucked away in western North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest is the Snowbird Mountain Wilderness Study Area. We believe Congress should add this special place to the National Wilderness Preservation System to protect it from logging.

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Š George Evans

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Š Darren Huski

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There is a fast-moving mining initiative underway at south-central New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, home to more than a thousand native species (including a prize pronghorn herd), thousands of ancient archeological sites, and more than half a million acres of wilderness-quality lands. Mining would also jeopardize the Salt Basin aquifer, the state’s largest, untapped freshwater resource.

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In the eastern Sierra’s Inyo National Forest lies Symmes Creek, featuring great views of 14,375-foot Mount Williamson, California’s second-highest peak.

This area deserves to be added to the National Wilderness Preservation System so that it will never be compromised by motorized vehicles.

© Ed Callaert

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Eastern Utah’s famed Desolation Canyon, one of the wildest stretches along the Green River, was named by explorer John Wesley Powell. It is a rafter’s playground, archeological treasure trove, and Old West icon that merits designation as a wilderness area so that it will be safe from gas drilling and off-road vehicle traffic. © Tom Till

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Caribou are among the species that would suffer if oil and gas drilling were allowed in the wildlife-rich portions of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. This special place also is vital to greater white-fronted geese, tundra swans, Pacific black brant, and many other migratory birds.

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Š Patrick J. Endres/AlaskaPhotoGraphics.com

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© Sean Babbington

Building an Army of Young Conservation Leaders

An alumnus of our training program, the Sierra Club’s Ben Greuel is helping protect the Olympic Peninsula.

By Hannah Nordhaus “I love the work I do,” says Tom Uniack, who directs conservation campaigns for the Washington Wilderness Coalition in Seattle. “It’s a powerful thing to know that you protected something for your grandkids’ grandkids.”

Uniack is a “graduate” of the mentoring and training programs that The Wilderness Society created in 1999.

“There were millions and millions of acres of wilderness crying out for protection, but way too few trained organizers to build the public support needed to protect that land,” explains Michael Carroll, associate director of the Wilderness Society’s Wilderness Support Center (WSC). “So we found some enthusiastic donors and started training a new generation of leaders to work in communities across the country.”

Those efforts have paid off. Today, thanks in large part to these programs, nearly every western state has a homegrown organization focused on wilderness, as do a number of East Coast and midwestern states. In the past decade, those organizations have played an important role in permanently protecting more than eight million acres of American wilderness.

Not that these victories are won overnight. As another graduate, Carol Lena Miller of the Virginia Wilderness Committee, puts it: “Through long conversations and lots of patient effort we can help convince people about the benefits of wilderness, and clear up lots of misperceptions that are out there.”

Meet a few more heroes who are leading the charge:

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Amber Kelley, San Juan Citizens Alliance Amber Kelley, 31, grew up on a farm outside of Cortez in southwestern Colorado. After earning a sociology degree in 2007, she found herself pulled home to the desert and mountains of her youth, and the San Juan Citizens Alliance hired her to help fight for protection of the lower Dolores River corridor.

Being a native makes Kelley more effective. Because her father still farms there, she knows many of the agricultural users who might normally be sitting distrustfully across the table from environmental advocates. “Having gone to the oneroom schoolhouse with their kids helps” allay some of that suspicion, she explains—though she has still had to gain their trust because of her new role. “Now we’re working together to ensure that the agricultural community can thrive and native fish can be sustained.”

Kelley has trained at WSC, and one staff member, Jeff Widen, continues to serve as her mentor. That support has helped her deal with the unique challenges of campaigning for lands protection in such a small community, which can be isolating. “Amber’s a quick learner,” says Widen. “I’ve been in her position a number of times, and I see her putting those lessons to work. She’s a strategic thinker who likes to find solutions.”

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Amber Kelley (left) and Sergio Avila (in jacket) received training from our Wilderness Support Center.

© Brian Kelley

Sergio Avila, Sky Island Alliance Sergio Avila grew up in Zacatecas, Mexico, a stark landscape of mesquite, cacti and rattlesnakes, and studied wildlife conservation in graduate school, specializing in large predators. Eventually, his work brought him to Tucson, where he now manages the Sky Island Alliance’s Northern Mexico Conservation Program.

Before Avila joined the grassroots environmental group, Sky Island Alliance operated almost exclusively on the Arizona and New Mexico side of the Mexican border.

But the increasingly rare jaguars and ocelots Avila studies did not, and in 2006 he started a program in Mexico, collaborating with researchers, ranchers, and government agencies to identify and protect wildlife corridors and habitat on both sides of the border. In March 2011, the Mexican government officially protected a 10,000-acre, biologically diverse private ranch where Avila has been monitoring wildlife since 2007.

He considers his work to be a bridge between the conservation communities in the U.S. and Mexico. “Going to work in another country isn’t just translating your brochures,” he says, “but also knowing how to understand the people and their values.”

“Sergio has a natural gift for talking with people that is a fantastic advantage in our work,” says Mike Quigley, who represents The Wilderness Society in Arizona and worked with him on a Tumacacori Highlands campaign.

Jeff Hunter, Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition It took 19 years of a day job, eight years of night school, and a six-month backpacking trip to do it, but eventually Jeff Hunter decided he needed to make his passion—land

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© Jessica Lamberton

conservation—his job. Though he had volunteered for forest protection organizations, it was only when Hunter took a leave of absence from his job at Verizon Communications and hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine that he knew it was time to make a change. “I realized I wanted to align my values with my career,” he says.

After completing an environmental studies degree in 2002, he took a job in Chattanooga with the American Hiking Society and then, in 2008, with the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, where he is working to protect and expand a number of wilderness areas in Tennessee. As the organization’s lone full-time staffer in the Volunteer State, Hunter has built a broad coalition of businesses, nonprofits, faith organizations, and influential individuals to support wilderness protection. He wins converts with hikes. “If you can get someone out to fall in love with a place, to jump into a pool at the base of a local waterfall, to hike a snowy trail in the mountains in wintertime—that creates a connection,” he explains.

“Jeff is a rock star,” raves the WSC’s Matt Keller, who has helped him develop strategy. “From his previous work Jeff brought tremendous people skills and lobbying experience, and that’s reflected in the progress made so far on the bill introduced by the state’s Republican senators. In most cases, our career changers have been great success stories.”

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Gena Goodman-Campbell, Oregon Natural Desert Association Gena Goodman-Campbell envisioned a career resolving international conflicts and earned a college degree in that field. But when her first post-college job threw her into a local wilderness campaign, she discovered that such work wasn’t all that different from resolving international disputes—it involved lots of listening and collaboration with many different players.

