Time Is Right for Eastern Wilderness
Sometimes eastern wilderness seems like a well-kept secret. “People hear so much about the wilderness out West that they may forget that there are wild places in the East,” says Frances Hunt, director of eastern national forest protection for The Wilderness Society. “It’s usually not as expansive as it is in the West, but it’s plenty special.”
In fact, Hunt and others are deeply engaged in campaigns designed to protect wilderness in a half dozen eastern states, almost entirely on national forest land. The most immediate prospects are in northern New England. By year’s end Congress may pass a bill adding 34,500 acres of New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest and 42,000 acres of Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest to the National Wilderness Preservation System. That would increase the two states’ wilderness total by nearly 50 percent. “It has been 16 years since wilderness has been protected anywhere in New England, so this legislation is overdue,” says Leanne Klyza Linck, who joined our staff in 2005 to lead the effort to protect wilderness in Vermont and New Hampshire. The measure also would establish a 15,857-acre national recreation area.
In Pennsylvania, we have teamed up with Friends of Allegheny Wilderness and others on a campaign to create eight wilderness areas totaling 54,460 acres. Located in Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania, these spots are popular with campers, hunters, anglers, birders, and boaters. “In addition, protecting these places would safeguard watersheds that provide clean water to downstream communities,” says Hunt, who hopes that a bill will be introduced in 2007.
The wilderness coalition in Virginia is building support for legislation that would add 43,000 acres of the Jefferson National Forest in the southwestern region of the Old Dominion to the Wilderness System. In West Virginia, we expect our efforts to lead to introduction of a bill early next year that would safeguard much of the 143,000 acres of wilderness that we have proposed for protection in the Monongahela National Forest. (Read more)
Further south, we worked with Georgia ForestWatch and other allies on shaping a measure that calls for expanding seven of Georgia’s 11 wilderness areas and making the popular Mountaintown Roadless Area a 13,382-acre national scenic area. We also have coalitions building momentum for wilderness bills in the Carolinas.
“With so much of the nation’s population in the East and the demand for high-quality outdoor recreation on the rise, these bills take on even greater importance,” says Bart Koehler, director of our Wilderness Support Center in Durango, Colorado.
“We have hardworking grassroots allies in all these states who have been at this for a decade or more. It’s been 20 years since we have been this close to seeing Congress create so many eastern wilderness areas.” To help protect wilderness in the East, urge your representatives in Congress to support the bills for these states.
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