Protecting
Wild America

Sierra Club launches project to save, restore Lewis and Clark trail

By Patrick McMahon, USA Today

SEATTLE - The Sierra Club is launching an ambitious five-year campaign today to protect and restore millions of acres of wilderness along the route explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled through the West almost 200 years ago.

The nation's oldest and largest grass-roots environmental organization has identified 34 sites in eight states for attention as it kicks off a multimillion-dollar plan called "Wild America: Protecting the Legacy of Lewis and Clark."

"There's a whole lot gone and a whole lot left," Sierra Executive Director Carl Pope said. "This is the premier land preservation and restoration opportunity that Americans are going to have in the first decade of the 21st century."

The project comes as the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's 1804-06 expedition approaches. Their journey is being celebrated in the media and in events from St. Louis to Oregon, where they became this nation's first cross-country travelers to glimpse the Pacific Ocean.

Thursday night, the History Channel premieres an hour-long documentary on the Missouri River with Stephen Ambrose, author of the Lewis and Clark biography "Undaunted Courage."

"Considering the trip was as exciting as a trip to the moon 200 years ago, every small town along the route has come down with bicentennial fever," Idaho lawyer Tom Keefe said. His hometown, Kamiah, was where the expedition camped for nearly a month after the Nez Perce Indians saved the explorers from starvation.

"This is the premier land preservation and restoration opportunity that Americans are going to have in the first decade of the 21st century."

-- Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club

"There's likely to be millions of people traveling the route in the next decade," said John McCarthy, conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League, "and to the extent we have some legacy left, the time is right" for the Sierra Club effort.

Idaho, which gets substantial attention in the Sierra Club plan, "has some of the greatest unprotected wild lands in the lower 48 states that look just the way they did when Lewis and Clark came through here," McCarthy said. However, "every year, we're losing hundreds of acres to development."

Jim Young, a Sierra Club official in Seattle and a co-author of the plan, said it seeks to permanently shield undeveloped lands such as the Beartooth Plateau in Wyoming, the Bitterroot Range along the Idaho-Montana border and the Dark Divide roadless area in Washington state.

The Sierra Club also wants to ban road building and logging in roadless areas, to protect grizzly bear, salmon and bison habitats, to keep off-road vehicles out of sensitive areas and to bar oil and gas leasing in pristine areas. The club also proposes to remove earthen sections of four dams on the lower Snake River and to protect prairie dogs in South Dakota's Buffalo Gap National Grassland.

It wants a federal wilderness designation for the Little Missouri Badlands in North Dakota to protect the area from oil and gas development. It wants the same designation for the Lemhi Mountains in Idaho, home of Lewis and Clark's Shoshone guide Sacagawea. It also wants Tillamook State Forest in Oregon, now earmarked for logging, to be saved as a state park. In Nebraska, it seeks greater water quality protection statewide and better management of the Niobrara River by the National Park Service.

New laws and regulations are needed to accomplish much of what the Sierra Club has outlined. Another key part of the plan is to generate public support for a proposal President Clinton recently announced to protect roadless areas in national forests, Young said.

The plan drew a caustic response from some.

"The wilderness advocates come up with one hare-brained scheme after another to lock up our public lands," says Clark Collins, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Commission in Pocatello, Idaho. "Wilderness advocates would lock out present-day explorers who want to use mountain bikes and off-road vehicles to explore our back country."

It is not known what the project would cost corporations or individual states.

The plan calls for elimination of some revenue-making activity such as lumbering and oil and gas exploration and would stymie some recreational development.

USA Today, November 17, 1999. Copyright 1999. USA TODAY. Reprinted with permission.

© Sierra Club

© Sierra Club

Sierra Club wants Lolo Trail protected

Organization says logging would be tragic

By Mike McLean, Staff writer

THE LOLO TRAIL -- A 60-mile stretch of the route of Lewis and Clark in Idaho is the centerpiece of a major drive by the Sierra Club to protect wildlands in the West.

The five-year campaign, Protecting the Legacy of Lewis and Clark, is already drawing skepticism over the major environmental actions it endorses.

"Americans generally have very little sense of their own history, but they are very good at commemorating events. The Lewis and Clark bicentennial is a huge event for this country."

But club members expect it to gain momentum as it coincides with the bicentennial of the historic expedition, which began when the Corps of Discovery set out from St. Louis on May 14, 1804.