In 2007 she joined the Oregon Natural Desert Association, heading up a campaign to designate the Oregon Badlands Wilderness near Bend. Thanks in part to the enlistment of more than 200 local busiJeff Hunter (left) and Gena ness supporters, the area Goodman-Campbell (below) was added to the National are providing leadership Wilderness Preservation in Tennessee and Oregon, System in 2009.

Goodmanrespectively.

Campbell received the thrilling news while on a WSC mentoring retreat, creating connections that have been essential to keeping her grounded and energized in her work. © Caara Fritz

The effort to train environmental leaders is evolving, says

Ben Greuel, Sierra Club Ben Greuel grew up on a farm along the Wisconsin Jeremy Garncarz, the River. The TV reception was terrible, so he spent his WSC director. “We have time fishing, swimming, hunting, and hiking, and, in created two new initiasummertime, driving around the West and camping tives,” he explains. “The © Tyler Roemer out of the back of his family’s blue Ford F250. first is the Wild Forever

No surprise, then, that when he finished colFuture Fellows program, lege, he immediately went into the business of preservwhich provides one-year fellowships to train young leaders ing wild places. He is now based in the Pacific Northwest in Wilderness Society field offices.” with the Sierra Club, working to protect wildlands and wa- The other initiative involves training sessions in selected tersheds on the Olympic Peninsula. “I do everything from regions. For example, about 25 conservation staff members educating our members to reaching out to everyone from from Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho gathered to share ideas on economic development councils to local fishing guides to how to protect the Great Basin. They were joined by Carroll recreation groups to local elected officials to local Tribes to and his colleague Melissa Giacchino. Next: the Colorado timber companies, putting a lot of miles on the old truck”— Plateau and the Northern Rockies. “The energy at these sesnow, a slightly newer 1997 Ford Ranger—“and meeting a lot sions is just amazing,” says Carroll. “Despite the challenges of interesting folks.” facing environmental campaigns, you can’t help but come

Greuel, 28, considers his interaction with other wilderaway from these things optimistic about the future.” ness advocates through WSC’s mentoring program to have been invaluable. “One of the things I learned is that when you’re doing outreach to local communities for wilderness Hannah Nordhaus lives in Boulder, Colorado. campaigns, it doesn’t just flow one way,” he says. “You need She is author of The Beekeeper’s Lament: How to build quality long-term relationships with these folks where One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed you take into account their needs and concerns.” Those lesAmerica, which follows an eloquent and embatsons have paid off: the Wild Olympics campaign has built a tled industrial beekeeper who is struggling mightdiverse coalition that has begun to break down barriers to ily to keep his bees alive. To learn more about the the dream of protecting the Olympic’s watersheds. book, visit www.hannahnordhaus.com.

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Too Wild To Drill

By Dave Showalter

Š Dave Showalter

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Noble Basin, about 40 miles south of Grand Teton National Park, is much more than a beautiful piece of the Old West. It is a major thoroughfare for elk, pronghorn, grizzlies, and other wildlife moving through the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

But that could change. Houston-based PXP wants to develop a 136-well gas field in the heart of the basin, at the foot of the Wyoming Range.

PXP would extract the gas via hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in an area that is part of a vulnerable aquifer and is in the headwaters of the Hoback River­—a wild and scenic river. Emissions would degrade the air over Grand Teton and adjacent national forests.

“Environmental logger” Dave Willoughby, 66, has spent much of his life in the Wyoming Range. I met him at Daniel Junction north of Pinedale, and we headed west, climbing along roads past sandhill cranes summering in wet meadows and ranches overlooking the Wind Rivers to the east. We made our way to the two-track on Forest Service land, and I listened as Willoughby’s memories flowed: his granddaughter’s first elk, wife Linda’s trophy moose, deer and elk taken by sons Chad and Derek.

We headed down into the basin through fields of gold balsamroot wildflowers lined with aspen. Our entire route is slated to become a twolane highway with an estimated 183 semi-trailers rumbling through every day.

We came to Davie’s Hill—Dave couldn’t recall who named it for him—and scanned the rolling sage and aspen below. We saw creeks, seeps, and streams where colorful Snake River cutthroat trout spawn before migrating 30 miles to meet the Snake River just south of Grand Teton. PXP’s vision for that landscape includes a pilot wildcat rig (“Eagle One”), which would drill three test holes before construction of the 17-pad, 136-well gas field, with compressor stations, a pipeline, 29 miles of new or upgraded road, and toxic waste storage. Willoughby broke the silence, saying, “This is where my wife and I will go when we die.”

While most Wyoming residents accept the reality of oil and gas development in their state, they cherish their natural legacy, and a growing number are concerned about the impacts of drilling. “By 2006 the massive and destructive Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields were there for all to

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see,” recalls The Wilderness Society’s Stephanie Kessler, who is based in Lander. “There has been significant air and water pollution, as well as declines in wildlife populations.”

Determined to prevent similar destruction in the Wyoming Range, a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations created Citizens for the Wyoming Range (CFWR). It includes ranchers, chambers of commerce, sportsmen, and even oil and gas workers.

Before long the state’s two Republican senators introduced the Wyoming Range Legacy Act, and Congress passed it in © Dave Showalter 2009. The bill prevented drilling on 1.2 million acres of Bridger-Teton National Forest.

But that law did not tamper with valid existing lease rights, so PXP still had the opportunity to pursue development in the Noble Basin. In early 2011, after the Forest Service issued a draft environmental analysis for the project that allowed the drilling, more than 60,000 citizens, organizations, politicians, and government agencies submitted comments on the proposal—95 percent of them raising concerns. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department faulted the agency for using “outdated and/or obscure research. The authors should better justify their statements with proven science…”

Kim Floyd, executive secretary of the Wyoming AFL-CIO, criticized the Forest Service for failing to properly account for the potential income from hunting, fishing, and other recreation, which totaled more than $2.5 billion in 2009 “and is a renewable resource.”

With legacy on my mind, I called Carl Bennett of Rock Springs, who likes to call himself “a son

The Wyoming Range is important to many species, including grizzlies, elk, moose, mule deer, pronghorn, and lynx.

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Visit wyomingrange.org to stay current with changing events and learn how you can help.

© Dave Showalter

Drilling in the Wyoming Range would further jeopardize the sandhill crane. Long-time champions of the area, such as Dave Willoughby (above) are fighting to protect it from industrialization.

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of Wyoming.” When Carl was about eight years old, his dad took him to a ridge-top view of Noble Basin and told him, “You know, son, I can’t give you a lot, but I can give you this.” Carl and his family spend their weekends and vacations in “the Wyomings.” In early 2011 he traveled to Washington, D.C., with fellow CFWR members and Wilderness Society staff to urge members of Congress to save “the place I love.”

