Stalking the Desert Holstein - Wildlife guzzlers in Wilderness

— By Steve Tabor

Nature lovers are used to industrial processes posing a threat to the land. Yet the advent of wildlife farming poses a new and menacing threat to the desert Wilderness of Southern California. The artificial augmentation of bighorn sheep populations for hunters has become a new and profitable industry, and it appears that everybody wants a cut.

Peculiar edifices known as "game guzzlers" are central to the success of this new industry. The California Fish and Game Department (CDFG) proposes to build more than one hundred of these in the desert, most in or adjacent to Wilderness. The "guzzlers", elaborately constructed artificial water holes, are designed to collect water for bighorn - rainwater runoff if it occurs, city water trucked in from urban areas if it does not. The fact that rainfall is often too meager to keep 10,000-gallon water tanks full seems to be lost on the project’s proponents. Furthermore, to keep the Wilderness guzzlers full, the plan calls for road construction for water trucks and frequent helicopter trips for repair and water fills. Wilderness, formerly viewed as a wildlife sanctuary, will now become a farm.

Conservationist Edward Abbey referred to mule deer as "rats with antlers" because of Fish and Game's elaborate efforts to "increase the herd" for hunters disgruntled at their lack of success. Bighorn will now become the "desert Holstein", raised in the same manner as livestock, mere raw materials in an industrial operation instead of wild animals dependent on their own responses to evolutionary pressures.

Bighorn sheep, an icon of wild and free nature, are now seen as a cash cow. Hunters are willing to spend several thousand dollars to kill them. The first sheep tag each season is auctioned off to the highest bidder, bringing in more than $100,000 for Fish and Game. Collectors of animal heads have been known to mortgage their houses to pay for a tag.

In July 2001, the California Fish and Game Department proposed the construction of two "guzzlers" in the Sheephole Valley Wilderness south of Route 66. The federal agency responsible for the Wilderness, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), went along with proposal. The 174,800-acre Sheephole, one of California's largest desert Wildernesses, is a CDFG-designated "growth area" for bighorn. It already has two constructed "guzzlers" and has been subjected to periodic transplants of animals since the 1940s. Hunting was begun in the Wilderness in 2000, after bighorn numbers had risen to eighty-two animals. Soon after, an unexplained die-off of fifteen animals occurred. CDFG concluded, without evidence, that lack of water was the reason, so the agency proposed to build two more "guzzlers". Disease, polluted water, poaching, or poisoning could have caused the deaths, but CDFG decided to solve the problem with more water.

One new "guzzler" is slated for Upper Surprise Canyon in the Calumet Mountains, seven miles across Sheephole Valley from the die-off. It's a remote canyon with no "guzzler" and no road. The Desert Trail, a map-and-compass hiking route moving north through the deserts of California, Nevada and Oregon, goes right past the site. The "guzzler" and its road will spoil hikers’ experience of the Wilderness, imposing an ugly new construction and disrupting wildlife populations. The Calumets are a seasonal refuge for bighorn, with migration routes and isolated lambing areas. CDFG wants a new "guzzler" to make a "permanent" population, and of course, to create a new hunting destination with fresh heads. A visit to the Calumets this winter revealed fresh bighorn tracks and scat. Several natural "tinajas" (rock tanks) were discovered. Sheep are doing well, without the CDFG.

The BLM conducted an Environmental Assessment (EA) of the project which they later deemed as having no significant impact on the Wilderness. The EA listed clear impacts to the wilderness character of the area, including 14 miles of new road used to construct and maintain the guzzlers. In addition, 17.5 acres of Wilderness will be modified by construction, and new sets of wheel tracks will be a temptation to ORV trespassers (even though the EA acknowledges that the BLM is unable to stop trespassers).
The EA also acknowledged new threats to wildlife, including the attraction of predators to the new water supply, which poses a threat to bighorn. Other threats include the disruption of bighorn lambing and migration, the disruption of the life process of other animals due to the new water supply, the introduction of noxious weeds into Wilderness, and dangers to native plants and the desert tortoise from increased trespass on the new roads.

