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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

© A. Vedder
Tackling Radical Ideas that Threaten Your Land
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
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
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.
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.
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.
Editor: Bennett H. Beach
(ben_beach@tws.org)
Photo Editor: Lisa Dare
Design: Studio Grafik
Proofreader: Connie Quinley
© 2011 by
The Wilderness Society,
1615 M St., NW,
Washington, DC 20036
www.wilderness.org
COVER PHOTO
© Tim Fitzharris.com
2 1-800-THE-WILD

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”
Five citizens tell us about theirs
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
On Cape Cod, a campground operator put the public first
By Kathy Shorr
26 Skiing in Wilderness Wonderlands
As winter nears, here are ten backcountry skiing gems
By David Goodman
30 The Bob and I, Under the Big Sky
An essay by Ivan Doig
32 Does Nature Affect Your Behavior?
A Q&A with Dr. Frances E. Kuo
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/
www.wilderness.org
The Wilderness Society
meets all standards as
set forth by the Better
Business Bureau/Wise
Giving Alliance.
44
© Dave Showalter
42 Building an Army of Young Conservation Leaders
We are training a corps for the future
By Hannah Nordhaus
44 Too Wild to Drill
Will rigs, roads and pipelines sprout south of Yellowstone?
By Dave Showalter
47 Wilderness Investors with a Long-Term View
Barbara and Bert Cohn are philanthropic champions
48 Everyone in the Car!
How those summertime national park trips shaped
our views
By Susan Rugh
52 On Safari in the Bodie Hills
This California treasure is this year’s “great place to visit”
By David Page
58 my wilderness
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
61 Crossword Puzzle
3

© 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
Achievements
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.
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
© Fred Hanselmann/hanselmannphotography.com
4 1-800-THE-WILD

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.
www.wilderness.org
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 Two-
Medicine (below).
© Bill Hodge
© Jared White
5

otes from the field
ALASKA
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
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.
6 1-800-THE-WILD
© William Kramer/USFWS

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
We are part of an effort to improve
public access to Owyhee Canyonlands
wilderness in Idaho.
© John McCarthy
www.wilderness.org
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 spectacular
wildlife habitat and
still has all the major species
observed by Lewis and Clark as
they traveled through two centuries
ago, including grizzlies, wolverines,
and lynx. To maintain the front’s natural
qualities and area residents’ way of
life, The Wilderness Society and other
members of the broad Coalition to
Protect the Rocky Mountain Front are
urging Senator Max Baucus (D-MT)
to introduce the act drawn up by the
coalition. In August more than 450
Montanans attended public meetings
with the senator to convey their
strong support for this initiative. Go
to www.savethefront.org to learn
more and to help.
Peter Aengst 406-586-1600
peter_aengst@tws.org
© Gene Sentz
A proposed bill to protect the Rocky
Mountain Front (above) would expand
Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.
UTAH
Operators of Coal Hollow Mine,
the state’s only strip mine, want to
expand it onto 3,500 acres of adjacent
public land ten miles southwest
of Bryce Canyon National Park. This
could extend the life of the mining
operation about 20 years. Such a step
would increase water and air pollution,
raise noise levels, reduce the darkness
of night skies, undercut tourism
and recreation, and damage habitat
vital to sage grouse, bald eagles, and
7

© 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
ARIZONA
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
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
© istockphoto.com/kokophoto
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.
© Flickr/Dolor Ipsum
8 1-800-THE-WILD

© 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
© Bill Hodge
9

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
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
© Steve Goldstein © Camille Brightsmith © Paul Zink
© Megan Quinn
“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.
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.
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.
Jeff Chen
Co-founder of Pick Up America
Columbia, Maryland
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!
Lana Lindstrom
Retired finance manager
Eugene, Oregon
© Gail Patrick
10 1-800-THE-WILD

Harbingers of
Climate Change
Acreek 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.
Illustration by David Sibley
www.wilderness.org
By MEL WHITE
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?
11

© Andreas Kanon
© Flickr/Kelly Colgan Azar
© Larry Master/masterimages.org
12 1-800-THE-WILD
© Mary Curtis © Larry Master/masterimages.org

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 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.”
www.wilderness.org
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
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.
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.
13

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
© 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.”
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
14 1-800-THE-WILD

The Final Frontier
By Marilyn Berlin Snell
© Kevin Smith/AlaskaStock.com
www.wilderness.org
15

