Issue Alert: Help Stop Tree Felling and Chainsaw Use in NM's Sandia Mountain Wilderness!
Help us protect a piece of New Mexico's wilderness! The US Forest Service is proposing to close trails where trees have been falling, and use chainsaws to cut down thousands of insect-killed trees in the Sandia Mountain Wilderness. The Forest Service wants to make sure Wilderness visitors are safe from experiencing nature. Wilderness Watch strongly opposes this proposal. We urge you to send a short email to the USFS voicing your concerns. Click here to view the Issue Alert.
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  Issue Alert: Help us Restore a Piece of the Alaska Wilderness!
The US Forest Service is proposing to remove two old cabins from Alaska's South Baranof Wilderness. Wilderness Watch strongly supports this proposal. We urge you to send a short email to the USFS supporting their proposal. Click here to view the Issue Alert.
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Omnibus Public Land Management Act
The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S 22) was passed by the Senate on 1/15/09 by a vote of 73 to 21 and was sent on to the House of Representatives for a vote. Wilderness Watch is concerned with many harmful provisions in the bill, especially a provision allowing for a road to be built through the million-acre Izembeck Wilderness in the Izembek  National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. We are also very concerned with special provisions in a couple of wilderness bills bundled in the Act, particularly the provisions for the proposed Owyhee Wilderness that would allow such non-conforming activities as herding livestock on ATVs, landing helicopters for routine fish and wildlife management, and many others. Many conservation organizations are praising the act, which, with its 160-plus individual public lands bills, would designate more than two million acres as wilderness, heritage, or conservation areas in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia, and add hundreds of free-flowing river miles to the National Wild and Scenic River System, but are doing nothing to remove the harmful provisions. We urge you to contact your congressperson and Speaker Pelosi in the House and ask them to work to remove the Izembek road and Owyhee wilderness provisions from the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. For more information, read Friends of the Clearwater’s commentary titled Comment Against the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.
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Wilderness Land Trust Acquires 2,635 acres in Southern Sierra Nevada
This from the Central Valley Business Times: “The Wilderness Land Trust…has purchased a 200-acre tract in the Domeland Wilderness and a 2,435-acre property adjacent to the Sacatar Trail Wilderness. Both parcels are in Tulare County east of the Sierra crest and will be conveyed to the Bureau of Land Management to be administered as wilderness.” Read the rest...
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DOJ Withdraws Proposed Rule on Mobility Devices
Several months ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released proposed rules to adopt accessibility standards under the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA). Key provisions under the rule included a definition for "wheelchair" and the use of "other power-driven mobility devices." Both provisions could have a direct bearing on Wilderness and other wildlands.

As the number of electric-powered vehicles being developed for different uses, including primitive or off-trail use, grows, the DOJ's proposed rule brought up the question of whether individuals with disabilities should be allowed to use their devices where others are prohibited.

Wilderness Watch's comments on the proposed rule included our support for the ADA as written, which allows the use of wheelchairs "designed solely for use by a mobility-impaired person" and "suitable for use in an indoor pedestrian area" in Wilderness. We also suggested that the ADA definition be applied to other areas that have been set aside to protect their wilderness character.  We opposed expanding the definition of "wheelchair" to other motorized or mechanized vehicles such as the Segway®.

Wilderness Watch recently learned that the DOJ has officially withdrawn its proposed rule dealing with the accessibility guidelines under the ADA. Prior to the DOJ taking this action, the Obama administration had placed a hold on all pending new regulations. The DOJ can resubmit to OMB, but has not yet stated their intention to do so.
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US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Policy on Wilderness Stewardship
Wilderness Watch is urging the Obama administration to rescind a flawed Bush administration policy for wilderness stewardship within the National Wildlife Refuge System. Some of the policy's major shortcomings include: 1) it fails to protect the physical, psychological and intrinsic qualities of wilderness, while allowing degradation of each area's wilderness character; 2) it exempts all refuge lands in Alaska from requirements for future wilderness reviews; and 3) it redefines "traditional activities" in Alaska as to allow inappropriate uses such as recreational snowmobiling in Wilderness. This new policy was issued without public comment and affects 20-million-plus acres of existing Wilderness on national wildlife refuges, plus tens of millions of acres of potential wilderness.

Wilderness Watch worked with a coalition of 98 local, regional, and national organizations to include a recommendation to the Obama transition team to rescind this policy and provide public comment opportunity.

The Clinton administration released the draft wilderness stewardship policy in January 2001 and it received more than 4,000 public comments, most of them supportive of the policy's positive direction, while advocating for strengthening provisions. The Bush administration replaced the USFWS agency professionals who wrote the draft policy with political hacks and State fish and game agency officials, who re-wrote  and weakened the policy. Implementing a strong policy that adheres to the tenets of the 1964 Wilderness Act is a priority of wilderness advocates and refuge managers alike.
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Snow Kiting
Wilderness Watch is seeing another threat to wilderness character emerge-the activity of snow kiting, where skiers and snowboarders utilize a kite to capture the wind and propel them along the ground at high speeds. According to one member of the Bend Kite Crew, which regularly meets in central Oregon's Three Sisters Wilderness to snow kite, "It's surprising how much power there is. It's like having a motorbike up in the sky." (The Bulletin, January 23: Riding the wind). While snow kiting is not specifically prohibited in the Wilderness Act, this relatively new activity in the US is clearly a form of mechanical transport, which the Act prohibits, and is inconsistent with primitive recreation in Wilderness. Although the US Forest Service feels that snow kiting is not an appropriate activity for Wilderness, they seem paralyzed to deal with the issue. For more information or to view the activity, please visit Wild Wilderness's website.
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