Amazing time-lapse photography of our National Parks

Our friends at The Wilderness Society shared a wonderful post featuring some gorgeous time-lapse photography of our National Parks. Below are a few of our favorites, where we also happen to have projects in 2015!

Yosemite National Park - June 7-13, 2015
There may still be time to throw your pack in the car and join WV in giving back on a backpack adventure in this outstanding National Park. This time-lapse is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but that's not surprising in Yosemite.

via Project Yosemite

Joshua Tree National Park - October 11-18, 2015
This Southern California National Park receives more than 1 million visitors, and there's really no question as to why. Our project there is currently full, but you're welcome to add your name to the waitlist in case of a cancellation, which does happen. And you can join us next year as well!

via Gavin Heffernan

Acadia National Park - September 20-26, 2015
Spots remain on our continuing service project in one of the most picturesque, wild places in the northeast. You'll get a good overview of the Park while giving something back.


Acadia National Park from John Fouse on Vimeo.

Zion National Park
Our continuing service project in Zion is currently full for 2015, but you can always visit this gorgeous National Park on your way to other WV service projects on the Colorado Plateau like the San Rafael Swell project or Grand Gulch-Cedar Mesa project that both still have spaces available.

via Matt Bowen

Denali National Park - July 12-18, 2015
WV returns to help maintain the Savage River Trail, a trail we helped build! This project is full for 2015, but stay tuned, as we plan to return in 2016.

via lanesapples

Olympic National Park - October 18-24, 2015
Our continuing project on the Elwha is helping naturalize the area after the dams were removed, in many cases planting saplings from seed previous WV groups helped collect.  Currently this project is full, but you're always welcome on the waitlist in case a cancellation or two occurs.

via Glenn Wadsworth

Big Bend National Park - November 1-7, 2015

Another continuing project, WV will once again return to the jewel on the Rio Grande to give something back with the National Park Service. While this project is full, WV is offering another spectacular trip in Saguaro National Park that has spaces available. 

via Sundance Kid

See the whole TWS blog post for more videos.

Wilderness: Our Enduring American Legacy

Hiking in the John Muir Wilderness

A new publication from The Wilderness Society celebrates the role of wilderness in shaping our national character, highlights the significance of wilderness in America and calls on Congress to protect more wild places.

"Changes unforeseen by the authors of the Wilderness Act five decades ago ... make the resource of wilderness even more essential to our nation's future."

 More than two dozen locally-crafted, home-grown bills to protect new wilderness areas are still pending before the House and Senate; many have been stalled on Capitol Hill for years due to political partisanship and ideological disputes. To honor the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, The Wilderness Society is calling on

Eagletail Mountains Wilderness in Arizona

Congress to renew its commitment to protecting wilderness by passing legislation to protect our wild legacy. The report highlights Hermosa Creek in Colorado, Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, and Maine’s Coastal Islands among other priority areas.

You can view this special report here. 

Let's Celebrate Wilderness! 4

Howard Zahniser

The founders of the Wilderness Society knew that the the early wilderness areas didn't have adequate protections as it was relatively easy to reverse the administrative acts that created them. They knew that it would take stronger legal action on the federal level and began to craft legislation to accomplish this. Howard Zahniser became the executive director of The Wilderness Society in 1945 and went on to write 66 drafts of the Wilderness Act. The Act went through 18 Congressional hearings between 1956 and 1964, opposed by such industry giants as the American Mining Association, the American Pulpwood Association and the National Cattleman's Association.

President John F. Kennedy endorsed the wilderness bill in 1961, and the Senate approved the Zahniser drafted bill that year, but the House radically altered their version of the bill and it died in committee that year. Howard Zahniser worked with the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee chair Wayne Aspinall (D-CO), one of the chief opponents of the bill, and other House representatives and eventually agreed to enough concessions to get The Wilderness Act of 1964 through both the House and Senate.

President Lyndon Johnson hands the pen he used to sign
the Wilderness Act of 1964 to Alice Zahniser. Also pictured
are Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Senator Frank Church
Mardy Muire, and Rep. Wayne Aspinall, among others.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Act on September 3, 1964. Unfortunately, Howard Zahniser, who worked so hard to make the Act reality, didn't get to see it finally enacted; he died in May of 1964 at the age of 58. President Johnson gave the pen he used to sign the act to Alice Zahniser, Howard's wife.

The Wilderness Act established the United States' National Wilderness Preservation System which permanently protects these federal public lands for future generations for both people and wildlife. There have been more than 100 separate Wilderness bills signed into law since 1964, designating approximately 107,500,000 acres of land as Wilderness. This is about 4.82% of the country, however, a little more than 50% of this Wilderness is in Alaska. The smallest Wilderness Area is Pelican Island, FL, at about 5 acres, and the largest is Wrangell-St Elias in Alaska at 9,078,675 acres.

Let's Celebrate Wilderness! 3

Aldo Leopold was the first to use the word wilderness to describe the areas he wanted to be preserved in the National Forests. He worked in the Forest Service where he was tasked with killing predators hated by local ranchers. He came to respect these animals and promoted an ecologic ethic that replaced the 'dominance of man' thinking that came to the United States with the settlers, with an approach that recognized that the balance of nature required predators for a healthy forest. His efforts resulted in the world's first designated Wilderness, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico's Gila National Forest.

Aldo Leopold

Leopold famously wrote in an essay, "Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" In 1935, he helped to found The Wilderness Society (along with Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKay, Bob Marshall, and Harvey Broome) which is dedicated to expanding, protecting and promoting a wilderness land ethic.

Shortly after his death in 1948, a collection of his essays were published as "A Sand Country Almanac." This book has been published in twelve languages and continues to be an important reference for modern conservationists.

More on the history of Wilderness next week.