Daily Wilderness News Clips

Sonoran Desert National Monument, Ariz. This swath of desert is in full bloom. The mountainsides blanketed by towering saguaro forests are now dotted with yellow and orange Mexican poppies, purple lupine, and white chicory. The monument is home to three wilderness areas and two historic trails.

These 487,000 acres sit along a corridor between Arizona's two largest metropolitan areas, Phoenix and Tucson, where demographers predict the population will increase from 5 million people to more than 10 million by 2040.

Critics of off-road vehicle use said yesterday that Congress must take a larger role in preventing destructive use that is threatening some of the West's most valuable natural resources.

While administration officials said they are working hard to keep public lands protected, witnesses told the House National Parks Subcommittee yesterday that federal land agencies' inability to enforce rules on ORV use was coming at a great cost.

Congress is considering permanent protection for 26 million acres of beautiful and historic landscapes in the American West, but has quietly excluded millions of acres of California desert.

It's been 28 years since a significant chunk of national forest surrounding Aspen received Wilderness designation. Environmentalists hope to end that dry spell soon with protection for hundreds of thousands of additional acres.

Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop is helping lead the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign. The ambitious plan would add roughly 700,000 acres of wilderness in the White River and Gunnison National Forests.

When it came to their grand ambition for expanding the Mount Hood wilderness area, Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith understood the importance of finesse and patience.

The House Natural Resources Committee will vote this week on a bill that could make permanent the 26 million-acre National Landscape Conservation System.

H.R. 2016, from Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), would give permanent protections so future Interior secretaries could not dissolve the system, which was established by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton administration.

The deadline has been extended for comments about a sweeping new plan to guide management of 2.4 million acres of public lands in Southwest Colorado. The new deadline is April 11.

Much public attention has been focused on the plan's proposal to classify 55,000 acres as new wilderness, including 51,000 acres west of Hermosa Creek. This would end mountain biking on a segment of the Colorado Trail and some other popular trails. Different compromises have been discussed at public meetings. Congress is ultimately responsible for deciding wilderness designations.

Going against Bush administration efforts to increase Northwest logging, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday dropped plans to slash protections for old growth forests used as nesting trees by a threatened sea bird.

The agency reversed its proposal to cut by 94% the 3.9 million acres of critical habitat set side in 1996 to help the marbled murrelet, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act. It cited uncertainties over plans to ramp up logging on federal lands in Western Oregon, according to a notice in the Federal Register.

Atop a rocky hill in the heart of this mountain-ringed expanse of undulating grasslands and cottonwood-lined creeks, rancher Mac Donaldson gestures toward a stretch of bottomlands below.

More than 300,000 remote acres in southwest Oregon are among the lands Gov. Ted Kulongoski has urged Oregon's congressional delegation to designate as wilderness.

"I am writing to bring to your attention areas in Oregon that are ripe for wilderness and wild and scenic river designation during the 110th Congress ...," Kulongoski wrote in a Feb. 24 letter to both Oregon senators and all five members of the House of Representatives.

The proposals, however, received only cautious comments from 2nd District Congressman Greg Walden and a timber industry representative.