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
“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.”
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.
16 1-800-THE-WILD

© 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,
www.wilderness.org
Chukchi Sea
Point
Hope
Arctic Ocean
Wainwright
Barrow
Beaufort Sea
National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska
Prudhoe Bay
N O R T H S L O P E
Colville River
ALASKA
Pacic
Ocean
Detail
ALASKA
Kaktovik
Trans Alaska
Pipeline
Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge
© 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
17

ON SHORE, THE ARCTIC REFUGE REMAINS AT RISK
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.
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
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.
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
18 1-800-THE-WILD
© Lincoln Else

© 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-
www.wilderness.org
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
19

Why I Sold My Land
to the American People
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.
20 1-800-THE-WILD
© Cheryl Currier

Currier’s uncle spent the winter creating paths
and tent sites, and in 1954 the family opened
the North of Highland Camping Area. “We’d
get 40 people packed in there on a hot day in
July,” remembers Currier. “We had a little cabin,
and the office was in a separate building.”
Today, the pine trees have outgrown the
telephone poles; the rutted buggy track is
smooth asphalt; and an air-conditioned building
holds both Currier’s house and office. But
the campground is remarkably unchanged.
Families still arrive each year to pitch tents,
cook their meals on small charcoal grills, and
walk a narrow dirt path four-tenths of a mile to
the wide, sandy beach and rolling surf of the
Atlantic Ocean.
The campground sits inside the Cape Cod
National Seashore, authorized by Congress
eight years after the Curriers bought the land
and now one of the National Park System’s
most-visited parks. About four million people
come to this narrow peninsula each year, but
campgrounds are increasingly hard to find.
Rising 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
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
been really good neighbors with the national
park for some time, and they were the first ones
I called,” says Currier, who placed that call in
2004. “I really did not want to see everything
we’d done for 50 years end up in house lots.”
The Park Service was eager to deal. “The
long-term protection of this large parcel for a
combination of camping and conservation purposes
made this our highest priority acquisition,”
www.wilderness.org
says CCNS Superintendent George Price. In
fact, Park Service land managers had identified
it as the highest priority for the Northeast.
Unfortunately, park superintendents do not
have money in their budgets to take advantage
of such opportunities. Instead, the Park Service,
U.S. Forest Service, and other federal agencies
that manage the public’s property rely on the
Land and Water Conservation Fund. Created
by Congress in 1965, LWCF receives $900 million
a year from the royalties that oil companies
pay for the chance to drill in offshore waters.
When Congress makes its annual appropriations,
it decides which proposed land acquisitions
will be funded.
To make the case for the campground,
Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA), who
represented the Cape at that time, teamed up
with the late Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA).
“Part of what the National Seashore was about
was creating public access for recreation,” says
Delahunt, who now has a public policy consulting
firm. “You’re on some of the most expen-
© Jerry and Marcy Monkman © Cheryl Currier
sive real estate, right by the ocean. But this is
about continuing a tradition that goes back to
the 1600s, a connection to people living on the
land. Generations of people slept under the
stars here 400 years ago. To cut some wood,
make a fire, walk the beaches, you experience
the full measure of human history. To lose that
would be tragic.”
Obtaining the appropriations usually takes
time—a lot of time, in many cases. To ensure
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.
21

In millions ($)
20,000
18,000
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
459
LWCF Funds and Offshore Energy Revenue FY00−FY10
4,546
0
FY00 FY01
LWCF Funds
Offshore Energy Revenue
563
7,498
573
4,136
FY02
413
5,934
FY03
272
5,348
FY04
259
6,325
FY05
144
7,607
FY06
138
7,019
FY07
155
18,045
FY08
180
5,819
FY09
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.
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.”
366
5,254
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
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.
22 1-800-THE-WILD

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
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.
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
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.
Continued on page 62
Steve Currier, shown
with his mother
Evelyn, remained
patient so that an
agreement could be
worked out with the
National Park Service.
Georgia’s Chattahoochee River offers first-rate recreation.
© Flickr/Capt Kodak
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.
23

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
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
24 1-800-THE-WILD

© Howie Garber
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
www.wilderness.org
Mill B-South Fork, Twin Peaks
Wilderness in Utah’s Uinta-
Wasatch-Cache National Forest
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.”
25

Great wilderness areas for backcountry skiing
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.
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.
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.
© Barbara Young, courtesy of the Banadad Trail Association
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.
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.
26 1-800-THE-WILD
© Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

