The Idea of Wilderness

Available Summer Adventures

There are still spaces remaining on WV service projects in several outstanding wild places. Here are a few of the places that have spots available to give something back:

Mission Mountains Wilderness, Montana, July 19 - 26

Photo by Tammy Rinaldi, WV Service Project in 2010

The Mission Mountain Wilderness, with its rugged peaks, pristine glacial lakes and mountain streams, is frequently called the American Alps. The Missions feature 225 lakes and its clear waters hold native trout, a high-bred "Cutbow" (which is a cross between the Cutthroat and Rainbow trout), and pike. Its high peaks tower 7000 feet above the valley floor, up to 9280' McDonald Peak. The slopes and valleys are heavily forested, rocky and lush with undergrowth.

This a great trip for everyone, including beginner backpackers, as it's fairly level and we have terrific pack stock support. Our service project will be very useful in helping maintaining these scenic mountain trails after a particularly late snow season this year.  See the project page to learn more and join us in America's Alps.

Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness, Bighorn Crags, Idaho, August 17 - 23

Photo by Caroline Williams, WV Service Project 2013

Located in west-central Idaho and below the Montana state line, lies the 2.3 million acre Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area - the largest wilderness in the United States outside of Alaska. Cutting through it with ferocity is the Wild and Scenic Middle Fork of the Salmon River, called the River of No Return by pioneers. High above the river is the remote, jagged Bighorn Crags area, with outstanding opportunities for hunting, hiking, primitive camping, fishing and whitewater rafting.

Please join us on our service project in this undeveloped and wild land, assisting wilderness rangers from the North Fork Ranger District with trail maintenance on the Ship Island Lake Trail. Our work will include erosion control, reroutes, brushing, and maintaining campsites following a 9 mile backpack to a picturesque base camp at Airplane Lake in the Ship Island Lake basin. 

Mt. Hood Wilderness, Oregon, September 7 - 13

Located twenty miles east of Portland, Oregon, and the northern Willamette River valley, the Mt. Hood

Photo by Sharon Pilot, WV Service Project 2012

National Forest extends south from the strikingly beautiful Columbia River Gorge across more than a million acres of forested mountains, lakes and streams. At its heart lies the imposing figure of Mt. Hood, a dormant volcano with 11 active glaciers, forested slopes and alpine meadows. The Mt. Hood Wilderness follows river drainages to lower elevations, concealing waterfalls and valleys that support an understory of Oregon grape, salal, rhododendron, huckleberries, and an overstory of towering cedars and other moss-covered conifers.

The service project is working with the Mt. Hood NF Fisheries Biology team on a continuing collective to restore and aid salmon habitat recovery along Still Creek and the Salmon River. We'll spend the first part of the week working on stream banks restoring riparian habitat, wetlands and stream-side vegetation by planting native Red cedar, and removing illegal campsites and fire rings as they are encountered. The second half of the week we'll be gathering seeds and berries for direct sewing or later propagation. Opportunities abound for day hiking to area waterfalls and taking in the sites of this classic Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest. This project is great for all experience levels including beginners to car camping and service work.

Find more info about these projects and more on our website.

Thanks for giving something back with Wilderness Volunteers!

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.

Let's Celebrate Wilderness! 2

Thomas Moran's
 "Tower Creek, Yellowstone"

In 1872, Yellowstone was designated a "public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the American people." Note that the National Park Service wasn't created until 1916, and so, in these early years, Yellowstone wasn't afforded much protection. But the creation of the park was important as it planted the idea that lands could be set aside by the government even if the idea of actual protection lagged behind.

John Muir in 1872

In the 1870s, John Muir began writing about the importance of nature and was published in many magazines. His letters, essays and books were read widely, and were an influence on the thinking about preserving natural areas. In 1874, John Wesley Powell wrote a series of articles that generated public interest in the Grand Canyon.

The "Indian Wars" came to and end with the sad battle at Wounded Knee in 1890, and John Muir creates the Sierra Club in 1892 to enlist public and governmental support for the idea of preserving natural areas. Frederick Jackson Turner read a paper at the the American Historical Meeting in Chicago declaring that "the frontier is dead" in 1893. At the close of the century, Gifford Pinchot is appointed as Chief of the Division of Forestry for the country, which later became the National Forest Service, as the government began conservation of natural resources.

The next 50 years, 1900 - 1950, saw an increasingly ardent movement growing around the protection of natural places. The growth of the railroad opened up access to the western part of the country, including the Santa Fe which brought tourists to the Grand Canyon. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt set aside the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island in Florida. The use of the Executive Order by sitting Presidents has been invaluable in protecting public lands.

Grand Canyon from Powell Point

Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1930 and wrote,
 "The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison—beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world... Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see." 
 In 1906, the passage of the Antiquities Act allows Presidents to establish National Monuments and Devil's Tower becomes the nation's first followed by Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908.

In 1913, a major conservation fight is lost when a dam is allowed at Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite. This loss boosts the determination of the environmental movement to increase their efforts for protection. Between 1920 and 1929, Arthur Carhart, Aldo Leopold, Robert Sterling Yard and others advance the idea of national wilderness preservation through their writings and appearances around the country.

Stay tuned -- more on the history of Wilderness next week.

Let's Celebrate Wilderness!

2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, signed into law by President Johnson on September 3rd, 1964. Wilderness Volunteers is planning a year long celebration of the Act, and is a sponsor of Wilderness 50th, a coalition of federal agencies, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and other wilderness user groups whose purpose is to raise awareness of this important piece of legislation and the need for Wilderness. We'll be blogging and tweeting about Wilderness weekly, and look forward to reading your comments about the role Wilderness plays in your life.

Frederick Law Olmsted

The Act was first drafted in 1949, but the idea to set aside special areas to protect them from the degradations of logging, mining, agriculture and development began with the beginnings of the environmental movement in the late 1800s. Frederick LawOlmstead pushed for protection of Yosemite Valley in 1864, and is widely held as first to advocate the idea of placing certain scenic natural areas under government protection. He is believed to be the start of the national conversation that got folks to start thinking about how quickly the US was being exploited. Around this same time, George P. Marsh publishes Man and Nature, warning citizens to stop the devastation of natural resources.

Santana

In 1867, a Kiowa Nation Chief, Satanta, recognized the effects of encroaching civilization and voiced opposition to construction of the Union Pacific Railroad at a council held at Fort Larned, Kansas. While Native Americans didn't have much sway at the time and went on to suffer greatly at the hands of the new country, their plight was noticed by the fledgling environmental movement.

More on the history leading to the Wilderness Act next week.