Wilderness Commentary

In the first couple of decades after the Civil War ended, much of Eastern North America was covered by a magnificent forest of towering trees - hardwoods, red spruce.About 1880, lumber companies began looking at the forest with glints in their corporate eyes.

The spread of railroads made the forests accessible. The invention of Ephraim Shay made the innermost nooks and crannies of the forests acces Shay's invention was the geared locomotive, with pistons coming off the sides of the boiler driving a cogged shaft that drove gears in each of the engine's wheelsets.

As The Forum's recent editorial states, the current modest proposals for wilderness designation in North Dakota are a no-brainer. Our state has less than one-tenth of 1 percent designated as wilderness.

Wilderness designation is the most effective method of protecting valuable, unique land's wildlife. And designation is the best way of protecting our few remaining wild lands from damage from off-road vehicles. All-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles have their place and will continue to have access to many more acres than those set aside as wilderness.

Greg Stahl made several factual errors regarding CIEDRA's proposed wheelchair-accessible trails in his recent article on Rep. Simpson's hike to one of those trails at Phyllis Lake.  As a longtime wheelchair user who has worked hard to incorporate accessible trail language into that legislation, I feel compelled to set the story straight.  

When we think of what kind of country we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, we probably would rather not hand down a nation bereft of its natural wonders with its once-abundant resources depleted, gone forever. We need places such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, the Arctic Refuge and the Grand Canyon, just as they are, for future generations of Americans to marvel at, as we have had the good fortune to do.

No cars. No trucks. No stoplights. On the far horizon, maybe a tiny profile of a farmhouse or two.

Otherwise, just hills, grass and a sky of prairie blazing-star blue, in every direction and as far as the eye could see: That was the view across much of western North Dakota, not so many years ago.

That's changing. The west is becoming an industrial landscape. Oil rigs pump atop many sections, trucks convoy and raise dust along rural roads, warehouses and fences sprout on fields that used to grow only sunflowers or wheat.

That old wilderness magic was in the air in Seattle a few nights ago.

Republicans and Democrats, business leaders and environmentalists, hunters and vegetarians gathered at an outdoor retailer to celebrate the Wild Sky Wilderness in the north Cascades. Earlier this year, legislation designating the 106,000-acre Wild Sky was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Republican president.

If Coloradans can brag about one thing, it's superior hunting and fishing. We have more elk and mule deer than any other state in the country, as well as trout streams and high mountain lakes that are world renowned.

Given these abundant outdoor opportunities - Colorado has 4.4 million acres of national forest roadless backcountry - a finer place to experience America's sporting heritage would be hard to find.

When I was approached by Kirk Johnson to become a member of the Board of the Friends of Allegheny Wilderness (FAW), I said I would be honored to serve and that I "will do what I can." For more than 70 years my roots have been in Warren, Pennsylvania.  From my home on Park Avenue, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins up and down the street, my early world was mostly Glade.  (I still have vivid memories of getting my head stuck in Glade Run¹s concrete bridge rail on our walk home from church one Sunday.) I spent my formative years exploring along the Allegheny and hiking

As a longtime resident of Central Oregon, and head of a local corporation, I want to echo the sentiments of John Sterling's recent commentary on the Oregon Badlands (Aug.

Re: the anti-wilderness letter by Walt Grabe (July 25): Grabe stated that mechanical devices such as bulldozers, to fight fires will be forbidden, that fire retardant dropped from aircraft will not be allowed and that fire crews hiking in with picks and shovels are the only method of fire fighting.

I have worked fires as a district archaeologist for the forest service. I walked bulldozers into fire lines in the Sierra wilderness to ensure the least amount of impact to culturally sensitive areas as well to achieve a corridor of rapid containment around fires.