April 2003
Volume 4

Welcome to the Wilderness Guardian, a monthly online digest dedicated to providing up-to-date news and information concerning Wilderness protection and stewardship nationwide. A service of Wilderness Watch, the Guardian was created to help Wilderness advocates keep abreast of breaking news, as well as providing contact information to facilitate public participation.

Interesting Tidbits & Wilderness Quotes:

Wilderness without SWAT teams – The March edition of the Wilderness Guardian reported that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was considering allowing a private commercial enterprise to conduct survivalist training in the Sacatar Trail Wilderness in California. We are happy to report that the BLM has recently discarded this proposal in lieu of a surge of indignant letters opposing the action. Thank you everyone!

Quote:

"…perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters…glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in." - Aldo Leopold

Contents:

Wilderness News Briefs provide short issue summaries and contact information. Action Alerts are full-length, time-sensitive postings.

Wilderness News Briefs:

1. Poison in the Gila Wilderness (AZ)
2. Good news for California Condors and Wilderness

Action Alerts:

1. Comments Needed to Protect Denali’s Wilderness (AK)
2. Stop Salt Baiting in the Teton Wilderness (WY)
3. Comment on Fish Stocking in the North Cascades

*Wilderness News Briefs*

1. Poison in the Gila Wilderness

The Gila Wilderness is America's first wilderness, established administratively by the Forest Service in 1924 at the urging of Aldo Leopold. Yesterday New Mexico's Water Quality Commission unanimously approved the NM Game & Fish proposal to apply the poison antimycin to the West Fork of the Gila River in the Gila Wilderness. The purpose is to remove stocked trout and replace them with the listed Gila Trout, in an effort to boost the population to a level that will allow delisting and resumed sport fishing of the species.

It is highly likely that the poison will adversely impact the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog that inhabits the area. Several of the commissioners attempted to strike the testimony of a medical doctor who provided scientific evidence regarding the known and unknown impacts of antimycin on humans and macroinvertebrates. Antimycin is banned in California because so little is known about its effects.

In a section of the EA entitled "Effects on wilderness, recreation, and scenery" there was nothing written -- the page was blank. We will keep you informed as this issue unfolds.

2. Good News for California Condors and Wilderness

Pinnacles National Monument will be a new release site for re-establishing endangered California condors, an icon of the once-wild coastline. The release site will entail construction of a large holding pen, water tanks, and an observation station, which would remain in place approximately 15 years.

Originally the National Park Service (NPS) considered building the release site inside the Pinnacles Wilderness and using helicopters for access to fill the water tanks, but now the preferred alternative is to construct the release facility in Grassy Canyon outside the Wilderness. Access will be by ATV and water trucks along an old jeep track.

Seeing giant condors soaring on thermals over the region will enhance the area's wilderness character, and finding a means of achieving this without placing structures and using helicopters inside the wilderness is to be commended. Please send a quick note supporting the Preferred Alternative E and supporting NPS' decision to protect wilderness throughout the process:

Rebecca Leonard
Pinnacles National Monument
5000 Hwy 146
Paicines, CA 95043
email: rebecca_leonard@nps.gov
phone: 831-389-4485 x 273

*Action Alerts*

1. Comments Needed to Protect Denali’s Wilderness

The National Park Service (NPS) has released a draft backcountry management plan for Denali National Park and Preserve. Of the four action alternatives, three propose opening portions of the park and preserve to recreational snowmobiling for the first time in park history. NPS’ ‘preferred alternative’ would open an astounding 46% of the park’s backcountry to recreational snowmobiles. Although snowmobiling will not be allowed inside the 2.1 million acre Denali Wilderness, it would be allowed on much of the park’s additional 3.75 million acres that have been formally proposed for wilderness designation.

Despite the current ban on snowmobiles, trespassing machines have become a chronic problem in the park, including noisy intrusions into critical wildlife winter range and into the Denali Wilderness. The proposed plan would simply bestow approval on the illegal snowmobiling. The plan would also open up the northern portion of the park to the noisy machines where there is currently little or no illegal use occurring. The open valleys along the northern wilderness boundary will assure that trespass into this quiet portion of the wilderness will be inevitable.

The plan would do little to effectively reduce the escalating amount of commercial scenic air tours that drone constantly over portions of the park during the summer, including over wilderness. Instead, it would seek ‘voluntary’ cooperation from commercial operators to slightly reduce impacts. The plan would also allow visitor use and congestion in some popular areas to increase, including aircraft landings of scenic tours.

Please Help Prevent this Tragic Loss of Wild Alaska!

One of America’s wildest premier wilderness parks is about to be transformed into an increasingly crowded and motorized playground. PLEASE SEND COMMENTS BY MAY 30th.

1. OPPOSE ‘preferred alternative D’ as well as all other alternatives that allow any recreational snowmobiling anywhere in Denali Park and Preserve.

2. Protecting wildlife, the natural soundscape, and the park’s unsurpassed wilderness values should be the plan’s focus.

3. NPS plans to develop ‘soundscape standards’ for the park – tell them Nature has already established those standards, and that standard is the area’s natural quiet, without the noise of snowmobiles and frequent aircraft landings.

4. SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE B, which places greater restrictions on aircraft landings and prohibits all recreational snowmobiling in the park.