"This is our nation's story," said John Osborn, during a Sierra Club sponsored tour of the Lochsa country and the Lolo Trail in the Clearwater National Forest.

The explorers traversed the ridge-line trail on their way west in September 1805 and on their return trip in June 1806.

"In this great national museum, the last wilderness section of the entire trail is the Lochsa River country," said Osborn, a regional environmental leader, author and Spokane physician. "It's remote, it's wild, it's incredible and it's a real national treasure."

Two centuries after Lewis and Clark, the world is a different place, he said, referring to the emerging series of difficult environmental problems.

"Americans generally have very little sense of their own history, but they are very good at commemorating events. The Lewis and Clark bicentennial is a huge event for this country," Osborn said. "We can eulogize what has been lost and perhaps point fingers in the process, or we can work very hard to protect what's left and to try to save the salmon, the cutthroat, the grizzly bear and the wolf from slipping into extinction."

"[C]ommemorate the bicentennial in part by bypassing those dams, honoring the treaties and saving the salmon."

The Sierra Club endorses proposals to breach four Lower Snake River dams. Osborn said a large body of scientific evidence indicates dam breaching would be the last chance for wild salmon and steelhead populations to recover in the Lochsa among other rivers.

"When Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide and stepped into the Columbia River ecosystem, they were walking into a river of life in which an estimated 16 million salmon and steelhead swam upriver," he said.

America's Native Forests

1620

2000

U.S. Forest Service photo

"One of the reasons they came down here to the Lochsa was in search of that fish to keep them alive. It was ultimately the fish and the camas root that saved their lives when they fell into the hands of the Nez Perce Tribe."

In the last century, the richest salmon fishery on earth has been transformed into the largest hydropower system, in some cases directly overriding tribal fishing treaties.

"In many ways it's a very sad part of the history of the region," Osborn said. "I think the opportunity presents itself to commemorate the bicentennial in part by bypassing those dams, honoring the treaties and saving the salmon."

Len Broberg, University of Montana environmental studies instructor and Sierra Club volunteer, said the Lochsa country is one of the last places were visitors can see the landscape much as Lewis and Clark saw it.

"This is the center of a wildlands complex," Broberg added. "This is a biodiversity hot spot. There are a lot of rare animals and endemic plants."

The Lochsa Wild and Scenic River corridor, which is sandwiched between the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness to the south and the Great Burn area to the north, is the last best place for grizzly bears, Broberg said.

"It makes sense that grizzlies should be here," he said.

While the largest land mammal in the lower 48 states may eventually find its way to the Lochsa, the Sierra Club supports transplanting grizzlies from healthy populations in Canada rather than from Yellowstone, where they are still on the Endangered Species List.

In addition, the club supports Northern Rockies Ecosystem proposals, which aim to connect separate grizzly bear populations in Yellowstone National Park, central Idaho, Cabinet-Yaak and Glacier National Park as well as lower British Columbia and Alberta in Canada to allow more genetic diversity.

"We think it's possible if we take the right steps soon," Broberg said.

Because grizzly bears are considered an indicator species, protection of land for grizzlies will also benefit other sensitive species such as lynx and wolverines.

The club, which opposes all logging on public land, is one of the biggest boosters of the Clinton administration's proposed roadless policy that would protect 40-60 million acres nationally from road building and timber harvesting.

The club specifically wants the Forest Service to withdraw plans for timber harvest on the Lochsa Face.

Clearwater National Forest officials are rewriting sales that originally included a timber harvest of 75 million board feet over a period of five to 10 years in the Lochsa country.

"This is spread over a large area and a large period of time," said Dennis Elliott, CNF deputy ranger. "I would guess we're a year and a half to two years away from anything going on the ground."

Some of the projects would be visible from the Lolo Trail.

"Any timber harvest you see would be set up to emulate natural conditions," Elliott said.

"What I would expect to see would be large acreages with what we could call structure left afterward. Just like you would see after a fire."

Two-thirds of the project involve ecosystem burning.

"Some of that would probably come right up to the Lolo Motorway," Elliott said.

Not everyone is delighted by the Sierra Club's campaign.

"the last wilderness section of the entire trail is the Lochsa River country. It's remote, it's wild, it's incredible and it's a real national treasure."

Alex Irby, a Konkoville Lumber resource manager who grew up in the Clearwater area, said the Sierra Club should let the Forest Service manage the resources.

