UPDATE-Forest Service Condones Rogue Actions Against Wolves in ID:  As we reported last September and again in December, ID Fish and Game (IDFG) has requested permission from the Forest Service to land helicopters in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (FCRONRW) to dart, capture and radio collar wolves. Although 95% of public comments opposed the plan, the Forest Service (FS) approved the plan last month. This won't be the first time IDFG has landed in the FCRONRW—as we reported in the December Wilderness Watcher (pg. 8), agency personnel landed at least once last winter to collar a darted wolf, and IDFG has stated its belief that it has the "legal authority" to land in the FCRONRW even without FS approval. Rather than force the State to follow the law, the FS thought it better to change the rules to make IDFG's actions legal. Wilderness Watch will continue its efforts to stop this.
Wilderness Watch file photo

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 Wilderness Watch Weighs In—
—On Wilderness/Logging Bill:  "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act" will Greatly Compromise Wilderness— Last month we reported on damaging wilderness provisions in the "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act", S. 1470—provisions that are contrary to the Wilderness Act, will compromise the wilderness character of areas designated as Wilderness by the Act, and will likely establish harmful precedents for future wilderness bills. Click here to read Wilderness Watch's testimony submitted to the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.
Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF photo courtesy of US Forest Service

—No to Poisoning Lakes in Sequoia-Kings Canyon (SEKI) Wilderness:  The National Park Service (NPS) is considering a plan to poison up to 85 lakes plus numerous streams, seeps and bogs in the SEKI Wilderness. The project is designed to remove introduced fish in order to protect the imperiled Mountain Yellow-legged Frog. Wilderness Watch is urging the NPS to adopt an alternative approach that doesn't involve poisons, motor vehicles, or other uses anathema to Wilderness or toxic to other lifeforms.

The proposal was first floated in 2007 as the "Restoration of Mountain Yellow-legged Frogs and High Elevation Lakes and Streams Environmental Analysis". We urged the NPS to write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to consider alternatives to using poison (which was part of their preferred alternative), evaluate and fully disclose their impacts, and evaluate why the frog population was declining before deciding to poison sensitive aquatic ecosystems. In 2009, the NPS released a Notice to Prepare an EIS published in the Federal Register. We submitted comments on the notice, which included our concern that, "...prioritizing one native species over others to the harm of other native species is not consistent with protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems or wilderness character."
Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness photo by George Wuerthner

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Action Alert—Keep it Free:  The Powder River Ranger District of the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming is proposing a $10/day user fee for the heavily used West Tensleep Parking Area. This undeveloped area is a gateway to the Cloud Peak Wilderness. It offers no amenities that could justify or legally allow a fee through the requirements of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. Please email or call District Ranger Mark Booth (307-684-4625) and let him know your concerns with charging the public to park at a Wilderness trailhead. Click here to read a letter to the editor (by one of our members) published in WY's Buffalo Bulletin.
Cloud Peak Wilderness photo by Andrea Davidson, courtesy of wilderness.net

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Action Alert—Quid-Pro-Quo in California:  The California Desert Protection Act of 2010, S. 2921, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, will expand the National Monument System, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and the National Wilderness Preservation System (including additions to the Death Valley National Park Wilderness—90,152 acres, Golden Valley Wilderness—21,633 acres, Kingston Range Wilderness—53,321 acres, and San Gorgonio Wilderness —7,141 acres). Unfortunately, the bill's damaging provisions include the release of Wilderness Study Areas—33,571 acres of the Soda Mountains Wilderness Study Area and the 84,400-acre Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area—plus the legislative designation of five off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation areas and the requirement that the Secretary of the Interior study the possibility of expanding these OHV areas. We encourage our members to contact Sen. Feinstein and let her know your concerns with these provisions:

Phone-
Washington, DC: 202-224-3841
San Francisco: 415-393-0707
Los Angeles: 310-914-7300
San Diego: 619-231-9712

Email: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe (Other contact information may be found here.)
Soda Mountains Wilderness Study Area photo by John Dittli