Dave Showalter of Arvada, Colorado, is the author and photographer of Prairie Thunder: The Nature of Colorado’s Great Plains. His photographs and articles have appeared in Outside, Outdoor Photographer, National Geographic Books, and elsewhere.

© Dave Showalter

© Dave Showalter

In July I toured the Upper Hoback River Basin with outfitter and retired Marine Dan Smitherman, a CFWR spokesman. The conservation group American Rivers lists the Hoback as one of the nation’s most endangered rivers because of the drilling plan. “Everything that Wyoming is known for either breeds, migrates, fawns, calves, or travels through this area,” he says, naming moose, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, black and grizzly bears, gray wolves, and Canada lynx. Dan Bailey, a triathlete who lives in a 1920’s homestead along the Hoback River, cites water, air, and noise pollution among his many concerns, adding, “It’s a joke to think that an accident won’t occur.”

Meanwhile, the Forest Service is poring through those 60,000 comments. In August Jacqueline Buchanan, supervisor of the BridgerTeton National Forest, told me, “Circumstances have changed. We now have grizzly bears down there, an endangered species.” She acknowledged that there have been many changes on the range over five years and said that they must be addressed.

PXP declined an interview request, referring me to its Web site, which says, “PXP believes strongly in the need to balance new energy development with protection of sensitive areas, wildlife populations and natural resources. As part of this commitment PXP believes in the value of collaborating with stakeholders of divergent views to achieve compromise and balance.”

Does the industry need more places to drill?

According to the March 2011 Interior Department Oil and Gas Lease Utilization report, 50 percent of existing leases (53.7 percent in Wyoming) are not currently being utilized by the oil and gas industry.

The coalition proposes that the leases be bought or donated. The Wyoming Range Legacy Act provides for this process, and if these leases are retired, the land would never be leased again.

Unfortunately, PXP has no obligation to do this.

“We think a buy-out is a win for both the company and the public,” says Kessler. “If that’s not possible, then we must do everything possible to ensure that PXP is held to the ‘gold standard’ of conservation. We owe at least that to future generations.”

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Member Profile

Wilderness Investors with a Long-Term View

www.wilderness.org

© Mark Silva

S

hortly after joining our Governing Council in 1996, Bert Cohn hiked through the canyons and arches of southern Utah. “I just fell in love with the place and the idea of protecting wilderness,” he recalls.

That adventure helped persuade Cohn and his wife Barbara to become the leading underwriters of our Wilderness Support Center in Durango, Colorado. Created in 1999, the center works with grassroots groups around the country to build public campaigns designed to convince Congress to establish wilderness and other conservation areas.

Cohn retired in late 2010 from the investment management firm First Manhattan Company, where he had been a managing director, and he takes a hardheaded approach to his philanthropy. “He likes to talk about the return on investment,” explains Melyssa Watson, former director of the center and now our assistant vice president for Southwest Regional Conservation. “When we calculated it, we came up with just one dollar for each acre we were protecting.”

Already leading supporters of the center, the Cohns took another giant philanthropic step forward in 2011 by creating a large lead trust that will help fund the center for 15 years. The lead trust provides current support while ensuring an inheritance for their grandchildren. “Everyone has different circumstances, but this vehicle made the most sense for us, and I urge others to consider it,” Bert Cohn says.

He traces his appreciation for nature to his childhood in South Orange, New Jersey, when his father would take him to Essex County’s bucolic South Mountain Reservation.

A graduate of Harvard and New York University’s School of Business, Cohn was an Army staff sergeant in the Philippines during World War II. It was grammar school classmate Ted Stanley, one of the giants of conservation philanthropy, who laid the groundwork for Cohn’s emergence as a major force in the field. Stanley, who died in 2009, persuaded Cohn to join him on our Governing Council.

“The moment I walked in The Wilderness Society’s door, Bert was talking to me about the future of the organization,” recalls our president, William H. Meadows. “He and Barbara have been pacesetters and catalysts who have made us a significantly better organization. Their generosity has made an enormous difference in the Wilderness Support Center, our intern program, and many other initiatives.” Since the center was born, more than eight million acres have been protected.

Barbara and Bert Cohn’s generosity has helped protect untold acres of America’s wilderness.

“I consider it a privilege to be able to help,” Bert Cohn says. “We have great respect for the staff’s economic, scientific, communications, and advocacy skills. It’s a rare combination.”

The couple’s generosity has also advanced environmental education and the history and philosophy of science. Other major beneficiaries include the Harvard University Center for the Environment, Tel Aviv University, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Barbara, who earned a master’s degree in anthropology from Sarah Lawrence, served as a college trustee for many years and is now an honorary trustee. Her interest in Native American culture and their respect for nature stimulated her own interest in the natural world. She is an active member of Rachel’s Network, named after Silent Spring author Rachel Carson. It promotes women as impassioned leaders and agents of change dedicated to the stewardship of the Earth.

“The most important legacy we can leave future generations is cleaner air and water and more wilderness areas so they can experience the incredible natural beauty of our country,” says Barbara. “It is an honor to be able to support this goal in every way possible.”

The Cohns’ three children and Bert’s brother Theodore have made support of The Wilderness Society truly a family affair. In September we honored the Cohns at a dinner in New York. “In view of everything they have done to save wilderness,” says Meadows, “they are probably entitled to one of these events every month.”

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Everyone in the Car!

How those summer national park trips shaped our views

By Susan S. Rugh

R

Trips to the parks brought Americans close— sometimes too close— to wildlife.

Such travel has helped build a public commitment to protecting the great outdoors.

ecently my son and his family sent photos of their vacation in the Southwest, where they visited Arches National Park in Utah. Our six-yearold granddaughter scrambled up the red rock to get a better view of the Windows, and her threeyear-old brother proudly wore his Junior Ranger badge on his T-shirt. Their parents were passing along their own enthusiasm for the stunning landscape of the West, a passion acquired on their childhood visits to the parks.

The pictures reminded me of our family vacation to Yellowstone in 1962, the year of the onebillionth visit to the national parks. As a member of the baby boom generation, I was part of a new summer vacation tradition—the family road trip. It

© National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection

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was invented after World War II when the Greatest Generation stashed the boomers in the back seat of the station wagon and set out to see America.

New interstate highways, the end of war-time gas rationing, and paid vacation benefits made it easier for families to take to the open road, guided by free maps from big oil companies. So did fast-food restaurants and “kids-stay-free” motels.

Many of us visited Disneyland, Washington, D.C., the shore, or the mountains. The destinations with the most lasting impact may have been the national parks.

The annual number of visits to the parks exploded from 21.7 million in 1946 to 61.6 million in 1956. Then, under the National Park Service’s

© MommyBlogExpert.com

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Airstreams like this one cruising through Utah carried millions of Americans to national parks and other popular destinations.