©
© Bradly J. Boner
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.
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.
© Sue Minter
www.wilderness.org
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
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.
© Flickr/Olastuen
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.
27

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.
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
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.
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
28 1-800-THE-WILD

© 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
www.wilderness.org
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
29

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.
© UI News Bureau: L. Brian Stauffer photo
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?
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.
30 1-800-THE-WILD

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
www.wilderness.org
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.
31

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.
© Justin Bailie
32 1-800-THE-WILD

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.
www.wilderness.org
33

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
34 1-800-THE-WILD

www.wilderness.org
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
35

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.
© George Evans
36 1-800-THE-WILD

© Darren Huski
www.wilderness.org
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.
37

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
38 1-800-THE-WILD

© Tom Till
www.wilderness.org
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.
39

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. © Patrick J. Endres/AlaskaPhotoGraphics.com
40 1-800-THE-WILD

© Sean Babbington
Building
an Army
of Young
Conservation
Leaders
“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:
www.wilderness.org
BY HANNAH NORDHAUS
An alumnus of our training program, the Sierra Club’s
Ben Greuel is helping protect the Olympic Peninsula.
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.”
41

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
© 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.”
42 1-800-THE-WILD

© Caara Fritz
BEN GREUEL, SIERRA CLUB
Ben Greuel grew up on a farm along the Wisconsin
River. The TV reception was terrible, so he spent his
time fishing, swimming, hunting, and hiking, and, in
summertime, driving around the West and camping
out of the back of his family’s blue Ford F250.
No surprise, then, that when he finished college,
he immediately went into the business of preserving
wild places. He is now based in the Pacific Northwest
with the Sierra Club, working to protect wildlands and watersheds
on the Olympic Peninsula. “I do everything from
educating our members to reaching out to everyone from
economic development councils to local fishing guides to
recreation groups to local elected officials to local Tribes to
timber companies, putting a lot of miles on the old truck”—
now, a slightly newer 1997 Ford Ranger—“and meeting a lot
of interesting folks.”
Greuel, 28, considers his interaction with other wilderness
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
campaigns, it doesn’t just flow one way,” he says. “You need
to build quality long-term relationships with these folks where
you take into account their needs and concerns.” Those lessons
have paid off: the Wild Olympics campaign has built a
diverse coalition that has begun to break down barriers to
the dream of protecting the Olympic’s watersheds.
www.wilderness.org
© Tyler Roemer
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
Jeff Hunter (left) and Gena
Goodman-Campbell (below)
are providing leadership
in Tennessee and Oregon,
respectively.
more than 200 local business
supporters, the area
was added to the National
Wilderness Preservation
System in 2009. Goodman-
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.
The effort to train
environmental leaders
is evolving, says
Jeremy Garncarz, the
WSC director. “We have
created two new initiatives,”
he explains. “The
first is the Wild Forever
Future Fellows program,
which provides one-year fellowships to train young leaders
in Wilderness Society field offices.”
The other initiative involves training sessions in selected
regions. For example, about 25 conservation staff members
from Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho gathered to share ideas on
how to protect the Great Basin. They were joined by Carroll
and his colleague Melissa Giacchino. Next: the Colorado
Plateau and the Northern Rockies. “The energy at these sessions
is just amazing,” says Carroll. “Despite the challenges
facing environmental campaigns, you can’t help but come
away from these things optimistic about the future.”
Hannah Nordhaus lives in Boulder, Colorado.
She is author of The Beekeeper’s Lament: How
One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed
America, which follows an eloquent and embattled
industrial beekeeper who is struggling mightily
to keep his bees alive. To learn more about the
book, visit www.hannahnordhaus.com.
43

Too
Wild
To
Drill
By Dave Showalter
© Dave Showalter
44 1-800-THE-WILD

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
www.wilderness.org
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.
45

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.
© Dave Showalter
VISIT WyOMINGRANGE.ORG TO
STAy CURRENT WITH CHANGING EVENTS
AND LEARN HOW yOU CAN HELP.
© Dave Showalter
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.”
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 Bridger-
Teton 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.”
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.
46 1-800-THE-WILD
© Dave Showalter

Member Profile
Wilderness Investors
with a Long-Term View
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.
www.wilderness.org
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.”
© Mark Silva
47

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.
Everyone
in the Car!
How those summer national park trips shaped our views
BY SUSAN S. RUGH
Recently 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
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
© National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection © MommyBlogExpert.com
48 1-800-THE-WILD

