The Campaign to Keep Mount Baker Wild!

Ken Wilcox is a writer and environmental planner. His business, Osprey Environmental Services, is located in Fairhaven.

A new battle for wilderness is quickly moving toward full throttle in Washington state. Not since passage of the Washington Wilderness Act in 1984, have citizens been so mobilized to protect National Forest roadless areas and other wildlands from being chopped up and bulldozed for the benefit of a few.

After refusing to honor the overwhelming sentiment of Americans who want to keep roads out of roadless areas, snowmobiles out of our national parks, and oil barons out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Bush administration now threatens to undo the Northwest Forest Plan.

In May this year, they found that not even one single acre of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest—the nation’s largest—qualified for wilderness designation. Even though 97 million acres of roadless areas and old-growth forest still remain in the Tongass, none, they say, qualifies for wilderness.

Despite strong criticism from across the political spectrum, the administration continues, on a daily basis, to pursue its hopelessly anti-environmental agenda.

That, to say the least, raises the stakes for preserving what few wild places remain in our own backyard.

To ensure that federal roadless areas and adjacent wildlands in Whatcom and Skagit Counties can be protected from the whims of politics, wildland advocates have embarked on a new campaign for expanding our wilderness areas. It’s called Mount Baker Wild! The group works both independently and in concert with the statewide Wild Washington Campaign (www.wild-washington.org).

How fortunate we are to have 100,000 acres or more of so-called inventoried and non-inventoried roadless areas in the northern portion of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, most of which is clearly deserving of permanent protection as Wilderness.

While the 1984 act protected most of the rock and ice in the higher elevations, it failed to include much in the way of old-growth forest or other critical ecosystems. Given the very real threats of the Bush administration, it’s time to protect the rest.

It may be surprising for some to learn that so many key areas remain unprotected, some of them well-known to readers: Sauk Mountain, Shuksan Lake, Skyline Divide, Church Mountain, Cougar Divide, Loomis Mountain, Park Falls, Ruth Creek, Thompson Creek, Slate Mountain, and the entire west flank of the Twin Sisters Range.

After having hiked into many of these spectacular areas, I like to tell my friends, “Imagine all the beautiful photos you’ve seen of cathedral old-growth forests, clear, rushing streams, soundless lakes, and the diverse creatures that depend on these places—wrapped in the arms of spectacular peaks, glaciers and subalpine parklands of the North Cascades—and you have a fair image of what’s at stake.”

While recreation opportunities abound, these wild places are also extremely important to many fish and wildlife species and populations, and many are crucial to a way of life among Native American tribes with whom we share these lands.

Mount Baker Wild! is made up of representatives of the North Cascades Audubon Society, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, Bellingham Mountaineers, Sierra Club, North Cascades Conservation Council, Mount Baker Wilderness Association, Washington Wilderness Coalition and other groups. Thanks to the generosity of the North Cascades Foundation and The Mountaineers Foundation, we have the financial wherewithal to move this important work forward.

As a fledgling committee, we met with Representative Rick Larsen last August to present the case for wild land protection in the Mount Baker region. Larsen has taken a leadership role in developing a Skykomish wilderness proposal (east of Everett) with Senator Patty Murray’s office. It was clear from our meeting with Larsen that we need to demonstrate the substantial support that already exists in both Whatcom and Skagit Counties and in the communities that would most likely benefit from wilderness protection in the Mount Baker area.

Demonstrating that support may turn out to be the easy part (especially if readers of this article will take the time to call or write Representative Larsen–please do!).

Twenty years ago, wilderness advocates were forced to confront an enormous timber lobby, potent ORV, mining and development interests, another blatantly anti-environmental administration in Washington, D.C., a hell-bent-on-logging Forest Service, a supposedly green-leaning but schizophrenic public, and the usual gaggle of skittish politicians. Nonetheless, under these rather hostile circumstances, two million acres of wildlands were ultimately protected—and nobody lost an election because of it. It was a major, albeit partial, victory.