Desert Survivors, Wilderness Watch, and other groups are watching the situation carefully as we await the BLM's final decision. More than one hundred comments were received by the agency, twenty times the average for a BLM "Proposed Action". It is our belief that bighorn sheep should remain free and wild, along with the desert Wilderness they are dependent on. If we want to see a "desert Holstein", we'll go to a farm. Nothing beats a truly wild animal, just as nothing beats a true and untrammeled Wilderness. We've worked hard to get Wilderness in the desert. Unfortunately, we now have to work even harder to keep it wild.

Steve Tabor is the executive director of Desert Survivors, a non-profit desert conservation organization with 800 members. The group advocates desert protection and also leads trips to the desert. To learn more, visit www.desert-survivors.org.

— By Howie Wolke

Howie Wolke is a Wilderness guide and long time conservationist who sits on Wilderness Watch’s Board of Directors.

We all knew what was going on but could do little to stop it. Most citizens were either indifferent or oblivious. It was a cold-blooded, systematic program perpetrated by a dedicated government cadre, a tragedy of momentous proportions.

In a 1984 interview with Public Land News, then Forest Service Chief Max Peterson came clean with the statement that "We generally road probably one to two million acres (of unprotected roadless area) per year." That’s at least a million acres of roadless de-facto "small w" national forest wilderness – about the size of Montana’s Glacier National Park – annually down the tubes. In recent years, the rate of national forest roadless area demise has slowed, although the Bush administration plans to renew the assault. Unfortunately, the assault on our roadless lands is not limited to areas managed by the Forest Service. On lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), roadless area bulldozing continues unabated, and throughout most of the public domain an explosion of ATV abuse threatens nearly every acre that is not designated Wilderness.

Turn the clock back to the early 1950’s and the post-war housing boom. Although national forests could and would never contribute much over 10% of the nation’s annual sawlog cut (that figure is now under 5%), Forest Service officials wanted a piece of the action. Thus they set the bulldozers in motion by soliciting timber companies to build mills near national forests. In 1952, Chief Christopher Granger boasted that the upsurge in Forest Service logging was due to "the initiative of Forest Service men going out and getting business." Since World War II, America has lost roughly 40 million acres of rich, magnificent forest wildland that otherwise might have become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). In addition, millions of acres of BLM, National Park, and National Wildlife Refuge wildlands have also been developed.
Roadless area loss to roadbuilding, logging, mining, ATVs, intensive livestock use, and resort development creates many well-documented problems. Problems such as erosion and weed infestation, habitat fragmentation, loss of old growth and wilderness dependent species, demise of native fisheries, loss of native biodiversity, increased poaching and road kill, loss of solitude, and the loss of the general essence of places that have harbored native life for centuries. Conservation biologists proclaim that as wild habitats shrink and become more isolated, species will disappear and ecosystems unravel. Our unprotected roadless areas form a protective hedge against this trend, yet they cannot perform this duty without protection.

Now, turn the clock forward and imagine a future in which this unprotected roadless domain has been squandered. Aside from the ecological ramifications outlined above, to where will the non-motorized users of these lost wilds go for recreation? To designated Wilderness, that’s where. Those who formerly hunted, fished, backpacked, camped, horsepacked or ski toured in silent wild unprotected places will inevitably turn to what will be the only remaining realm of wild country, the National Wilderness Preservation System.

In the lower 48 states, where most of us live, there are about twice as many unprotected public land roadless acres (over 90 million) as acres of designated Wilderness (roughly 40 million). Its easy to see future demand for designated Wilderness recreation dramatically increasing – perhaps doubling – in response to roadless area loss. Sadly, with increased user demand comes a corresponding increase in all of the known impacts, conflicts, and restrictions that must be imposed in futile and controversial efforts to keep designated Wilderness wild. Wilderness will suffer more eroded and compacted trails and campsites, more litter and fecal contamination, more wildlife displacement, more horses and more weeds, and less silence and solitude, more required permits and so on. Add to this equation our nation’s expanding population, and a potentially grim scenario for the future Wilderness system emerges. That’s why it is so important for those working for better Wilderness stewardship to support the efforts of those who work to protect threatened roadless areas.

