sardog1
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This one hits pretty close to home. Immediately before moving from WA to MN, I took a last backpacking trip into the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. I used the road described in this article to get to the trailhead. That was before the washouts made access far more problematic for Boomer knees like mine, just as the article points out:
"PART OF the disarray within the local green movement might be a sort of lapsed-Cold-War phenomenon: The near-demise of a former common foe, big timber, has left enviros with few people to fight against. And a lot of wilderness has been secured, leaving, literally, only the margins to quibble over.
But another part is a generational shift in approaches, Dykstra and others believe.
The old, confrontational style — sue first, ask questions later — has given way to a more measured, collaborative approach, one that already has produced successes, such as the recent landmark wildlife/land-use accord between user groups in Washington’s Okanogan Highlands. That pact has become a national model. Dykstra and others have similar hopes for the Yakima plan, which involves some of the same groups.
The downside of the passing of the torch: Most of the aging, green lions who sprung from their cages as eager youths in the 1960s and ’70s are now in their golden years. And they remain, by far, the largest constituency for wilderness.
That still-active coalition of green baby boomers — many of whom, ironically, find environmental restrictions they championed as youngsters indirectly keeping them out of wilderness areas as knee-replacement oldsters — won’t last long.
“It also doesn’t represent the diversity of the voters who we need to inspire to be the next generation of folks to protect wilderness,” Dykstra says.
That makes maintaining road access even more critical. Conservation groups are just waking up to the fact, Dykstra says, that they need to join forces with recreation groups they might have once been at odds with.
HOW ALL of this will play out is anyone’s guess, as federal land-management budgets are dismantled, demands on wilderness access increase with rising population, and climate change brings about 100-year storms as often as twice in the same decade, further threatening forest roads and bridges."
Wilderness advocates battling over whether to save the ways in
"PART OF the disarray within the local green movement might be a sort of lapsed-Cold-War phenomenon: The near-demise of a former common foe, big timber, has left enviros with few people to fight against. And a lot of wilderness has been secured, leaving, literally, only the margins to quibble over.
But another part is a generational shift in approaches, Dykstra and others believe.
The old, confrontational style — sue first, ask questions later — has given way to a more measured, collaborative approach, one that already has produced successes, such as the recent landmark wildlife/land-use accord between user groups in Washington’s Okanogan Highlands. That pact has become a national model. Dykstra and others have similar hopes for the Yakima plan, which involves some of the same groups.
The downside of the passing of the torch: Most of the aging, green lions who sprung from their cages as eager youths in the 1960s and ’70s are now in their golden years. And they remain, by far, the largest constituency for wilderness.
That still-active coalition of green baby boomers — many of whom, ironically, find environmental restrictions they championed as youngsters indirectly keeping them out of wilderness areas as knee-replacement oldsters — won’t last long.
“It also doesn’t represent the diversity of the voters who we need to inspire to be the next generation of folks to protect wilderness,” Dykstra says.
That makes maintaining road access even more critical. Conservation groups are just waking up to the fact, Dykstra says, that they need to join forces with recreation groups they might have once been at odds with.
HOW ALL of this will play out is anyone’s guess, as federal land-management budgets are dismantled, demands on wilderness access increase with rising population, and climate change brings about 100-year storms as often as twice in the same decade, further threatening forest roads and bridges."
Wilderness advocates battling over whether to save the ways in