© Eric Mohl

ten-year Mission 66 program, more than $1 billion was spent to upgrade facilities to better meet tourists’ needs. By 1966, annual visitation topped 133 million. The numbers also reflected the camping craze and the urge to escape the pressures of civilization. Camping was almost as inexpensive as staying at home.

“One of the best things about the parks was how much you could learn both from your own exploring and from the park rangers,” recalls Michelle Haefele, a Wilderness Society economist. “One of

my most vivid memories was going on a ranger-led tour of the Ancestral Puebloan ruins at Mesa Verde in western Colorado. I was fascinated and even began thinking that I’d like to be a park ranger when I grew up.” She majored in natural resources and went on to get a Ph.D. Nowadays Haefele enjoys taking her niece and nephew to Rocky Mountain National Park to hear the elk bugle.

Haefele was not the only one entranced by the educational activities and museums that the Park Service established. Thousands of tourists

Your 635-million-acre portfolio National parks are known and loved by virtually all Americans. But they are not the only wonderful places that belong to each of us.

We jointly hold deeds to 635 million acres, and these other treasures also have helped make memories and raise our awareness of the values of nature.

National parks represent about 12 percent of the public lands. As a citizen, you also own the national forests, national wildlife refuges, and western lands overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. (The most

www.wilderness.org

pristine ten percent of the BLM lands make up the National Landscape Conservation System.)

Nearly 110 million acres of this legacy are guaranteed permanent protection because Congress put them into the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Wilderness Society is dedicated to increasing that figure.

World-class recreation—kayaking, camping, fishing, birding, hiking—is what usually comes to mind when we think about these lands. In addition, these places send clean water to

downstream communities, filter the air, provide habitat for fish and wildlife, and generate local jobs by luring visitors, small business owners, and retirees. They even help combat climate change by absorbing and storing carbon.

Theodore Roosevelt had it right: “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”

© BLM

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is just one example of other special destinations.

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A Junior Ranger swearing-in ceremony at the Grand Canyon

flocked to nighttime campfire programs, learning about history, plants, geology, and wildlife.

Crowds gathered on designated viewing platforms at spectacular park features to listen to rangers talk about natural wonders.

Meantime, park officials refused to cordon off rushing waterfalls and precipices, adamantly maintaining that if they protected visitors from all hazards, the parks no longer would give visitors the sense that they were in the wilderness. Children were thought to be natural campers, curious explorers who needed to take only a few precautions for their own safety.

Fishing, boating, and hiking drew children away from the campsite to a more immediate experience with nature. © NPS photo by Michael Quinn Yosemite National

These Lands Are Your Lands—except….

The national parks may belong to all Americans, but that wasn’t always the reality. Despite National Park Service policies forbidding segregation, the campgrounds and toilet facilities at Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, for example, were racially segregated until the late 1950s. As one

African American tourist wrote to the Interior Secretary in 1950 after a trip to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, “Lip service to democracy is not enough…”

Of course, travel to the parks could be difficult, too. As recently as 1956, black families could find

© Frank Bauman, photographer, LOOK Magazine Collection, Library of Congress

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Park began a forerunner to its current Junior Ranger program in 1930, and its nature program offered a weekly schedule of classes covering topics from reptiles and insects to birds and Indians, culminating in a Friday nature hike.

Among those who took their family to Yosemite were Lloyd and Kay Harline of Orem, Utah, who have visited that California icon annually for the last 40 years. Parents of eight, grandparents of 32, and great-grandparents of 12 children, the Harlines regard the four-day family outing as the highlight of every summer. As their children grew up, Kay and Lloyd loved watching them hike, float downriver on rafts, and roast marshmallows over the campfire. The Harlines taught their children “an appreciation of the beautiful land we live in.” As they explored Yosemite, “We never let them do anything to harm the land.” Four generations of Harlines have learned an appreciation for America’s wilderness thanks to these trips.

When interviewed for the Ken Burns PBS series on the history of the national parks, historian William Cronon, a longtime member of The Wilderness Society’s Governing Council, mused,

overnight accommodations at only three places in New Hampshire, according to The Negro Motorist Green Book. Jews, as well, could run into problems on such trips, encountering signs reading “Gentiles Only” or “Clientele Carefully Selected.”

The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 provided strong legal grounds for enforcement of racial equality throughout the National Park System.

General societal progress also helped. Even so, people of color make up only a tiny percentage of national park visitors.

Audrey and Frank Peterman, an African American couple, discovered this during a vacation tour of the parks in 1995.

The experience prompted them to create Earthwise

Continued on page 62

Productions, a consulting company that promotes integration of the national parks and forests. They also wrote a book on the subject: Legacy on the Land.

“I feel that we are on the verge of a huge change,” said Frank Peterman, former Southeast regional director for The Wilderness Society. “Recently there’s been a lot of media coverage, with NPR, Outside magazine, MSNBC, and others reporting on the situation and how to rectify it. Most important of all, the Park Service is seeking to cultivate a relationship with the broader public.

Audrey was just appointed to a subcommittee of the National Parks Advisory Board that will help establish these relationships, and she came back from the first meeting ecstatic.”

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Wildsong Edited by John Daniel

Nest Site

—Mount St. Helens, Willow Flycatcher Below her steaming dome, a nest of dead stems cups two hatchlings, blind wobblers among bits of shell. Even the way their willow sways above trickles of snowmelt cannot make them less unlikely, scruffy lumplings slated to unlock their wings and sew

Desire

Leaf, Bird, Tree

Once, walking in the woods, I met a hunter.

Leaf—quilled pen writing spirals in air

He spoke. I stopped.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have.

But he didn’t touch me.

He only said I moved fast, asked if I wanted to lead his dogs.

This is not to say he let me get away.

Ever since, I have dreamed of running among hounds.

As we slip through the leaves, the leathery touch of laurel, the dogs narrow in the nose and shoulders, grow into wolves. I go wild too, and disappear into the trees.

I become why dogs howl at the forest’s edge, and you wake at night, and you say, It’s nothing.

Rose McLarney Marshall, North Carolina

www.wilderness.org

Its weighted stem making of papery skin a wing Those other wings blown upward from every limb—bird

this air of ours, this gray land we call blast zone. If there is an aim to their snaps and sallies, their kind of fletched breath, look for it in skin-shut eyes flushed with life, in the way a child keeps from sleep as long as she can, cupping a flashlight for the bloody glow of her hand.

