Stewardship Campaign News

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Tennessee Wilderness Act with Wilderness Trail Work

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:15:22 +0000

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I am swinging a pulaski deep into the ground, hoping to chip off a nice large chunk of soil. I am on Sampson Mountain on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Tennessee Wilderness Act of 1986, doing trail maintenance in this magnificent wilderness. It is a gorgeous October day and I am working together with six volunteers, all of us swinging pulaskis and hoes, eager to repair the tread on this trail so that others can venture up here and enjoy the stunning view.

The Tennessee Wilderness Act of 1986 designated five areas in the Cherokee National Forest as wilderness, including the spot I am standing on, and I cannot think of anything I would rather be doing right now than working on this mountain side with a group of strangers who are as passionate about wilderness as I am, and as willing to spend a Saturday maintaining a trail.

This trail is rarely used because it has not been maintained for a period of time and erosion has obscured or entirely eliminated the trail at certain stretches. What a shame, since the views from up here are spectacular! During the summer, a trail maintenance crew with the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards worked on an earlier part of the trail that had been blocked by fallen trees after a tornado ripped through the area. With crosscut saws, the sawyers removed the massive logs, cleared the debris, and once again made it passable. We are following up on their work by digging a wider tread, so that the trail will be visible and passage will be safe during all seasons.

Digging trail is hard work, but it is also fun, and through the sweat and toil, we are talking, laughing, and making sure that everyone stays hydrated. The camaraderie is almost instant when you hike two steep miles up a mountain with heavy tools in order to dig trail tread for several hours.

We get a good stretch of the trail done, and our crew leader is impressed with the progress that we have made. While there is still much work to do to get this trail restoration completed (by future volunteer trail crews), the six of us feel pretty good about our contribution to restoring this trail to a top condition for the hikers that will follow.

As we decend through the stunning fall foliage of the hardwoods and the beautiful gorges filled with rhododendron, I am grateful that this landscape is protected, and that its beauty, solitude and uniqueness will be enjoyed by hikers for generations to come. As for me, I feel rejuvenated and relaxed. I will soon be back in the smog of Washington, D.C., but for now I am breathing fresh air and taking in the amazing nature that surrounds me, already planning my next trip to the Tennessee wilderness. Maybe next time I come down, I will get to visit a brand new wilderness in the state, one of the 19,556 acres of land that would be designated as wilderness if the Tennessee Wilderness Act of 2011 passes in Congress.

See you on a Tennessee wilderness trail!
Anna

To find out how you can volunteer with a trail maintenance crew in the wilderness of Tennessee, contact Bill Hodge of the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS) at billhodge@trailcrews.org or 865-617-4804.

A Subtle Kind of Wilderness

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:00:00 +0000

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Last Saturday I was able to join 30 enthusiastic hikers to explore a kind of wilderness that is different than what we often think of as "wilderness" – the subtle, enigmatic hills and valleys of the Adobe Badlands. The Adobe Badlands are unique in many ways, a maze of soft yellow shale that supports extremely rare plants and creatures that survive the harsh conditions in this starkly arid landscape.

Adobe Badlands is also a Wilderness Study Area quite close to the western Colorado town of Delta. The area’s proximity to a population center makes it both highly valuable for nearby quiet solitude. It also means this area is vulnerable to human impacts of dumping and unauthorized motorized use. Primitive hiking opportunities include a trek to the geologic formation aptly named “Devil’s Thumb.”

Formed from Mancos Shale deposited in an ancient inland sea, the Adobe Hills are hotspots for globally rare plants. The clay-loving wild buckwheat is an Adobes plant found only in two counties in the world. Sensitive wildlife including burrowing owls, pronghorn, white-tailed prairie dog and kit fox inhabit this mysterious ecosystem.

Saturday’s educational hike featured intriguing desert plants like the desert trumpet, and the federally threatened Colorado hookless cactus. As the Dolores River Basin Wildlands Coordinator I led a chat with the hikers about many of these plants. They also heard from Andrea Robinsong from the Western Colorado Congress and additional hike participants with expertise in geology and biology.

The Bureau of Land Management will consider management of the larger Adobe Badlands landscape in their Resource Management Plan due to be published in draft form in late 2012. In addition to the Wilderness Study Area, several Areas of Critical Environmental Concern have been proposed to protect environmental resources. Public comment will be important to encourage preservation of the special and unique values found in the Adobe Badlands.

Photos:
Desert Trumpet. Photo by Barbara Hawke.
Schlerocactus glaucus in Badlands. Photo by Barbara Hawke.

Longing for the call of the Whippoorwill: A reflection

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:35:53 +0000

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Autumn on the horizon, there is a coolness in the night air and the days are getting shorter. I am sitting on my front porch recalling the first time I used a crosscut saw last summer. That’s when I first met The Wilderness Society’s Bill Hodge and when I cut my first tree – an experience that prompted me to spend nine weeks with the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS) as a crew leader.

