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Plan keeps timber industry, environmental concerns in mind
A proposal to designate 215,000 acres of new wilderness areas in the Colville National Forest is drawing support from a broad coalition of forest users.
The rolling highlands of Northeast Washington are home to grape ferns, lady slipper orchids, burnt-orange flameflowers - and scratch-dry ponderosa pine that timber companies really want to log.
The wild country from the Kettle Range to the Selkirk Mountains offers a corridor linking Washington's elusive lynx with other carnivores in Montana. But it also offers uber-popular spots for riding dirt bikes, jeeps and all-terrain vehicles.
Coloradans have long chosen a way of life full of hard work and independent thinking.
As global events and economies increasingly affect our way of life in western Colorado, it becomes ever more important to stay active in planning for our lands and resources.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a new book featuring photography of the Blue Ridge Mountains might offer quite an earful - which is exactly the goal of a conservation group presenting the book to the public at East Tennessee State University Thursday.
The book, titled "The Blue Ridge: Ancient and Majestic," features photography by Johnson City resident Jerry Greer and essays by Jonesborough resident Charles Maynard. It highlights the natural beauty of the world's oldest mountains, stretching from Georgia to Pennsylvania.
A bill designating almost 350,000 acres in Do-a Ana County as wilderness and conservation areas was unanimously approved by a Senate committee Wednesday.
The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act, sponsored by New Mexico's U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, allows some public use - such as hunting and grazing - while protecting the granite peaks of the Organ Mountains and the volcanic cinder cones of the Portrillo Mountains from development.
San Juan County residents who don't want Sen. Bob Bennett's land bill to die have formed a grassroots organization, Friends of Cedar Mesa, to keep citizens in the loop while wilderness-designation discussions hang in limbo.
Mark Meloy, a retired river ranger for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, says Friends of Cedar Mesa seeks to let the citizens' voice be part of any wilderness or other conservation protections for the region in southeastern Utah.
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today reported that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved a bill that protects the Organ Mountains of Dona Ana County. Bingaman and Senator Tom Udall are sponsors of the bill.
An isolated area from high in the Mendocino National Forest in the north down to Lake Berryessa in the south is being considered for designation as a national conservation area.
Out of the 436,077 acres proposed for the area known as Berryessa Snow Mountain, 42,190 acres are located in Glenn County. The proposed area also includes land in Colusa, Lake, Yolo, Napa, Mendocino and Solano counties.
Sarah McCollum and other members of the Larimer County Youth Conservation Corps know the value of public lands.
They said they've been shedding a lot of sweat restoring tundra near the Alpine Visitor Center at Rocky Mountain National Park, and they'd like other kids to have access to spectacular public lands, too, through better outdoor education programs in public schools and other incentives to get kids outside.
A new coalition representing nearly 65,000 Pennsylvanians has been formed to advocate for increased wilderness in the Allegheny National Forest.
Six different conservation groups Friends of the Allegheny Wilderness (FAW); The Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter; the Pennsylvania division of the Izaak Walton League of America; Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited; the Wilderness Society; and the Campaign for America's Wilderness of the Pew Environment Group have thrown their support behind FAW's Citizens' Wilderness Proposal for Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest.