Derek Sheffield Leavenworth, Washington

flock rises still clustered as if memory of the tree shaped its lifts and turns in the brightening sky They whirl and vanish together down the windfilled clouds leaving the tree bare of leaf and bird in its own slow spiraling between earth and sky Robin Chapman Madison, Wisconsin

Song For The Unseen We, enamored of all things grand, of mountains, towers, gods whose mouths once sang rock and water awake, of time uncountable, colossal ships ploughing through gigantic oceans, we ought to regard the new green leaf, fashioned in spring of one small tree, fashioned of land teeming with beings whose microscopic eating feeds the tree which feeds the air through its own breathing, and by that breath not just the small survive.

Christine Colasurdo Portland, Oregon

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On Safari in the Bodie Hills

A great place to visit b y d a v i d p a g e

Š Bob Wick/BLM

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Bodie Hills: A Great Place to Visit

We

bounced into Bodie the way most of the lumber and firewood once did, up from the shores of Mono Lake on the old Cottonwood Canyon wagon road. It was mid-July, but up here where the Sierra Nevada meets the Great Basin, summer had only just taken hold. Beckett, 3, slept in his car seat in the back, slumped over a pillow against the door. Jasper, 6, looked out at the hills. The dog, his head out the front window, gulped air spiked with sweet phlox, bitterbrush, and sage, and surveyed the landscape for jackrabbits.

The infamous Wild West town site—since 1962 preserved in a state of “arrested decay”—was at its fitfor-the-big-screen best, with cumulous clouds over the western ridges and great sidelong shafts of lateafternoon sun on antique timbers and spring-green hills. Even at five minutes to closing, the parking lot overflowed with dusty RV’s and rental cars. But less than a mile down-canyon, along the trickle of Bodie Creek, what was once the main (and notoriously bandit-infested) stage road to Aurora turned rutted and wild—and empty.

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At the edge of a meadow thick with wild daisies, before the Nevada state line, we turned onto a lonely, two-track Jeep trail. I locked the hubs and shifted into 4-wheel-drive. [For guidance on a destination that does not require 4WD, see the information box on page 57.]

Up we climbed into the heart of the Bodie Wilderness Study Area (WSA), one of three such designated areas surrounding the state historic park that together make up nearly half of the Bureau of Land Management’s 200,000-acre Bodie Hills

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the coyotes—dozens of them, it seemed—began a round of yipping and shrieking out in the darkness, all around us. The next morning, along the edges of the basalt flows, we came upon ancient petroglyphs and chippings of obsidian. We found bleached cow bones, pincushion phlox, pennyroyal, waist-high thickets of red columbines, and Basque sheepherder inscriptions dating back to 1913.

“You can see them sitting here,” said our friend John Dittli, a photographer, noting how radically the outside world had changed in a century. This place, by contrast, was still essentially the same as when the first people came though 10,000 years ago.

In the afternoon we made our way back through Bodie. Our vehicles climbed up along the flanks of Potato Peak to the headwaters of Rough Creek— one of two streams in the Bodie Hills determined by the BLM to be eligible for federal Wild and Scenic River status. We splashed in the cool, clear water, walked barefoot in the grass, strolled through fields of wild iris and onion to drink from the springs. Then, before heading down Aurora Canyon, back to civilization and pizza at the Virginia Creek Settlement, we stopped to explore the abandoned Paramount mercury mine.

The Paramount site, its 50-year-old mine works and tailings piles now in the early stages of reclamation by wild aspen groves, “is rated as having a high potential for occurrence of gold, silver and mercury,” according to a recent BLM report, and is of great interest to Electrum, a gold mining company that already has begun exploration. “Developing

Pronghorn, barn owls, and golden eagles are among the wildlife found in the biologically diverse Bodie Hills.

© John Dittli

© John Dittli

Complex. Because of the primeval nature of the landscape, the exceptional biodiversity, the critical water sources and habitat for a variety of species (including threatened ones like the greater sagegrouse and the Lahontan cutthroat trout), the possibilities for solitude, the outstanding geological, cultural, and scenic value of these areas, they were inventoried by the BLM back in 1979 as having potential for wilderness designation.

Since then, the BLM has had to toe a delicate line while waiting for Congress to decide whether to protect these areas or release them so they can be developed. On the one hand, the agency is required to honor historical activities such as mining (with valid claims) and off-road vehicle use (on existing roads and trails). On the other hand, by law, it must manage the areas “in a manner so as not to impair [their] suitability for preservation for wilderness.”

We pitched our camp with some friends at an old fire ring at the edge of Dry Lake, at about 8,000 feet, on a high plateau. A band of pronghorn frolicked beside the cows on the stubble-grass playa.

To the east rose the Beauty Peak cinder cone; to the west the twin summits of Bodie Mountain and Potato Peak, dark colonies of willow and quaking aspen clustered in their folds.

With the day’s last light fading over the snowdappled Sweetwater Range, the boys watched their first satellite run across the sky. A barn owl hovered for a minute or two over our little campfire as if to study marshmallow roasting techniques.

Later, when the boys were zipped into their bags,

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Bodie Hills: A Great Place to Visit

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David Page is the author of the Lowell Thomas Award-winning Explorer’s Guide to Yosemite & the Southern Sierra Nevada, now in its 2nd edition. He has written for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Times, Men’s Journal, and numerous other publications. He lives in Mammoth Lakes, California.

© Burke Griggs

a gold mine here,” says The Wilderness Society’s Sally Miller, “would cut out the ecological heart of the Bodie Hills. Mining would pollute the water, harm wildlife, and forever scar the landscape.”

To secure permanent protection for this special place, The Wilderness Society and other organizations formed the Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership (bodiehills.org). “We are developing a plan with other stakeholders to protect the area’s outstanding natural and cultural values, enhance recreational opportunities, and help boost the local economy,” Miller explains.

With Congress now considering legislation (H.R. 1581) to drop protection of all remaining WSAs across the country, including in the Bodie Hills, the future of this unique landscape is far from certain.

Youngsters still can get a taste of wide-open spaces and big skies at Bodie Hills.

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Bodie Hills Visitor Information Bodie State Historic Park is 20 miles southeast of Bridgeport and 33 miles northeast of Lee Vining, an easy day trip from Mono Lake and the east entrance to Yosemite National Park.

You can take CA 270 (paved until the last three miles) in from US 395 or the rougher Cottonwood Canyon Road up from CA 167. A 4WD vehicle is necessary to navigate the Bodie Creek Road beyond Bodie State Park and the Jeep track up onto the Dry Lakes Plateau.

For those with a high-clearance 2WD vehicle, there is a great loop to drive once the snow has melted (usually by mid-July). This loop offers an excellent introduction to the Bodie Hills and hosts outstanding Great Basin wildflower displays mid-summer. Go to the main park entrance, via CA 270, travel north on Geiger Grade Road and onto the high plateau of the Bodie Hills to take in the stunning views. Then drive past the unmarked turnoff to the old Paramount mine site, turn left at a four-way road junction onto Road 168, and proceed seven miles down scenic Aurora Canyon to the historic town of Bridgeport. To complete the loop, travel seven miles south on US 395 to the Bodie turnoff.

