December 2007

While contemplating your gift-giving options this holiday season, consider simple wilderness-related gifts to inspire your loved ones. Gifts like snowshoes, back-country maps, and binoculars make great tools for wilderness exploration. A humorous look at wilderness is available in the Nevada Wilderness Project's 'Wild Men of Wild Nevada' 2008 wall calendar, featuring scenes of Nevada's great activist men in the wild.

In the second half of the 20th century, industrial clear-cut logging ran rampant in the Tongass. In the face of such destructive, unsustainable logging practices, a handful of concerned citizens organized their first initiative: to permanently protect West Chichagof and Yakobi Islands in order to preserve the precious ecosystem for cultural and ecological purposes for current and future generations.

For over fifty-five years, Dr. Sanford "Sandy" Schemnitz has been a friend and champion of the wilderness. A lifelong hunter, Sandy has brought his love of outdoor recreation and his commitment to wild land preservation to his work as a professor of wildlife sciences.

Some of the last remaining ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest are imperiled by a Bush Admin- istration plan that ignores the wilderness qualities of these areas and leaves them vulnerable to large-scale logging. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has released its proposal for managing 2.5 million acres of western Oregon forestlands. The BLM's process for developing wilderness recommendations has been grossly inadequate - they recommended a mere 5 of the 146 areas inventoried as potential wilderness.

November was a busy month on Capitol Hill for wilderness legislation. While new legislation was being introduced by Representative Dave Reichert (R-WA)-bringing to an fourteen the number of wilderness bills on Campaign for America's Wilderness' active agenda-the House heard testimony of five additional bills.

The San Juan Mountains are spectacularly scenic, filled with brilliant wildflowers, jagged peaks, and clear lakes, and sparkling streams. Within the San Juan range, and just six miles south of the Town of Telluride, is the Sheep Mountain area, which covers more than 11,000 acres and reaches an elevation of approximately 13,000 feet. It encompasses a variety of ecosystems, including alpine tundra, subalpine fir, aspen forests, and wetlands.

Dear supporter,

In this first session of the 110th Congress, the final push to enact legislation comes this month. With your help again, we hope to see at least a couple wilderness bills get to the President's desk.

The House of Representatives passed two wilderness bills, for the Wild Sky in Washington, and for the Blue Ridge of Virginia. These bills could be taken up by the Senate yet this year. Contact your senators to ask about the status of H.R. 886 and H.R. 1011 and indicate your support for their enactment.