By the same token, much of the conservation movement behaves as though designated Wilderness is safe from abusive practices, ignoring the increasingly widespread degradation of the NWPS. Wilderness Watch and others focused upon Wilderness stewardship need more support from those whose primary mission is to protect roadless areas and secure new Wilderness designations. As one who works with both Wilderness Watch and various organizations focused upon new Wilderness designations, I see cooperation between the two approaches essential to the future of American Wilderness.

In other words, we Wilderness lovers are all in the same tiny boat. Our shrinking public land Wilderness domain – designated and de-facto – is under assault from a rapidly expanding human population that on a global scale already converts about 40% of the earth’s terrestrial net primary production to human biomass and its support facilities. That in itself is reason enough to designate every single acre of qualifying wildland as big W protected Wilderness, the only land designation we have that safeguards public wildlands from a juggernaut that knows no bounds, and to make certain that Wilderness is administered to the highest standards possible.

— By Tim McNulty

With its lowland temperate rain forests, lush sub-alpine meadows, glacier-capped peaks and rocky, storm-bound coast, the Olympic Wilderness in Washington is one of the jewels of the National Park System. Honored by the international scientific community for its unique ecosystem, Olympic was designated as a biosphere reserve in 1976 and added to a select list of World Heritage sites in 1982. In 1988, Congress completed protection of Olympic by adding nearly 877, 000 acres of the park to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Though fourteen years have passed since the Olympic Wilderness received its designation, park officials have yet to produce a management plan. Instead, they have initiated a historic building boom in Olympic that has stunned conservationists with its disregard for Wilderness values. A review of recent projects in the Wilderness shows that park officials consider aging forest service structures to be cultural treasures, more significant than the unique (and threatened) Olympic Wilderness.

The most recent project is a plan to helicopter two newly constructed shelters into a remote sub-alpine meadow. The new shelters were constructed to replace two abandoned forest service shelters that collapsed due to winter snow. Opposed by conservation organizations including Wilderness Watch, the new shelters were constructed - at no small expense - even before the park service invited public comments on their proposed plan.

Olympic Park managers consider aging backcountry structures to be cultural treasures as worthy of preservation as old-growth forests, wild salmon or wildlife. That the structures occur in designated Wilderness appears to be of little concern, as does the fact that the newly constructed replacements are hardly historic. (The two shelters are sided with milled lumber and fitted with constructed floors, both significant departures from the original earthen-floored, cedar shake-sided structures they are meant to replace.)
Olympic officials have played fast and loose with cultural preservation in Wilderness for years. Many restored structures include buildings that fail to meet the minimal 50-year requirement for consideration under the National Historic Preservation Act. Importantly, the Act does not require that buildings be preserved, even those listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Though historic documentation is required, the buildings may be removed or simply allowed to fade back into the landscape - often the most appropriate option in Wilderness.

In its willingness to reconstruct non-existent historic buildings the park service, which manages the majority of America’s Wilderness, is setting a dangerous precedent. Officials would like to transform the Olympic Wilderness into a historic theme park, a second-rate Mesa Verdi for the 1930s forest service. There are dozens of old shelters and sheds that have moldered back into the ecosystem under Olympic’s near-biblical rainfall. As it stands, without guidance from a Wilderness management plan, and sound judgment from park managers, even a shack from the 1970s could be deemed a cultural resource deemed worthy of restoration.

What you can do:

Though the comment period concerning the proposed plan to fly two new structures into the Olympic Wilderness ended in December, you can still send your comments and concerns to the following address:

Superintendent David Morris
Olympic National Park
600 East Park Avenue, Port Angeles, WA 98382.

Tim McNulty is a poet, author of "Olympic National Park, A Natural History" and other books, and president of Olympic Park Associates.

— By Bill Worf

Americans place a high value on maintaining links with the past. Each year, historic monuments such as Monticello and the Little Big Horn receive thousands of visitors interested in learning about the skills and deeds of our colonial ancestors. Predictably, a number of historic places are located in designated Wilderness, including cabins, trails, and bridges. This fact poses a challenge for Wilderness managers, who must balance the need to maintain historic structures with their overarching mandate to preserve wilderness character.

