Creating an enduring wilderness in the Columbia Highlands

By Derrick Knowles

Protecting wilderness is not an easy task. Especially in remote, western turf, like the Columbia Highlands. We should know. Some of our staff and volunteers and other wilderness advocate allies have been at it for decades. So we take our wins and blows seriously. This summer, we have a little of both to report on.

The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

First, the good news. On Friday, August 14, 2009, in Spokane, we had the ear of Congress to hear from experts about balanced forest management for the Colville National Forest, including wilderness, responsible forestry, and recreation issues. This forum on collaborative efforts sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers was a major step forward for the wildlife and communities of the Columbia Highlands.

And now the bad news. In a stunning disregard of seven years of collaboration and common ground reached by the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, a preview of what "potential wilderness areas" the Colville National Forest is considering recommending for wilderness gives only 4 roadless areas out of 21 a high rating.

That’s less than a quarter of the eligible lands the Coalition recommended for wilderness consideration and far from a balanced package. It’s a huge disappointment to wilderness advocates. But it is not that big of a surprise from an agency with a long history of hostility toward wilderness.

When many people think of the Forest Service, what comes to mind is a friendly ranger out walking our trails and campgrounds greeting hikers and campers or the image of good-old Smokey-the-Bear. But, as the old joke goes, behind Smokey’s back he’s hiding a chainsaw. Understanding the Forest Service’s rich history for pushing road building, logging, and motorized recreation projects in undesignated wilderness and opposing permanent protection for most wildlands is key to making sense of how a public lands agency can be so out of step with the wishes of the American public.

A 2008 Zogby poll showed nearly 9 out of 10 Americans believe protecting wilderness is important.

Of course, there are many honorable, good people working for the Service, especially on the Colville National Forest where trust has been built through years of collaboration. Yet it can be difficult for many of them to rise above the historical roots and bureaucratic ruts of their agency to support meaningful protection for the well-deserving lands they manage on behalf of all of us.

Wilderness and the Spark of Passion

There is something about wilderness, even the very word, that lights a spark of passion, either for or against, in the souls of so many millions of Americans. Wilderness, for the majority of us in the pro-wilderness camp, lives in our minds and dreams as a place where some element of the magic and myth that helped shape us still hangs on there at the edges of our mapped and managed world, a place where ecosystems and wildlife can still get a fair chance to live, struggle, and evolve without the tinkering of humanity.

The small but vocal anti-wilderness crowd, on the other hand, has a mix of mostly ideological objections to what they wrongly portray as lands of "no use." They fear the loss of mechanical powers to control, manipulate, and modify the few remaining landscapes of our primordial past.

Then there are the land management agencies, including the Forest Service, who are occasionally tasked, as is the case with the Colville’s current forest planning process, with recommending new potential wilderness areas to Congress. 
Witnessing this process of running some of the most rare and beautiful wild landscapes through a sterile decision-making process has been disheartening for many of us. How did the Forest Service exactly determine that only 4 of 21 roadless areas are rated high as potential wilderness?

A big part of it seems to have been determined by specialists with little connection to the amazing lands in question, applying out-of-touch and in some cases absurd criteria, basically passing judgment subjectively that the other 17 areas are just not wild enough.

A Step Into the Wild

It can turn your stomach to listen to people explain that Thirteenmile Canyon or Twin Sisters roadless areas, for instance, are not wild enough to be wilderness, when you know damn well they’ve never spent the time you have out in such places.

How many members of the forest planning team or the anti-wilderness crowd (that really just want to ride their ATVs up and over the Kettle Crest) have actually made the several day trek through 13-mile and Bald/Snow from the San Poil River to Sherman Pass? Or spent nights out winter camping below Snow Peak under a dark night sky? Or spotted tracks of wolverine or lynx? Or even stepped away from their vehicle and out in a wild forest more than a couple hundred yards?

Distant town lights, far-off sights of farm fields and other developed lands, a popular cabin the Forest Service could easily draw out of the boundaries of a recommended wilderness area—these are some of the sad excuses used to disqualify deserving lands for wilderness.

One might think such officials may be unaware that there are wilderness areas practically on the city limits of Albuquerque, Tucson, Missoula, and other western communities where the sights and sounds of those cities didn’t deter their protection, except that those wilderness areas, too, are managed by their own agency.

In fact, wilderness adjacent to towns and cities are just as wild and provide an added benefit as a recreation and tourism destination and scenic backdrop to neighboring communities. Then how could it be that such considerations were used to shoot down the wilderness merits of thousands of acres on the Colville National Forest? Politics, I'm afraid.

