Daily Wilderness News Clips

A federal judge in San Francisco Tuesday struck down national forest management rules devised by the Bush administration that environmentalists had denounced as a thinly veiled sop for timber companies.

U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin ruled in favor of a group of 14 environmental organizations that sued the U.S. Forest Service for essentially relaxing regulations in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act.

SUMMIT COUNTY - A plan to add up to 30,000 acres of new and expanded wilderness areas in Summit County will require local support, and this week, backers of the "Hidden Gems" proposal will meet with the county commissioners to provide a few details.

"It's a good opportunity to get everybody on the same page," said Lisa Smith, who has been coordinating the wilderness plan for the past few years.

Glacier National Park will be a century old next year, and park Superintendent Chas Cartwright wants one special present.

"With the upcoming centennial, I can't think of any better birthday present than to formally designate these lands as wilderness," Cartwright said.

"President (Richard) Nixon forwarded that recommendation to Congress 35 years ago," he said. "So it's truly a matter of unfinished business that has been sitting in the lap of Congress since then."

The 70-square-mile Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness has a lot going for it: a short driving time from Portland, spectacular views and a good workout for hikers.

The wilderness derives its name from the marriage of the Salmon River and Huckleberry Mountain --and the mountain is a grand objective for a summer hike. Save it for a clear day, though, to take advantage of the panoramas from the open areas on the summit. The top has a sub-alpine look, with phlox and other low-lying wildflowers splashing the rocky areas with purples, reds and yellows.

COWEN, W.Va. -- When a tree fell across Little Fork Trail in the Monongahela National Forest in February, Diane Artale and Nathan Welch could have cleared it away with chain saws.

But as of March 30, when an act granting wilderness protection to 37,000 acres of remote Monongahela National Forest land was signed into law by President Obama, hand tools must be used to do maintenance work along the deep-woods footpath. Little Fork Trail passes through part of a new 11,951-acre expansion of the Cranberry Wilderness Area.

Tom Vilsack deems them to be in the interest of forest stewardship. But proposals for new roads would be reviewed at the highest level of the Forest Service.

In Summit County, about 60,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas are currently managed under direction of the 2002 White River National Forest plan. District Ranger Jan Cutts said the plan's roadless direction comes from the original 2001 national roadless rule established under President Clinton.

At one point in my life I was very interested in studying wild sheep. I almost accepted a graduate research project at the U of Alaska to look at winter diet and behavior of Dall sheep in the Brooks Range. I wimped out when I realized that I'd be alone months at a time in a tiny cabin on the North Slope peering through a night vision scope to watch the animals in the near 24 hours of darkness of mid-winter forage in 50 below zero weather. It just didn't sound like that much fun-though definitely interesting.

There was much evidence last week that the infamous era of "Timber Wars" in northwest Montana seems to have gone out with, not so much a bang, as a whimper. That isn't to say that disputes over land use, timber, recreation and wilderness won't continue as long as there is public land. But the interests involved in such disputes seem to be looking toward processes that might get them some of what they want, if not everything, while avoiding some of the deep acrimony that arises from such disagreements.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that it has begun to mark and establish the boundaries of the newly created Soda Mountain Wilderness.  Boundary markers will be installed at prominent access points and portions of seventeen roads will be barricaded.

The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of March 2009 (Public Law 111-11) designated approximately 24,100 acres within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (CSNM) as wilderness.

RIO GRANDE GORGE, N.M. - Craning his neck to see over the small airplane's instrument panel, Ron Gardiner points out the path Spanish explorers had to take around the deep crevasse that cuts through the center of northern New Mexico.

To the west of the famous Rio Grande gorge and its towering basalt cliffs is a broad plateau of sagebrush, native grass and remnants of the ancient volcanoes that helped form this rugged landscape. Herds of elk, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and golden eagles call it home.