© 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
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
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
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.”
Airstreams like
this one cruising
through Utah
carried millions
of Americans
to national
parks and
other popular
destinations.
© BLM
Canyons of the Ancients
National Monument is just
one example of other special
destinations.
49

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
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.”
50 1-800-THE-WILD

Wildsong
Edited by John Daniel
Desire
Once, walking in the woods,
I met a hunter.
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
Leaf, Bird, Tree
Leaf—quilled pen
writing
spirals in air
Its weighted stem
making of papery skin
a wing
Those other wings
blown upward
from every limb—bird
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
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
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
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
51

On Safari in
the Bodie Hills
A GREAT PLACE TO VISIT by david page
© Bob Wick/BLM
52 1-800-THE-WILD

www.wilderness.org
53

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.
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
54 1-800-THE-WILD

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,
www.wilderness.org
© John Dittli
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
55

Bodie Hills: A Great Place to Visit
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.
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.
Youngsters still can get a taste of wide-open spaces and
big skies at Bodie Hills.
56 1-800-THE-WILD
© Burke Griggs

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
www.wilderness.org
books and brochures
on the natural and
cultural history of the
region, are available
at the Forest Service
office in Bridgeport.
The Lee Vining Chamber
of Commerce has
a well-stocked bookstore
with maps and
books on the region’s
history. Both Bridgeport
and Lee Vining
offer a range of mo-
395
Mammoth
Lakes
tels 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.
395
CALIFORNIA
Bridgeport
YOSEMITE
NATIONAL
PARK
182
Lee
Vining
NEVADA
Bodie
Hills
270
Bodie State
Historic Park
167
Mono
Lake
120
Lake
Crowley
Detail
Area
CA.
© John Dittli
57

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,
© Kai Hagen
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
58 1-800-THE-WILD

© Lynn Donaldson
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
© Kai Hagen
© Carrol Henderson
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 CO 2
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.
59

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
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
© Mark Silva
© Robin Sell, BLM
Bruce Babbitt Hansjörg Wyss Roy Smith Lauren Oakes
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.”
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
Elise Kahl, Melissa Rickert,
Meagan Leatherbury
Steve Scauzillo
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.
60 1-800-THE-WILD
© Steve Menzel/UWSP