For any excursions into the Bodie Hills, bring adequate food, water, and other supplies.

The Tom Harrison 1:63,360 Bodie Hills Map is a good resource for navigating the back roads beyond the park. The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Map covers the broader region with slightly less detail. These, as well as a variety of

Detail Area

NEVADA CA. books and brochures 395 on the natural and CALIFORNIA cultural history of the 182 Bodie State region, are available Historic Park Bodie Bridgeport at the Forest Service Hills 270 office in Bridgeport.

167 The Lee Vining ChamMono Lee YOSEMITE Lake Vining ber of Commerce has NATIONAL PARK 120 a well-stocked book395 store with maps and Lake Mammoth Crowley books on the region’s Lakes history. Both Bridgeport and Lee Vining offer a range of motels and restaurants, as well as service stations and small grocery stores for supplies. The Virginia Creek Settlement (760-932-7780), one mile north of the main Bodie Road on US 395, serves thick burgers and an excellent selection of pizzas. Go to www.bridgeportcalifornia.com or www.leevining.com or call 760-647-6595 for more information.

Bodie State Historic Park (760-647-6445) is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in winter (or as posted), when the park and the hills are accessible only by skis, snowshoes, or snowmobiles (using existing roadways). Entrance fees and hours do not apply to those merely passing through the park to reach the Bodie Hills. There is no camping at the park, but there are limited dispersed campsites on BLM land along certain roads in the Bodie Hills. Check with rangers at Bodie for details and current conditions.

Š John Dittli

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© Kai Hagen

my wilderness

By Tashia Tucker

If

you were asked why you support The Wilderness Society, what makes you care about the work we do, or why it’s important, chances are you’d answer each question roughly the same. You would hearken back to a place you love or a vivid memory from the great outdoors. You might catch yourself daydreaming about an especially delicious s’more, skipping rocks in the lake with your family, a nap in the hammock, or a spectacular hike through a wildflower meadow.

That’s why The Wilderness Society and Frontier Airlines jumped at the opportunity to team up on the my wilderness campaign. While The Wilderness Society works tirelessly to protect America’s great wildlife and wild places, Frontier takes people to these places,

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enabling them to understand what’s at stake and then get involved.

Since April 2011, we’ve featured moms and dads, photographers, writers, celebrities, activists, and recreationists who have shared their wilderness experiences on our Web site, reminding us why wilderness is worth fighting for.

Take Lynn Donaldson, Montana tumbleweed photographer and wilderness mom. She supports The Wilderness Society because she wants her young children to have the memorable experiences in wilderness that have shaped her.

Then there’s Frederick County Commissioner Kai Hagen of Maryland.

He has been committed to wilderness

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© Kai Hagen

© Lynn Donaldson

© Carrol Henderson

my wilderness has featured the stories of Lynn Donaldson and her family, the Hagens (on bench), and Dudley Edmondson.

protection ever since his first escape from the inner city to the country.

Dudley Edmonson is so invested in the power of wilderness that he leads boys on backpacking trips through Washington’s North Cascades so that they can become tomorrow’s “wilderness sentinels.”

my wilderness celebrates everyday heroes— each and every one of our supporters—for their dedication to saving America’s last great places.

And we ask you to have some fun with us. You can enter contests to win wilderness trips, watch videos featuring wild places, get outdoors tips, and learn more about the places you enjoy.

Frontier Airlines has added to the fun with a Spokesanimal of the Month. Here’s a message from Sarge the Bald Eagle: “I’m proud to be the national symbol of the United States. And there’s no place I’d rather strut my stuff than on the tail of a Frontier Airlines flight. It’s true that I don’t need a plane to fly, but Frontier always takes me to greater heights. That’s why you’ll often see me perched planeside.”

We want to see more of your best my wilderness places, stories, poems, and campfire recipes.

There’s a place for everyone in my wilderness, no matter your favorite outdoor activity or place. The Wilderness Society, Frontier Airlines, and all our supporters are always dreaming up fresh ideas and stories, and we hope you’ll join us in the fun at my.wilderness.org.

www.wilderness.org

Airline with a Mission Frontier Airlines operates more than 500 daily flights from hubs in Denver, Milwaukee, and Kansas City, serving over 80 destinations in the United States, Mexico, and Costa Rica. The low-fare airline flies to Alaska and many other places where The Wilderness Society is especially active.

Frontier is dedicated to a culture that ensures the commitment of its 5,500 employees to the environment. ”This is one of the ways we are delivering on our promise to be a better and different airline,” says Bryan Bedford, chairman, president, and CEO.

Frontier ranks third among the 20 largest U.S. airlines in energy efficiency, according to a recent analysis by Brighter Planet, but Frontier is aiming higher. To get there, the airline is converting to a more fuel-efficient fleet. Frontier has placed orders for 40 Bombardier C-Series aircraft (which emit 20 percent fewer greenhouse gases than any plane currently in production) and 80 Airbus A320neo jets (which use 15 percent less fuel than the current A320). By using the A320neo jets, Frontier will cut fuel use by nearly 370,000 gallons—the annual consumption of 1,000 mid-size cars—and will reduce CO2 emissions by 3,600 tons a year. The company also is engaged in other initiatives to significantly reduce fuel consumption and the resulting damage to the environment.

For more, visit FrontierAirlines.com.

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Paying Tribute To Environmental Heroes Teamwork. That’s how wilderness is saved. But teams need leaders, and The Wilderness Society believes in honoring those citizens who have gone above and beyond in their efforts to protect America’s wildlands and wildlife. Over the past year, we have presented the following awards: © Mark Silva © Robin Sell, BLM

© Mark Silva

Steve Scauzillo

Hansjörg Wyss

Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt received our Ansel Adams Award, presented to a current or former federal official who has shown exceptional commitment to conservation and the fostering of an American land ethic. “Bruce is a visionary who, as Arizona’s governor and later as interior secretary, compiled a sterling record,” said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. “He capped his government service with the establishment of the 26-million-acre National Landscape Conservation System.”

A decade of work to help make this system successful is a major reason why Hansjörg Wyss received the Robert Marshall Award, The Wilderness Society’s highest honor for a private citizen. “Hansjörg and the Wyss Foundation have worked tirelessly to protect America’s natural heritage, particularly in the Rockies,” Meadows said. “Though he is largely unknown to the American people, his

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Roy Smith

generosity is going to make a difference for generations to come.” Wyss has been a member of our Governing Council since 1993.