If approved, structures more than 50 years old may be protected by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which was sighed into law on October 15, 1966. Section I(b) of the Act states that, "…the spirit and direction of the Nation are founded upon and reflected in its historic heritage;…the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved …for future generations of Americans ..." Since NHPA passed we have placed numerous structures and sites on the National Register of Historic Places.

NHPA does not require preservation or restoration of historic structures. It only requires that restoration/preservation be explored as one option for preserving the historic message told by the structures themselves. This is an important distinction regarding structures in Wilderness, as there are many constructions over 50 years old that may not need to be preserved as historic.

Some managers believe their responsibilities under NHPA eclipse their responsibilities under the Wilderness Act. This is particularly true when the historic properties are cabins. For example, a recent proposal by the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park aims to thin trees and brush around 25 small cabins within recommended Wilderness. The Superintendent proposes to use chainsaws and other motorized equipment and to transport personnel and tools with helicopters. The cabins in question were built about 100 years ago by military personnel and early park rangers for winter snowshoe patrols to prevent wildlife poaching.

One can certainly understand the interest in these old structures and the story they tell. I’m sure the Park sincerely believes its proposed action is proper to fulfill its responsibilities under NHPA. However, it overlooks the historic preservation duties under another Act signed into law 2 years, 1 month and 11 days before NHPA. The Wilderness Act of 1964 strives "to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness". Congress took action "In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify, all areas within the United States and its possessions...".

When considering the future management of the historic cabins (or any other historic structure in any Wilderness) managers must keep in mind that wilderness is the ultimate American historic resource. Howard Zahniser described Wilderness as "a piece of the long ago that we still have with us." It was the resource that Pilgrims stepped into when they came ashore at Plymouth Rock. At that time, except for a few small enclaves occupied by Native American villages, the wilderness resource blanketed all of North America. These historic cabins (and other similar structures in designated Wildernesses) are relics of our ancestors struggle to subdue the wilderness. They are, however, intrusions on the historic value of the wilderness resource. Historically speaking, these cabins are, to the resource of wilderness, as electric wiring or aluminum siding would be on a building originally constructed in 1800. Historic relics similar to the old cabins abound across the nation but only a few tattered remnants of Wilderness remain. The only place future generations will see it is within units of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

The issue is not whether to follow NHPA or abide by the Wilderness Act. The objectives of both Acts can and must be met on all Wildernesses. The Park should balance its responsibilities by having the cabins thoroughly documented using site maps, photographs, architectural drawings and a written history. Once that is done, nature should be allowed to operate unhindered. Future generations will be able to watch as natural processes - including wild fire - slowly and completely erase the evidence of mans’ works. Left alone Wilderness, the ultimate historic resource, will restore itself!

— By Melissa Walker

Imagine that you have never visited Wilderness in the eastern United States, and you have only just learned about the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975 that paved the way to the designation of almost a million and a half acres of Wilderness east of the Mississippi River. As a supporter of Wilderness Watch, you decide to educate yourself about wild places in states you’ve only seen from airports and urban streets. You start your investigation in Georgia, a state you don’t immediately envision as wild, but which in fact has more than a dozen areas of spectacular designated Wilderness.

As the chair of the Georgia chapter of Wilderness Watch, I welcome visits from folks who want to learn about Wilderness in our neck of the woods. I recommend that you visit the Rich Mountain Wilderness near Ellijay, Georgia, eighty-five miles north of downtown Atlanta. My husband Jerome and I pick you up at your hotel, and in less than half an hour we turn off on a four lane that takes us past Jasper, Talking Rock, and Ellijay. At Cherry Log, we turn right on the Rock Creek Road that borders the Rich Mountain Wildlife Management Area and parallels Rock Creek. Unfolding to the south is the roadless Cold Mountain area and beyond that the Rich Mountain Wilderness. We drive another few miles of this now dirt road and leave the car at Stanley Gap. From there we walk along a rutted, almost impassable single lane road for half a mile to the Wilderness boundary. You tell me that you long to disappear into the woods, but we have come for another reason—to understand the major threat to this Wilderness.