Something has been missing from my life since the program ended and I couldn’t put my finger on it until now as I listen to the sound of silence.

My mind wanders back to my time in the woods. Week number three, we visited the Flatside Wilderness Area in Arkansas and cleared dozens of trees on a part of the Ouachita National Recreation Trail. We headed to Tennessee after that to work in the Citico Creek Wilderness for a trail restoration project on the Crowder Branch Trail. Here on the first night at sunset we were welcomed by a Whippoorwill calling to its mate somewhere out in the wilderness. We next went to the Big Frog Wilderness doing another trail restoration project on the Grassy Gap Trail. Again we were welcomed by a lone Whippoorwill.

The Shining Rock Wilderness in North Carolina was next on the agenda. We did general trail maintenance and worked on drainage issues. We weren’t welcomed by a Whippoorwill this time but we were given a spectacular week of sunsets. Week number seven, we were off to Georgia to the Brasstown Bald Wilderness for more trail maintenance and some rock work (building steps). Here also the lone cry of a Whippoorwill sang to us at sunset.

Week number eight took us back to North Carolina to work on a trail reroute on the Hawksbill trail in the Linville Gorge Wilderness. Yep, you guessed there was a Whippoorwill there, too. This was also the last week that my SAWS Team 6 worked together. We headed back to Tennessee the following week. That’s pretty much my back yard. We hit the Sampson Mountain Wilderness for storm damage and some trail work.

Bill repeatedly asked me over the past month to name my favorite place. It was hard for me to answer until now. Each and every Wilderness Area we worked in holds a special place in my memories: the spectacular views at Hawksbill, the sunsets at Ivestor Gap, the incredible downpour on the Crowder Branch Trail, the black bear on the Arkaquah Trail, meeting Wildland Fire Fighting crew from Iowa, a haunted girl scout camp, and all the volunteers and trail techs doing the work they do. I have to say, though, that the Sampson Mountain Wilderness is my favorite place of all.

As I sit here writing this, I know those experiences have redefined me as a person. I now look at the world through a different set of ideals and eyes. For most of my 42 years, I lived life with a love of the outdoors but was firmly planted in civilization. Now I have a passion for those areas “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain” (Wilderness Act of 1964) … those areas where “solitude” and the call of the Whippoorwill go hand in hand. And it is that solitude and that call that I long for.

About the Author: Scotty Bowman, a native of Tennessee and junior at East Tennessee State University, spent this summer as a crew leader for The Wilderness Society sponsored SAWS program. Scotty spent 13 years as a chef before returning to school to study Natural Resource Management.

Pebble Mine voted down by Bristol Bay but still looms as a threat

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:12:47 +0000

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Developers can never again claim that residents of Alaska’s Lake and Peninsula Borough want them to build the dangerous Pebble Mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

In a major victory for opponents of the mine, voters in the Bristol Bay region have passed the Save Our Salmon initiative, which would prohibit the borough from issuing permits for mining projects that would threaten to destroy salmon habitat.

Pebble Limited Partnership hopes to develop the mine roughly 200 miles southwest of Anchorage and just north of Iliamna. Pebble Mine would be the largest open-pit mine in North America, involving the excavation of billions of tons of raw ore containing copper, gold and molybdenum.

The mine would threaten the largest remaining wild sockeye salmon run in the world, which sustains the world’s richest commercial wild-salmon fishery; the habitat for tens of millions of salmon that spawn in the streams of the Bristol Bay watershed; and the subsistence ways of life of Alaska Natives who depend on fishing to feed their families. Sixty-five percent of the borough’s residents Alaska Natives, and most continue to practice traditional subsistence fishing activities that have sustained their people and culture for thousands of years.

The issue will now head to court in November because Pebble Limited Partnership has challenged the initiative’s legality. So has the state of Alaska, which claims authority over the development of natural resources belongs to the legislature, not local governments.

Concern that Pebble Mine could cause an environmental catastrophe in Alaska has unified a vast coalition of sport and subsistence-fishing interests, commercial fishermen and seafood processors, Native groups, former state and federal regulators and elected officials, conservation groups, and even churches.

Pebble Limited Partnership, which includes Northern Dynasty Minerals and the giant mining company Anglo American, has waged its own public relations campaign to convince the public that the mine would be an economic boon to the Lake and Peninsula Borough region.

But when local residents mailed in their ballots over the past few weeks, the majority approved the initiative 280 to 246.

What chance does a relatively small group of voters have against an international juggernaut willing to spend millions of dollars trying to force the construction of an open-pit mine in such a rare and special place? We’ll see what the courts say.

But the voters have already decided: Pebble Mine isn’t welcome in Bristol Bay.

Watch the Pebble Mine video

More about our work to save Bristol Bay