5. INSIST that the plan must define "traditional activities’ for the entire park before allowing the use of aircraft, motorboats, or snowmobiles for recreational activities. By law, snowmobiles are only allowed for transportation to "traditional activities," unlike recreational snowmobiling where the snowmobile is an intrinsic part of the activity.

Send your comments to:

Superintendent
Attn: Draft Backcountry Management Plan
Denali National Park and Preserve
PO Box 9
Denali Park, Alaska 99755
Email: dena_public_comments@nps.gov

Read the plan online: http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/planning/plans/bcplan/bcbrief.html
For more information, contact TinaMarie Ekker at Wilderness Watch: (406) 542-2048; tmekker@wildernesswatch.org

2. Stop Salt Baiting in the Teton Wilderness, WY

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) wants to clean up and revegetate 25 salt-affected sites in the Teton Wilderness in Wyoming. These sites were created by hunters and commercial hunting guides as a means of luring elk out of Yellowstone National Park. Because hunting is prohibited in national parks, Yellowstone's elk are famous for living long enough to develop very large antlers that some hunters covet. To lure elk from the park, hunters pour salt on the ground just outside the park boundary within the Teton Wilderness. All summer the elk and other ungulates grow accustomed to visiting the sites to lick the salty earth. During hunting season, commercial hunting guides lead their clientele to the sites and simply wait for a trophy elk to show up. Grizzly bears may be drawn to the area by the gut piles and elk carcasses, which puts the bears at risk of being shot when they encounter humans. Although salt baiting is illegal, the practice has continued for decades with very little law enforcement.

Pawing by elk and the increased soil salinity means that the average bait site is a bare, denuded depression in the ground covering an average of 2400 sq ft. Now the USFS proposes to cover the sites with tree limbs and downed logs to prevent further trampling and compaction, add calcium to improve the soil, and reseed with native plants.

However, unless the area is closed to hunting, it is unlikely that restoration of these sites will prevent hunters from creating new salt bait sites in this remote Wilderness. Although hunting is regulated by the state, the USFS does have authority to close the area if hunting practices are harming forest resources.

Please support the Forest Service's proposal to restore these salt-bait sites, and also strongly urge them to close the area to hunting so they can assess whether restoration is occurring without threat of additional salt being added to the periphery of existing sites, and to prevent creation of new salt-bait sites.

Send comments to:

Tim Short, Deputy District Ranger
Bridger-Teton National Forest
PO Box 278
Moran, WY 83013
email: tshort@fs.fed.us

For more information, contact TinaMarie Ekker at Wilderness Watch: (406) 542-2048; tmekker@wildernesswatch.org

3. Comment on Fish Stocking in the North Cascades

From the North Cascade Conservation Council (NCCC):

The North Cascades National Park Service Complex (NCNP) "is requesting comments from the public on fishery management issues and concerns including fish stocking." This is the scoping stage of what promises to be a very interesting issue in Wilderness management in the North Cascades. Continued fish stocking has been shown to negatively impact high lake ecosystems -- especially with respect to amphibians. It is time for NCNP to revise its fish stocking and fish management policies.

During the General Management Plan process, NCCC raised questions about the ecological impact of continued stocking of fish in lakes and streams in the National Park. This practice was a hold over from pre-Park days when the US Forest Service managed the area under a multiple use management philosophy. In the early era, creating recreational opportunity by stocking naturally barren lakes in the Cascades was seen as a benefit. In more recent years, the National Park Service (NPS) has started to take its mandate to protect native species and to manage for ecosystem integrity seriously and has stopped stocking fish where they do not naturally occur. The prime benefit of the NPS nationwide approach is the protection of native species and especially amphibians like frogs, salamanders, and other aquatic biota.

The NPS requested time to perform much needed research on high lakes fishery management in order to better manage these resources. While NCCC felt that immediate cessation of stocking of fish into barren lakes and streams was the preferred alternative, NCCC agreed to a somewhat scaled down interim stocking program and a significant 5-year research program on the high lakes fish management issues. These studies are now complete and offers documentation of NCCC’s original concerns. [For more information and links to these studies, please see, www.nps.gov/noca/highlakes.htm.]

Naively, NCCC had assumed that fish stocking would cease under NPS management. Instead, NCCC learned that fish stocking continued in NCNP under a Memorandum of Agreement. NCCC asks you to consider the following concerns:

1. Assess the full impacts of fish stocking on high mountain aquatic ecosystems.

2. Fully assess the role of recreational fishing and its impacts on lake shores and stream banks [this was supposed to have been studied as part of the research but was not]

3. Assess the feasibility of restoring high lake aquatic ecosystems that have been degraded through fish stocking

4. Determine appropriate levels, if any, of fishing for naturally reproducing populations of fish

5. Identify and monitor recovery of high elevation aquatic ecosystems from effects of fish stocking and past fish management processes

6. Assess need for and feasibility of lake shore habitats where degraded by fishing and other recreational activity.

7. Assess the NCNPC lakes as scientific reference areas for other management applied in other parts of the Cascades.

8. Insist that the EIS include a detailed legal and management analysis of NPS authorities and policies relative to high lake fish management as applied to NCNPC.

Please send comments to:

Superintendent
North Cascades National Park
810 State Route 20
Sedro-Woolley, WA 98284
E-mail: noca@den.nps.gov

EIS website: http://www.nps.gov/noca/highlakes.htm (The Park will continue to accept comments beyond April 18, as this is the scoping step of the EIS

For more information, contact Thom Peters at Voice4wild@aol.com