The Olaus and Margaret Murie Award honors frontline state or federal land management employees, or any “young environmentalists,” especially those who are innovative and have taken risks to promote the principles of natural resource conservation. The 2011 recipient was Roy Smith, the key water staffer with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Colorado. “Water is undoubtedly the most contentious environmental issue in this state,” said Suzanne Jones, who directs our work in Colorado, “and ensuring the flow of water to wilderness is critically important.

Roy has been extraordinarily effective in making this happen for the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness and BLM lands across the state—and amazingly, does so in a manner that brings people together.”

Lauren Oakes

Steve Scauzillo of the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers received the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing. Meadows praised him as “a steadfast voice asking why a road must be built through a state park and what we will lose when a grove of 200 oaks and sycamores—more than a century old—are cut down. He has dared the public to dream of a national recreation area that includes the San Gabriel River in L.A.’s urban backyard.”

The Gloria Barron Wilderness Society Scholarship was awarded to Lauren E. Oakes for her proposed research on climate change’s impact on yellow cedar in Alaska’s coastal rain forest. A native of Stamford, Connecticut, who graduated from Brown University, Oakes is a Ph.D. student at Stanford. “This scholarship aims to find the Aldo Leopolds and Rachel Carsons of the future,” says Tom Barron, an author and long-time member of our Governing Council. He established the fellowship

© Steve Menzel/UWSP

Bruce Babbitt

Elise Kahl, Melissa Rickert, Meagan Leatherbury

to honor his mother, who was a dedicated educator and tireless advocate for wilderness.

Three University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point graduate students received Gaylord Nelson Earth Day Fellowships in 2011. Elise Kahl of Perrysburg, Ohio; Meagan Leatherbury of Avondale Estates, Georgia; and Melissa Rickert of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, were recognized for making significant contributions to promoting conservation ethics and environmental education, and for exhibiting future leadership potential in the field of environmental education. We initiated these fellowships in 1990 to honor Earth Day’s founder, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Gaylord Nelson, long-time counselor of The Wilderness Society, who died in 2005.

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Conservation Enthusiast C rossword p u z z le b y A le x S tarke y

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Last owner of the land which became Arlington National Cemetary, Robert __ 18 19 17 6. Animal one may see at Denali National 1 20 21 22 7. "Use Common ____", Grand Canyon 23 24 25 26 27 28 warning 29 30 31 32 33 8. New England's only national park 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 9. Home of the Colossus 41 42 43 44 10. Super market convenience 45 46 47 11. ____ and Run 48 49 50 51 52 53 12. Period of time 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 13. Military draft organization (abbr) 62 63 64 65 21. Plead 66 67 68 69 70 25. Start over 71 72 73 26. Like the ponies at Chincoteague Nation 74 75 76 © John McCarthy Wildlife Refuge 47. Superman enemy 27. Operated a car ACROSS 1. Land ___ & Environmental Law 48. Often speaks out 28. Forest Glen _____, home of the Nation Across Down Park Seminary Historic District 4. Land 52. ______and Haws 1. & Environmental 52. Need to pay Need to pay 1. Application 31. Tic-___-Toe Law 2. Only National Park south of 54. Use one’s eyes 33. ___ the Season 8. National Park in Utah and 54. Use one's eyesthe Equator, American 30.

Connecticut's ___ Whitney Forest, a 20 4. ___ and Haws ___ 55. Goes up 34. Foundation 8. National Park in Utah and 3.

Expression of shock 58.

Common carbon emitters 35.

Entertain home of the Three Gossips 55. Goes up acre forest to protect water quality home of the Three Gossips 4. Independence ___. National 62. Willie Nelson song, __ the 36. Gumption 14.

Gradually Parkemitters Service historic site Forest 38. Wind Cave National Park’s 14.Sink 58. Common carbon 31. Tic-___-Toe Sink Gradually 15. Nature’s soothing ingredient 5. Last owner of the land which 63. Wise advice from Edward famous Bed of ____ Nature's soothing ingredient 15.Seats 33. ___ the the National 16.

became__ Arlington Abbey (part62.

3) Willie Nelson song, 39. Season Large, beautiful tree 17. I ____ Rock Cemetary, Robert _____ 66. “_____ of the good life” 42. ___ Speedwagon Forest 16.

34.

Seats Foundation 18. Ponce de ____ Springs State 69. Item used at Rocky Mountain 6. Animal one may see at 43. Also Park National Park Denali National Park 35. Entertain 44. Plant 17. I ____ Rock 63. Wise advice from Edward 19. Life lines

7. “Use Common ____”, Grand 70. ___ to Billie Joe 49. ____ Lake National Park, Ponce defrom ____Edward Springs State Abbey (part 3)Canyon warning 18.Wise 36. Gumption 20. advice 71. Park President in office when body of water filled only by Abbey (part 1) Badlands and Theodore 8. New England’s only national precipitation National Park's 19.Pesticide 66. designated 38. Wind Cave Life lines "_____ of 22. banned in the US park life"

Roosevelt were as the good 50. Ones who take sight famous Bed of _ in 1972- an action linked to the national parks 9. Home of the Colossus 53. Prefix for environmental 20. Wise advice from Edward 69. Item used at Rocky Mountain 39. Large,terms beautiful tree comeback of the bald eagle 10. Super market convenience 72. Ardent

23. Simplicity 73. Sleep stage (abbr) 56. Short piece of writing on a Abbey (part 1) National Park 11. ____ and Run 42. ___ Speedwagon 24. Creepy

74. Instructors 12. Period of time single subject 22.USPesticide 43. Also 57. Get the answer US in 70. ___ to Billie Joe13. Military draft organization 26.

Govt healthbanned watch dogin the 75.

Cravings 29. Acquire

76. Places where ambulences (abbr)

59. Previously

1972anLand action to the 71. President in office 44. Plant 60. Biker when 32. ______ Sierra Trust linkedmay 21. Plead

go (abbr) 34. Could be for plastic bags bald or 25. Start over 49. ____ Lake 61. Place for plant buds comeback of the eagle Badlands and Theodore National Park, body of water bear trapping 26. Like the ponies at 62. Analogy words 37.

Swimming pool divisions Chincoteague National Wildlife 64.

Chinese dish Chow ____ Roosevelt were designated as filled only by precipitation 23. Simplicity 40. Saugus ____Works, national Refuge 65. Teaching PHDs national parks 27. Operated a car 50. Ones 66.

24. Creepy who take historic site in Massachusetts Play part sight 41. Wise advice from Edward 28. Forest Glen _____, home 67. 19th letter in the Greek 26. US 72. Ardent 53. Prefixalphabet Govt for environmental terms Abbey (part 2) health watch dog of the National Park Seminary

45.

Certain

Historic District 68.