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UPDATE—Little Lake Creek Wilderness:  In the December Guardian, we urged readers to comment on two proposed dams that would flood thousands of acres of bottomland, slope, and upland forests in the Sam Houston National Forest (SHNF) in Texas, including all of the Little Lake Creek Wilderness (LLCW), plus many miles of the Lone Star Hiking Trail, and thousands of acres of federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker habitat. The Region H Water Planning Group (RHWPG) voted not to include the dams in its draft 2011 Region H Water Plan (RHWP), but only because it lacks information on the dams. If a study were to be done, it's possible the 2011 plan could be amended to include the dams.

If you haven't yet, please consider submitting comments to the RHWPG (and thank them for not including the dams in the draft 2011 RHWP): Mr. Mark Evans, Trinity County Judge, c/o Reed Eichelberger, P.E., General Manager, San Jacinto River Authority, P.O. Box 329, Conroe, Texas 77305-0329. If you live in Texas, please contact Brandt Mannchen, (713-664-5962) for information on additional specific actions you can take as the process continues.
Wilderness Watch file photo

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Kofa Project Delayed:  The US Fish & Wildlife Service has delayed the High Tank #3 project in the Kofa Wilderness following interest and concerns expressed by Wilderness Watch and others. The proposal for improvement of this pothole includes the use of a helicopter and a gasoline-powered cement mixer. This, like other tanks built in the Kofa, is cited as a water source for bighorn sheep. According to the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge's manager, the paperwork on the project is awaiting final review at the Regional Office and a decision will follow. We'll keep you informed on the outcome.
Photo courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish Department

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Save the Dates:
MT—Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 6pm:  Walkin' Jim Stoltz concert to benefit the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, which Wilderness Watch is part of. Join us for an evening of music and fun celebrating Montana's wildlands and learn why Senator Tester's "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act" fails to protect our public lands.

Place: The Stensrud Building, 314 N. First St., Missoula, MT 59802
Time: 6pm
Cost: Free
For more info, please email Dawn Serra at Wilderness Watch.

CA—Thursday, April 8 through Sunday, April 11, 2010: 2010 Western Wilderness Conference at UC Berkeley:  The Western Wilderness Conference will focus on the role of wilderness in an age of global climate change. Issues and questions to be addressed include:

• How can wild lands mitigate the effects of climate change?
• How will climate change impact wilderness qualities?
• How can we guard the vital concept of wilderness as "untrammeled" land when managers are actively assisting wildlife to help species escape from, or adapt to, the effects of climate change?
• How can we connect with new allies and make wilderness relevant to "non-traditional" supporters, like Native Americans, Hispanic communities, urban dwellers, hunters and anglers? And how can we engage the next generation?

For more information, visit: www.westernwilderness.org.

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Loving Wildernesses, Parks and Forests to Death:  A new study looking at housing around every national park, national forest, and Wilderness in the lower 48 has mapped and produced statistics on the increasing incursion of homes within 1 to 50 km of these protected areas. Researchers determined in 2000 there were 38 million houses within this specified range, nearly triple the 9.8 million in 1940, and predict the trend to continue, with a projected increase of nearly 50 percent between 2000 and 2030. One of the study's authors writes, "I was shocked to think that these protected areas aren't doing the job we believe they were doing. There are now rings of housing around national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite...These parks, wilderness areas and forests are intended to protect biodiversity, so we need look at what is going on. We are in danger of loving these protected areas to death." Click here to read the rest.

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Congressmen Say the Damnedest Things: "Let me say that this bill illustrates one of the problems that we here in Congress have. Wilderness designation is the most inflexible and restrictive of any of the land use weapons that are at our disposal and in our arsenal."
-Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), the ranking republican on the House Resources Committee, describing the Wilderness Act. This was from a floor discussion about a bill that would authorize the Forest Service to issue special use permits for existing water diversions in the FCRONRW and Selway-Bitterroot Wildernesses.

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 Wilderness in the News: Great American Wilderness Spots
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