Instead of going directly into the Wilderness, we skirt it, walking along a rough, muddy, deeply rutted one-time logging road that has fueled a raging controversy between conservation groups and ORV enthusiasts. Locals refer to this road as the Old Road. For two hours we head south, climbing up to Horsepen Gap, where Old Road turns west, winding around Big Bald, Little Bald, Aaron, and Bee Mountains.

When RARE II lands were mapped in the early 1970s, the nearly 10,000 acre area now known as the Rich Mountain Wilderness and the adjacent 5,500 acre Cold Mountain primitive area were mapped as one roadless area, with no reference to Old Road. Yet when the Rich was designated in 1986, Old Road became its northern boundary, separating it from the equally wild Cold Mountain area, which surely would have been included in the designation if it had not been for Old Road.

Attempts by environmentalists to close Old Road have been unsuccessful because no one seems to know who owns it. The Forest Service insists that the road belongs to the county, though it runs entirely through national forest lands. Although the road doesn’t appear on any map of county roads and isn’t maintained by the county or anyone else, Gilmer County agrees that it’s the rightful owner. Attorneys who have looked into the matter say the county cannot provide supportive documentation for their claim.

Meanwhile, despite of our efforts to stay upright we slip, slide and sink into deep mud, even falling from time to time. Churned and pitted, Old Road has become treacherous as increasing numbers of ATVs invade the area, which is described in detail on ATV websites. While the road is hazardous for hikers, it is even more dangerous for motorized users; drivers navigate Old Road at high speed, drinking beer and throwing trash into the brush and, when the road gets too rough, heading off into the Wilderness, crushing ancient colonies of fern and trillium.

I doubt that those who come here on joy rides even know the names of the plants they degrade and eventually kill: trientes borealis (starflower), veradim viride (false hellebore), and heraculum maximum (cow parsnip). Among the diverse species of trillium found here are colonies of the rare trillium simile and trillium flexipes. Less rare, but still uncommon, are trillium luteum and trillium grandiflorum.

The 9,649 acres of the Rich Mountain Wilderness are covered with a rich, black loam that gives the area its name. On ridges one finds basswood, ash, and black cherry, trees commonly found in the eastern Blue Ridge only in high, rich coves. This richness of the soil and over 60 inches of rain each year accounts for the diverse and extravagant flora. The names of the mountains reverberate with the history of pioneer days: Horse Pen, Wolf Pen, and Turniptown Mountains; Tickanetley Bald, Big Bald, and 4,040-foot Rich Mountain. "Bald" refers to a relatively treeless mountaintop covered either with a meadow of grasses and wildflowers or a heath studded with mountain laurel and the reddish orange flame azalea. The azalea’s color is so intense that when he first saw it in bloom, the 18th century naturalist William Bartram thought the woods were on fire.

In the late afternoon we come to a steep drop-off where two Mercedes SUVs went into the deep ravine a couple of years ago. Fifty yards later we see a new Chevy Silverado blocking our way, its frame resting on a three-foot high boulder, its front wheels turned out in opposite directions in a kind of wall-eyed gesture of surrender, its unlucky owners nowhere in sight.

On the final leg of the hike, Old Road becomes increasingly degraded. In places it is worn so that we stand in trenches so deep that what was once the edge of the road is now over our heads. One would think that the obvious degradation associated with the Old Road would provide more than ample evidence that it must be closed. Unfortunately, legal action will probably be necessary before the county abandons its specious claim. When that happens, the Forest Service will be obliged under existing laws to close the road. Only then can the Cold Mountain Primitive area be reunited with the Rich Mountain Wilderness and the whole area be protected from the devastating incursions of motorized vehicles and careless humans.

Your comments count! Send letters to the Forest Service urging closure of the road to Alice Carlton/Acting Forest Supervisor C.O.N.F./1755 Cleveland Hwy/Gainesville Georgia 30501Melissa Walker, Vice-President of National Wilderness Watch/Chair of Georgia Wilderness Watch, and author of Living on Wilderness Time (September 2002)