Exhibit, “The ___ of Zion 29. Acquire 73. Sleep stage (abbr) 56. Short piece of writing on a single subje 46. “_____ old for this!”

30. Connecticut’s ___ Whitney National Park” 47.

32.Superman 74. Instructors Forest, a 20,000-acre forest 57. toGet the answer ______enemy Sierra Land Trust 48. Often speaks out protect water quality Answers on page 62 34. Could be for plastic bags or 75. Cravings 59. Previously bear trapping 76. Places where ambulences 60. Biker www.wilderness.org 61 may go (abbr) 37. Swimming pool divisions 61. Place for plant buds 40.

62. Analogy words DOWN 14

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Continued from page 50

travel has increased, and electronic gadgets have replaced billboards as entertainment. What remains constant is the passing on of a love of our nation’s land to future generations on a visit together to the national parks.

GOVERNING COUNCIL Edward A. Ames, Riverdale, NY James R. Baca, Albuquerque, NM Thomas A. Barron, Boulder, CO Richard Blum, San Francisco, CA David Bonderman, Fort Worth, TX* Crandall Bowles, Charlotte, NC William M. Bumpers, Cabin John, MD Majora Carter, Bronx, NY Bethine Church, Boise, ID Bertram J. Cohn, New York, NY William J. Cronon, Ph.D., Madison, WI, Vice Chair* Brenda S. Davis, Ph.D., Bozeman, MT* Christopher J. Elliman, New York, NY Joseph H. Ellis, Cornwall, CT David J. Field, Gladwyne, PA George T. Frampton, New York, NY Jerry F. Franklin, Ph.D., Issaquah, WA Caroline M. Getty, Corona Del Mar, CA Reginald “Flip” Hagood, Washington, DC Marcia Kunstel, Jackson, WY, Secretary* Kevin Luzak, New York, NY, Treasurer* Michael A. Mantell, Sacramento, CA Dave Matthews, Charlottesville, VA Molly McUsic, Chevy Chase, MD, Vice Chair* Heather Kendall Miller, Anchorage, AK Scott A. Nathan, Boston, MA Jaime Pinkham, St. Paul, MN Rebecca L. Rom, Edina, MN Theodore Roosevelt IV, New York, NY Patrick L. Smith, Arlee, MT Cathy Douglas Stone, Boston, MA Sara Vera, Seattle, WA Douglas Walker, Seattle, WA, Chair* Christina Wong, Tempe, AZ Hansjörg Wyss, West Chester, PA* * member of Executive Committee

Susan S. Rugh, a professor of history at Brigham Young University, is the author of Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations. She is now writing a book about the history of motels in America.

© Kent Miles

“We remember when our parents took us for the first time . . . and then we as parents pass them on to our own children.” Cronon sees family visits to parks as “a kind of intimate transmission from generation to generation to generation of the love of place, the love of nation that the national parks are meant to stand for.”

In 2010 Yosemite welcomed more than four million people; Yellowstone more than 3.6 million. With the economy struggling to recover, the parks are an increasingly popular destination for families. Of course, family vacations have changed; families are smaller, trips are shorter, airplane

remains of interest to many members on both sides of aisle. “It’s one of very few programs that has success stories in every congressional district, where constituents can say, ‘Having these open spaces and recreation contributes to the life I want for my kids.’”

Kathy Shorr’s work has appeared in a number of publications, among them The Boston Globe, National Geographic Green Guide, and The Trust for Public Land’s Land & People.

She lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, just a few miles from the North of Highland Camping Area.

© Robert Finch

Continued from page 23

HONORARY COUNCIL Frances G. Beinecke, Bronx, NY Robert O. Blake, Washington, DC Gilman Ordway, Wilson, WY Charles Wilkinson, Boulder, CO SENIOR STAFF William H. Meadows, President Frederick L. Silbernagel III, Senior VP (Finance & Administration) Amy Vedder, Senior VP (Conservation) Paula Wolferseder Yabar, Senior VP (Membership & Development) Sara Barth, Vice President, Regional Conservation Melanie Beller, Vice President, Public Policy Ashford Chancelor, Vice President, Finance Lynn Croneberger, Vice President, Development Lisa L. Loehr, Vice President, Operations Ann J. Morgan, Vice President, Public Lands Spencer Phillips, Vice President, Research Jane Taylor, Vice President, Communications & Marketing

© Jeff L. Fox

Take Action To Save Wilderness

As a member of The Wilderness Society, you’ve already established your commitment to wilderness protection. Now, we hope you’ll take the added step of becoming an online advocate for wilderness.

It’s simple, and free. Just subscribe to WildAlert, and we’ll send you regular notices about easy actions you can take to protect wildlife and wilderness. Learn more at: www.wilderness.org/wildalert.

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1-800-THE-WILD

David Getches, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on water rights and Native American law, died July 5, 2011, of pancreatic cancer. He was 68. “It hurts to lose a hero and a friend,” said Jaime Pinkham, a Nez Perce leader who served alongside Getches on our Governing Council for 11 years. “His battle with cancer was lost so quickly that it seemed to lack the justice and fairness that characterized his five decades of public service.”

A professor at the University of Colorado Law School for 32 years and eventually its dean, Getches at one point headed the state’s Department of Natural Resources. “We depended on him for legal advice on all things water and wilderness, for help with recalcitrant politicians, for his ingenious solutions to policy challenges large and small, or sometimes just a kind

and encouraging word,” said Suzanne Jones, who directs The Wilderness Society’s programs in Colorado. “He was like a towering ponderosa pine to us—one that we thought would always be there, deep-rooted, well-equipped with humor and intelligence to withstand drought and wildfire, providing shelter and inspiration to so many, a mighty forest anchor .”

Getches was the founding executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, a national, nonprofit American Indian-interest law firm in Boulder. “He had a passion for both the natural world and for Native people,” Pinkham recalled.

“Those lucky enough to get to know David,” said Wilderness Society President William H. Meadows, who spoke at Getches’ memorial service, “were as struck by his personal qualities as by his

THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY

© Bill Weber/Amy Vedder

A Tribute to David Getches

scholarship. He had an unbelievable work ethic, rock-solid integrity, a belief in service to others, an easy smile, and genuine humility. He made the most of his years, and all of us who learned from him will help his legacy endure.”

ENJOY 2012 WITH THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY CALENDAR

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To order, go to www.calendars.com and search for WILDERNESS SOCIETY.

2 012 C A LENDA R © Photo: Marc Muench/Muench Photography, Inc.

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Or mail your order, with check payable to The Wilderness Society, to: Calendar Order, The Wilderness Society, 1615 M St., NW, Washington, DC 20036

Calendar: BrownTrout Publishers Inc.

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