With a daunting agenda, and little time, it seems the wilderness community moves from one campaign right into the next. We often don’t celebrate our successes enough.
Fortunately, people are taking time out to commemorate their collective achievements in winning Congressional approval and Presidential signing of new additions to the National Wilderness Preservation System. To see the burly rancher bear-hugging one of our staff members is a winning picture. To observe publicly the roles played by members of Congress, county commissioners, city councilors, small business owners, and representatives of horse-riding or hunter-and-angler groups, is the right thing to do.
It’s also well worth getting out to these landscapes now protected as wilderness. A staff person for one of our partner organizations in California did just that on a hike, and came across a sign for the new Hoover Wilderness the Forest Service already has proudly erected.
For my part, I took a river trip down the east fork of the Owyhee River with a couple of our board members, a foundation supporter, a botanist from the Bureau of Land Management, a professional nature photographer, and staff from our partner organization, the Idaho Conservation League.
In seven days, including Memorial Day weekend, we saw more bighorn sheep than people. We flushed a pronghorn fawn, whose mother appeared out of the sagebrush at the fawn’s alarmed bleating. We ran some river and portaged some. We gazed up at cliffs dappled with sulphur moss and topped with rocks shaped like gargoyles of ancient castles.
More important than the scenery and wildlife, however, is the knowledge that future generations will be able to explore these canyons just like we did, thanks to the hard work of a lot of local people, all of whom should be very proud of what they have done for their communities, and for the nation.