Conservation Enthusiast
CROSSWORD PuzzLE By ALEx STARKEy
Conservation Enthusiast Crossword By Alex Starkey
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16
17
1
18 19
20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44
45 46 47
48 49 50 51 52 53
54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61
62 63 64 65
66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73
74 75 76
5. Last owner of the land which became
Arlington National Cemetary, Robert __
6. Animal one may see at Denali National
7. "Use Common ____", Grand Canyon
warning
8. New England's only national park
9. Home of the Colossus
10. Super market convenience
11. ____ and Run
12. Period of time
13. Military draft organization (abbr)
21. Plead
25. Start over
26. Like the ponies at Chincoteague Nation
Wildlife Refuge
© John McCarthy
ACROSS
Across 1. Land ___ & Environmental Law
47. Superman enemy
48. Often speaks out Down
27. Operated a car
28. Forest Glen _____, home of the Nation
1. 4. Land ___ ___ and & Environmental Haws 52. Need to 52. pay Need to pay 1. Application Park Seminary 31. Tic-___-Toe Historic District
Law
54. Use one’s eyes
2. Only National Park south of 33. ___ the Season
8. National Park in Utah and 54. Use one's eyes 30. Connecticut's ___ Whitney Forest, a 20
4. ___ and Haws
55. Goes up
the Equator, American ___ 34. Foundation
8. National home Park of in the Utah Three and Gossips 58. Common 55. carbon Goes emitters up 3. Expression of shock acre forest 35. Entertain to protect water quality
home of the Three Gossips 62. Willie Nelson song, __ the 4. Independence ___. National 36. Gumption
14. Sink Sink Gradually
Forest 58. Common carbon Park emitters Service historic site 31. Tic-___-Toe 38. Wind Cave National Park’s
15. Nature’s soothing ingredient 63. Wise advice from Edward 5. Last owner of the land which famous Bed of ____
16. 15. Seats Nature's soothing ingredient Abbey (part 62. 3) Willie Nelson song, became __ Arlington the National 33. ___ the 39. Season Large, beautiful tree
17. I ____ Rock
66. “_____ of the good life” Cemetary, Robert _____
42. ___ Speedwagon
16. Seats Forest
34. Foundation
18. Ponce de ____ Springs State 69. Item used at Rocky Mountain 6. Animal one may see at 43. Also
Park 17. I ____ Rock National Park 63. Wise advice from Denali Edward National Park 35. Entertain 44. Plant
19. Life lines
70. ___ to Billie Joe
7. “Use Common ____”, Grand 49. ____ Lake National Park,
20. 18. Wise Ponce advice de from ____ Edward Springs State 71. Park President in office Abbey when (part 3) Canyon warning 36. Gumption body of water filled only by
Abbey (part 1)
22. 19. Pesticide Life lines banned in the US
Badlands and Theodore
8. New England’s only national precipitation
Roosevelt were 66. designated "_____ of as the good park life" 38. Wind Cave 50. Ones National who take Park's 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, beautiful tree
comeback of the bald eagle 72. Ardent
10. Super market convenience terms
23. Simplicity Abbey (part 1) 73. Sleep stage (abbr) National Park 11. ____ and Run 42. ___ Speedwagon
56. Short piece of writing on a
24. Creepy
74. Instructors
12. Period of time
single subject
26. 22. US Pesticide Govt health banned watch dogin
the 75. US Cravings in 70. ___ to Billie Joe 13. Military draft organization 43. Also 57. Get the answer
29. Acquire
76. Places where ambulences (abbr)
32. ______ 1972- Sierra an Land action Trustlinked
may to the go (abbr) 71. President in office 21. Plead when
59. Previously
44. Plant 60. Biker
34. Could comeback be for plastic of the bags bald or eagle
bear trapping
37. 23. Swimming Simplicity pool divisions
Badlands and Theodore
25. Start over 49. ____ Lake 61. Place National for plant buds Park, body of water
26. Like the ponies at
62. Analogy words
Roosevelt were Chincoteague designated National as Wildlife filled only 64. Chinese by precipitation
dish Chow ____
40. Saugus ____Works, national
historic 24. Creepy site in Massachusetts
Refuge
national parks27.
Operated a car
65. Teaching PHDs
50. Ones 66. who Play take part sight
41. Wise advice from Edward
Abbey 26. US (part Govt 2) health watch dog 72. Ardent
28. Forest Glen _____, home 67. 19th letter in the Greek
of the National Park Seminary 53. Prefix alphabet for environmental terms
45. 29. Certain Acquire
46. “_____ old for this!”
47. 32. Superman ______ enemy Sierra Land Trust
73. Sleep stage (abbr) Historic District 56. Short 68. piece Exhibit, of writing “The ___ of on Zion a single subje
30. Connecticut’s ___ Whitney National Park”
74. Instructors Forest, a 20,000-acre forest 57. to Get the answer
48. Often speaks out
34. Could be for plastic bags or 75. Cravings
protect water quality
59. Answers on page 62
Previously
bear trapping 76. Places where ambulences 60. Biker
37. www.wilderness.org
Swimming pool divisions may go (abbr)
61. Place for plant buds 61
40. DOWN 62. Analogy words

Continued from page 50
“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
Continued from page 23
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.’”
Take Action
To Save Wilderness
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
U S E H E M S A R C H E S
S A G A L O E C H A I R S
A M A L E O N A O R T A S
G O D B L E S S D D T
E A S E E E R I E F D A
G E T E A S T E R N
B A N L A N E S I R O N
A M E R I C A L E T S S A V E
S U R E I M T O O L E X
I S V O C A L O W E
S E E R I S E S C A R S
I A M S O M E O F I T
A T A S T E S L E D O D E
C A R T E R A V I D R E M
T U T O R S Y E N S E R S
62 1-800-THE-WILD
© Jeff L. Fox
© Kent Miles
© Robert Finch

A Tribute to David Getches
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
THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY
www.wilderness.org
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
2012 CALENDAR
© Photo: Marc Muench/Muench Photography, Inc. Calendar: BrownTrout Publishers Inc.
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
14” x 12” wall calendar with
large daily planning boxes,
only $14.99 (including
shipping & handling)
Great holiday gift idea!
To order, go to
www.calendars.com
and search for
WILDERNESS SOCIETY.
Or mail your order, with
check payable to The
Wilderness Society, to:
Calendar Order, The
Wilderness Society,
1615 M St., NW,
Washington, DC 20036
© Bill Weber/Amy Vedder
63