Wilderness News

Comments at Tuesday's city council meeting indicate a lot of people care about the 360,000 acres of desert, canyons and washes southwest of Mesquite.

And why not? It's a magnificent landscape, with incredible vistas and fascinating rock formations. It is becoming an increasingly popular place for outdoor recreation, and people come from all over the world to explore its unique attractions.

This is the sixth in a weekly series profiling the areas proposed by the Hidden Gems campaign for federal wilderness designation. The campaign, led by Carbondale's Wilderness Workshop, calls for approximately 380,000 acres to be protected as wilderness. Most of the land is in the White River and Gunnison national forests, and includes areas in Pitkin, Gunnison, Eagle and Summit counties. An act of the U.S. Congress is required to designate new wilderness.

DENVER - It's been 11 years, but Denver democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette says she's pleased that her once-highly-touted wilderness bill has finally gotten a Congressional hearing. The bill was first introduced in 1999.

DeGette's bill targets more than two dozen areas across the state as possible federally protected wilderness areas, including prized plots of wild lands north of Interstate 70 in Eagle County. If passed the total land mass of all the proposals would hover near a million acres. Most of them are at mid-range altitudes.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Dianne Feinstein's push to build support for her plan to preserve more than a million acres of San Bernardino County land has yielded an important ally: the White House.

During a budget hearing this week, high-ranking Obama administration officials spoke favorably about Feinstein's legislation to create a pair of national monuments totaling 1,075,000 acres in the Mojave Desert, one northwest of Palm Springs and another in the eastern reaches of the county.

The Hidden Gems wilderness plan is a once in a lifetime opportunity to preserve environmentally sensitive parts of the National Forests that surround us. The areas proposed for protection by Hidden Gems generally consist of intact lower elevation habitats within the White River National Forest. Development or over-use of these areas, many of which are located right here in the Frying Pan, Crystal and Roaring Fork river drainages, would have a major impact on wildlife, soils and vegetation.

In a change of position for the Obama administration, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said last week that Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act," which seeks to combine new wilderness protections with logging mandates in Montana's national forests, could be acceptable as long as changes are made to the bill.

"We're going to continue to work with Sen. Tester to accomplish what the bill is supposed to do," Vilsack said. "There's a tremendous opportunity here."

Edgar Wayburn, 103, a physician and five-time Sierra Club president who is credited with protecting more wilderness and parkland than any other American citizen, died March 5 at his home in San Francisco. No cause of death was reported.

I was happy to support wilderness protection at the recent field hearing for the proposal aimed at protecting local natural treasures like the Organ Mountains, Broad Canyon, and the Potrillo Mountains. More than 500 interested citizens attended, and as I listened to the many voices, one thing was clear: Community members want our precious public lands protected so that New Mexicans can forever enjoy these wild places.

A House panel will consider a bill this week that would designate about 850,000 acres of public lands in Colorado as wilderness.

H.R. 4289, from Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), would give a protected status to more than 30 separate areas in Colorado, including what DeGette terms "crown jewels" such as the Browns Canyon, Dolores River Canyons, Redcloud Peak, the Palisade and Bull Gulch.

"Many of the lands are endangered by drilling," DeGette's chief of staff Lisa Cohen said. "As Colorado continues to expand, the wilderness is shrinking."

The fight over 50,000 acres of land in Buffalo Gap National Grassland might seem irrelevant to those who don't follow the ins and outs of wilderness management.

But the land's uniqueness means that South Dakota either faces a great opportunity or is poised for a disastrous mistake.

U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., plans to introduce legislation to designate the area as federally protected wilderness.