Today, there is no timber industry clucking with any credibility at all about the supposed tens of thousands of lost jobs that new wilderness designations might cause. Indeed, times have changed. The Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest decided some years ago that the need to protect environmental and recreation values on the Forest far outweighed the need to continue clear-cutting. The unfortunate demise of the northern spotted owl helped assure that transition in the 1990s, a decade in which harvest levels on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest declined by 86 percent.

Mining and development issues are less prominent in many areas today, especially along the west slope of the North Cascades. Snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles are still a pain in the neck in places where they don’t belong, but the general public is almost as weary of them as those who have fought for years to keep them from destroying what’s still pristine. There are also very few private inholding issues to resolve.

And today, the public appears to be much less schizophrenic about its desire to see wild places stay wild. While there’s a lingering tendency of Americans to keep voting way too many anti-environmental bums into office (go figure), there are good reasons to be hopeful. According to a Los Angeles Times poll conducted last year, nine out of ten respondents agreed that “it is important that wilderness and open spaces be preserved.”

As reported by the Wild Washington Campaign (and others), another pollster, the Melmann Group, queried the nation in July 1999 and found that “the overwhelming majority of Americans favor protecting more National Forest land as Wilderness.” Furthermore, “sixty-three percent support a proposal to protect wild areas larger than 1,000 acres, while more than 70 percent favor a ban on oil drilling and logging.”

Admittedly, there are still a few naysayers hanging around who continue to oppose new wilderness on its face—like Chuck Cushman, wise-use activist and leader of the American Land Rights Association. Last year, after Senator Murray announced her support for new wilderness, The Seattle P-I quoted Cushman: “Is there no end, Senator Murray, to the greed of those who would lock people off federal lands?”

It’s a familiar argument among those who think it’s wrong to leave a legacy of untrammeled wildlands to future generations. No one is being locked out. Hunters can hunt. Fishers can fish. Hikers can hike. Wolves can howl. Salmon can spawn. Native Americans and the rest of us can celebrate.

As with most unprotected wildlands, saving unspoiled areas near Mount Baker will depend on our ability to demonstrate strong public support. Will the traditionally timber-dependent communities of rural Whatcom and Skagit Counties be willing to endorse proposals for new wilderness in the region? We think so, perhaps on environmental grounds alone, but especially when the economic arguments are more clearly articulated.

In both counties (and across the state) it is our protected parks and wilderness areas that are the principal draw for tourism and recreation in these “up-river” communities. In the upper Skagit alone, hundreds of thousands of tourists and recreationists spend far more dollars each year as non-consumptive users of federal lands than does the timber industry, or the ORV industry, or the mining industry.

Winning wilderness designation for equally spectacular, but not-yet-protected, wildlands can only increase the potential for these communities to preserve the environment while at the same time enjoying increased economic vitality.

Many, like the Wild Washington Campaign, point to research indicating that “wilderness is an economic development tool, increasing land values and attracting outside economic investment.” In fact, people and businesses purposely choose to locate near protected wildlands because of “environmental and physical amenities, scenery, outdoor recreation, and the pace of life.”

The campaign website indicates that Washington state residents “by a 38 to one margin, commented in favor of a proposed rule to protect 58 million acres of National Forest roadless areas across the country, including nearly two million acres in the state.” Nationally, the roadless initiative attracted comments from a record 1.6 million people. Well over 90 percent wanted these areas protected.

Despite the decidedly anti-environmental attitudes in the Bush administration, the battle for Washington’s wilderness should be far easier to win this time around. Not a shoe-in, but easily worth the effort. Public support has never been so resounding. We should insist that our elected leaders here in Washington state simply do the right thing.

There are still 1.8 million acres of inventoried roadless wildlands in Washington that are not yet protected, and more than a million more acres that have not been inventoried. It’s not just the Skykomish or Sauk Mountain or Mount Baker or Dark Divide that are important. There are wildlands across the state where volunteers are working hard to ensure they remain wild for the benefit of ours and coming generations.

If we truly want wild areas protected, our Senators and Members of Congress will need to hear from us. And soon. u