About 70 percent of the land in the Clearwater Region is federally managed.

"Coming out against all logging is foolhardy," said Irby, an Idaho Fish and Game commissioner who enjoys the trail. "When they came out with that stance, it alienated some of their best supporters."

He said there is no longer excessive logging in the region.

"The Forest Service just hasn't been selling any timber here for five to 10 years. This past year, they sold a little under 2 million feet on a forest that's capable of growing close to 400 million a year," Irby said. "Most of that was firewood and fence posts."

Coeur d'Alene Press, October 3, 2000. Reprinted with permission of the Coeur d'Alene Press

 

36,647 Miles of Roads and Trails

By Chris Ehlers

While the US Forest Service is busy gathering public comment concerning the proposal to exclude the building of new roads on 40 million acres of public land in the U.S., with 8 million of those acres in Idaho, one environmentalist group says more than enough roads already exist for motorized use. Too many, in fact, according to the Sierra Club.

135,000 miles of roads and 26,000 miles of trails are open to dirt bikes and ATVs across eight Western states.

"This discrepancy is grossly unfair," said Roger Singer with the Middle Snake Group of the Sierra Club in Boise. "Idaho's growing recreation need is greatest for more non-motorized use, like hiking and horseback trails, not more dirtbikes.

"There are already 36,647 miles of National Forest roads and motorized trails in Idaho," Singer added.

"Only a fifth of the landscape first experienced by Lewis and Clark two hundred years ago on foot and on horseback is still wild,"

-- jonathan stoke

"Non-motorized use is being crowded out for a privileged few."

The fuel for the Sierra Club's fire was an internal report with data gathered by Sierra Club staff and released last week that concluded that motorized vehicles have been given access to National Forest trails out of proportion to their numbers. The report found 135,000 miles of roads and 26,000 miles of trails are open to dirt bikes and ATVs across eight Western states.

The result of the motorization of forest backcountry is that hikers, backpackers and horse riders who seek to escape machines during their trips, according to Sierra Club officials, are crowded onto a limited number of trails -- 112 per mile each year in Idaho. On the other hand, the smaller number of dirt bike and ATV users is spread out across a larger area -- 36 riders per mile annually.

"Only a fifth of the landscape first experienced by Lewis and Clark two hundred years ago on foot and on horseback is still wild," said jonathan stoke of the Sierra Club. "Much of what remains is without lasting protection, threatened by dirtbikes and ATVs."

"Trail use by dirt bikes and ATVs spooks wildlife, creates erosion, introduces invasive weeds, and hounds out other hikers and horse riders who can't stand the noise, stench and damage the machines cause to the trails."

-- Mark Lawler

Ditto, said Mark Lawler with the Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter in Washington.

"While ever increasing numbers of hikers have been crowded into the backcountry, the US Forest Service has happily spent huge amounts of money to "'improve' trails for dirt bikes and ATVs," Lawler said. "Trail use by dirt bikes and ATVs spooks wildlife, creates erosion, introduces invasive weeds, and hounds out other hikers and horse riders who can't stand the noise, stench and damage the machines cause to the trails."

Wood River Journal (Sun Valley, Ketchum and Hailey, Idaho), June 21, 2000, Reprinted with permission of the Wood River Journal.

Shattered Solitude And Eroded Habitat

The motorization of the Lands of Lewis and Clark

Mark Lawler, Sierra Club, June 2000.

"The American West has been utterly transformed in the two centuries since first documented by Lewis and Clark. We continue to lose wildlands at a rapid pace: it is estimated that Washington state has lost an average of a quarter-million acres a year over the past century and Idaho lost a million acres of wildlands on National Forests in the ten years before 1995."

"This report [shows] that on the whole, many more opportunities for recreation on motorized trails and roads are available to ORV riders than are available to the far greater numbers of hikers and horse riders. There are enough open roads on the region's National Forests and Grasslands to go around the Earth five times. Similar discrepancies occur in winter recreation between snowmobiles and cross country skiers and snowshoers."

The mileages given are only for National Forests and Grassland. State and private lands, plus National Wildlife Refuges, and even Parks, have additional miles of roads and ORV routes.

The full report is available for electronic viewing or printing at www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/ORV or by contacting mark.lawler@sierraclub.org.

