Citizens for Eastern Washington Wilderness

Northeast Washington advocates

You care deeply about the wild and beautiful country in your own backyard: what's the next step? In 2005 concerned folks in eastern Washington organized formally as “Citizens for Eastern Washington Wilderness.” Their goal: to help protect remote and wild public lands in the Columbia Highlands and help find creative solutions to recreation, roadless, and wilderness issues.

One of the things this group likes best is to get out and hike. They occasionally coordinate trail maintenance and restoration outings in the national forests, and sponsor events that showcase the wealth of eastern Washington natural areas.

Special people, special places

The Citizens are working to protect:

• Hoodoo Canyon, the Kettle Crest, and other areas in the Kettles in the Colville National Forest
• Additions to the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area, Abercrombie-Hooknose, and Grassy Top Mountain, near the Selkirk Mountains
• Wenaha-Tucannon wilderness lands along the upper Tucannon River in the Umatilla National Forest

These lands give habitat for diverse wildlife, including the last population of mountain caribou in the lower-48, bear (both black and grizzly), wolverine, lynx, great gray owl, northern goshawk, spruce grouse, elk, moose, mule deer; bull, red-band, and cutthroat trout; and native salmon and steelhead.

A bit of local wilderness history

Several proposed wilderness areas in the Kettle Range and Selkirk Mountains received Congressional scrutiny when the 1984 wilderness bill was developed, but, aside from the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area, located in the extreme northeast corner of the state, no other wilderness was designated in what has been Washington's only wilderness bill to date.

In all, less than 3 percent of the Colville National Forest is protected as designated wilderness (33,000 acres), in a landscape where many thousands of acres of roadless lands deserve wilderness status. The Citizens plan to change that. Please join them!

For more information about Citizens for Eastern Washington Wilderness, contact Derrick Knowles at 509.747.1663 or dknowles@conservationnw.org.