Next week Wilderness Watch staff will be in Washington, D.C. to educate and urge members of Congress to take action to protect Wilderness.
There are always bad bills to be fought, but this year we need more. We need wilderness champions to defend against the silent threat of piecemeal dismantling of our National Wilderness Preservation System. The four agencies in charge of administering our Wilderness System have spent decades reducing their wilderness budgets and eliminating their wilderness rangers and programs with very little Congressional oversight.
This chronic neglect has resulted in a self-inflicted “emergency” and illegal actions such allowing motorized tools, like chainsaws, in Wilderness. What began as a failure to enforce the Wilderness Act’s prohibitions has emboldened the rule breakers and led to the U.S. Forest Service unlawfully authorizing third-party road construction and backcountry airstrips in Wilderness. Congress is attacking Wilderness, too. The Congressional Review Act has enabled votes to advance mining interests at the impending cost to wildlife in some of our wildest lands in Alaska and our unpolluted watersheds throughout the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area.
There are bills that increase grazing, which will undoubtedly impact Wilderness where grazing is grandfathered in, and at the the same time, the Bureau of Land Management is overhauling its grazing regulations, and Wilderness and its wildlife will not come out the winner. Even proposed wilderness bills create exceptions for surprising levels of wildlife manipulation or exceptions for otherwise prohibited uses in Wilderness. And we haven’t forgotten that Congress has amended the Wilderness Act so one recreation group—climbers—can permanently degrade Wilderness with their equipment. Our baseline has already started to shift from honoring nature for its intrinsic value to what we can exploit—from minerals to recreation. Creeping normalcy means that we, as a society, will no longer see any problem with poisoning streams to stock our chosen fish species, with moving animals around and manufacturing habitats to keep them there, with using motorized tools to rapidly shape nature, or with motoring around to get deeper into the backcountry faster. We need wilderness defenders—and we need wilderness champions. You can help us by calling your members of Congress to tell them about the value of Wilderness so when Wilderness Watch shows up on Capitol Hill next week, they take note.
Please call your representative and two senators at 202-224-3121 and deliver the following message: |
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“I'm calling to let my member of Congress know that Wilderness is important. The Wilderness Act was a bipartisan bill passed in 1964 and the threats are greater than ever. Agencies are flouting the law and Congress is actively considering bills that will undermine and chip away at the Wilderness Act. Please keep nonconforming exceptions out of wilderness bills and start holding the agencies accountable for their attacks on Wilderness.” |
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Thank you for making the call! Together, we’ll defend the Wilderness Act and our National Wilderness Preservation System from these unprecedented attacks. |
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Help us protect Wilderness around the country. A generous member has pledged to DOUBLE all first-time donations up to $30,000 this year. |
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