We've seen seven years of collaboration between timber and environmental leaders with more and more local business and community leaders and elected officials choosing collaboration and real solutions over more of the same old fighting and ideological battle lines that have held our communities back. Yet the Forest Service has not demonstrated their ability to rise above their historic bias against wilderness by supporting a balance of protected and managed lands.

Power of the People

This is nothing new. Congress has traditionally stepped in to correct errors and omissions in Forest Service wilderness recommendations. It was Congress who overcame objections from many in the agency and passed the Wilderness Act in 1964 after nearly a decade of debate. The Wilderness Act was created to give Congress and the public a tool to end the continued whittling away of wild areas by the Forest Service and other agencies. And, beginning with the forum for the Colville held on August 14, we hope it will be Congress who picks up the pieces of what’s shaping up to be an unbalanced forest plan recommendation and brings the balance back.

Such political attention is long overdue for an area that’s been repeatedly passed up despite its critical importance for wildlife. What's different now? Why the interest from both an eastern Washington Republican and a western Washington Democrat in giving the Colville National Forest this much attention in the midst of immense national debates over major economic, social, and environmental challenges?

It's likely that the critical mass of common ground the Coalition and others have built has set the stage for our elected officials to work with the timber industry, conservationists, and local communities to come up with a truly balanced, winning plan for the forest.

Our Senator and Congresswoman have an excellent opportunity to build on existing common ground and forge ahead with a bipartisan solution. They'll be leading today by following the footsteps of dozens of other Democrat and Republican stalwarts from the recent and distant past. These historical leaders overcame party and ideological differences to craft both wilderness and other land management and conservation legislation and provide the funding and support for local communities to solve land and conservation challenges.

Moving forward will require leadership and overcoming the entrenched ideologues that have vested political or personal interests in maintaining the conflict and polarization of the past. 

Wilderness, the Natural Unifier

It’s no secret that wilderness is the politically challenging piece, although a critically integral one, of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition’s vision for the forest. But many western Republicans and Democrats since 1964 have been able to rally impressive common ground around wilderness and other public lands bills. As wilderness historian Doug Scott writes in The Enduring Wilderness, there have long been wilderness champions from so called red states and blue states. "Wilderness laws have been the good works of deep-dyed conservative Republicans and Teddy Roosevelt progressive Republicans, of 'Blue Dog' Democrats and liberal Democrats, and of Independents."

As Scott notes, "It is dead wrong to conclude that all Democrats support or all Republicans oppose wilderness legislation. Such an assumption flies in the face of a history of thorough bipartisan leadership for wilderness preservation in Congress, which in turn reflects broad public support."

In recent years, a host of wilderness bills have passed in Washington's neighboring states with the support of Republican lawmakers. In Idaho, Senator Crapo championed the Owyhee Initiative, which passed this year, protecting over 500,000 acres of new wilderness in the spectacular Owyhee canyonlands. In Oregon, former Senator Gordon Smith had been a strong supporter of the wilderness designated in the Mount Hood area. Representative Mary Buno Mack of California backed hundreds of thousands of acres of new wilderness in her state this year.

Here in the Evergreen State, there is also a long tradition of bipartisan wilderness achievement. Congressman Dave Reichert cosponsored legislation that created the Wild Sky Wilderness Area and is the lead House sponsor on legislation to protect additions to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Other Republican wilderness backers in the state include former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, former Senator Slade Gorton, former Governor and Senator Dan Evans, as well as former Congressman Sid Morrison.

We can only hope the cooperation the Coalition has nurtured will lead to even more bipartisan wilderness efforts in the Columbia Highlands in the near future.

The Road Ahead

After nearly eight long years of hard work finding innovative, science-based solutions to forest management problems on the Colville National Forest, it is comforting and inspiring to look to the past to remember the many struggles our wilderness forefathers endured to get us where we are today. Scott, in The Enduring Wilderness, writes about the frustrations shared by prime architect of the Wilderness Act Howard Zahniser after eight years of campaigning for the Wilderness Act: "No one, I suppose, knows better than I do how wearying it is to continue over a period of years what is essentially the same program. I can well sympathize with all who grow tired of having to repeat essentially the same efforts Congress after Congress. I surely am eager to go on to the next step."

We hear you, Zahnie. We, too, eagerly await moving forward in the Columbia Highlands.