For more on the
Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

please see: www.sierraclub.org/lewisandclark
Email the campaign at lewisandclark@sierraclub.org
 
Call the campaign in Washington at 206-378-0114, ext 311
or in Montana at 406-582-8365, ext 3004

More sites:

The National Council of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial www.lewisandclark200.org
(888) 999-1803
 
MONTICELLO
www.monticello.org
(434) 984-9822
 
PHILADELPHIA
American Philosophical Society
www.amphilsoc.org
(215) 440-3409
 
ST. LOUIS
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
www.nps.gov/jeff
(314) 655-1700
 
NEZ PERCE NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK
Spalding, Idaho
www.nps.gov/nepe
(208) 843-2261
 
FORT CLATSOP
www.nps.gov/focl
(503) 861-2471
 
For more on the Columbia River's environmental history
and it's future, visit www.waterplanet.ws

"Capt. Clark" at the DeVoto Grove of Ancient Cedars, Clearwater National Forest, Sept. 2000. Photo: Chase Davis

 

About Sierra Club & Ridgelines

The Sierra Club's grassroots advocacy has made it America's most influential environmental organization. Founded in 1892, we are now more than 700,000 members strong. The Northern Rockies Chapter covers Idaho and eastern Washington, and is comprised of five groups: Upper Columbia River, Palouse, Middle Snake, Sawtooth, and Eastern Idaho.

Our Mission is to:

  • Explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth;
  • Practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources;
  • Educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and
  • Use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.

To find out more about us and our work, visit our web page www.sierraclub.org. For more information about the Northern Rockies Chapter, see www.idaho.sierraclub.org.

A special thanks to John and Ann Klekas for their fine work in uncovering the Lewis & Clark stories from 1805 and 1806.

Quotes from Bernard DeVoto are from THE JOURNALS OF LEWIS AND CLARK, edited by Bernard DeVoto. Copyright © 1953 by Bernard DeVoto, renewed 1981 by Avis DeVoto. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Ridgelines is the journal of the Northern Rockies Chapter of the Sierra Club. This is a special Lewis & Clark commemorative issue, edited by John Osborn; computer,web, layout and graphic design by Easy.

Ridgelines is published by the Northern Rockies Chapter of the Sierra Club, and is free to all members living within the geographical area of the chapter. Submit letters or articles to PO Box 552, Boise, ID 83701.

This publication is printed on at least 40% recycled paper with soy based ink. This edition is also on the web, which helps reduce paper use, and can be viewed at: www.waterplanet.ws/lewisandclark



www.sierraclub.org

NORTHERN ROCKIES CHAPTER LEADERSHIP DIRECTORY

Chair & RCC At Large
jonathan stoke*
jonathan.stoke@juno.com
 
Vice-Chair, Membership Chair
Marty Marzinelli*
 
Secretary, Dave Hedge
dave.hedge@juno.com
 
Treasurer, John Allen
 
RCC Delegate, Ron Wise*
wiser@valley-internet.net
 
Conservation Chair & RCC At Large
John Osborn*
john@waterplanet.ws
 
Council Delegate, Duane Reynolds*
wdreynolds@bigfoot.com
 
RCC Delegate, Edwina Allen
edwinaallen@homeinternet.net
 
Al Poplawski*
dial@moscow.com
 
John Schmidt*
jschmidt@srv.net
 
Hal Rowe*
hrowe@kettlerange.org
 
Bert Redfern*
bertilia@juno.com
 
* Chapter Executive Committee member
 
GROUP CHAIRS
Upper Columbia River - Hal Rowe
hrowe@kettlerange.org
 
Palouse - Al Poplawski
dial@moscow.com
 
Sawtooth - Duane Reynolds
wdreynolds@bigfoot.com
 
Eastern Idaho - John Schmidt
jschmidt@srv.net
 
Middle Snake - Scott Larson
LARSOS@bor1.sd01.k12.id.us
 
STAFF
Chase Davis
(509) 456-8802
scnw@icehouse.net
10 N Post St, Ste 447, Spokane, WA 92201
 
Roger Singer
(208) 384-1023
roger.singer@prodigy.net
PO Box 552, Boise ID 83701


Return To Lewis & Clark Home Page

 

Contents

Download the full newsletter in color in printable PDF format.
Section 1
Introduction
Bicentennial
Corps of Discovery
Section 2
100 Years Later
200 Years Later
Section 3
Protecting Wild America
About Ridgelines & Sierra Club
 
Return To Lewis & Clark Home Page