Your National Forests Summer/Fall 2014

The Old Way is the Best WayLEARNING TRADITIONAL SKILLS IN WESTERN MONTANA.

What Wilderness Means to MeA COLLECTION OF QUOTES AND SHORT ESSAYS.

Aldo Leopold in the Gila WildernessTHE STORY OF A WILDERNESS VISIONARY.

The Magazine of the National Forest Foundation Summer – Fall 2014

YOUR NATIONAL

Board of Directors Executive Committee

John Hendricks, Hendricks Investment Holdings, LLC (MD), Chairman

Craig R. Barrett, Retired CEO/Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation (AZ), Vice Chairman

Max Chapman, Chairman, Gardner Capital Management Corp. (TX), Vice Chairman

Lee Fromson, President and COO, Goal Zero (UT), Treasurer

Timothy P. Schieffelin, Senior Director, BNY Mellon Wealth Management (CT), Secretary

Caroline Choi, Vice President, Integrated Planning & Environmental Affairs, Southern California Edison (CA), Member

Peter Foreman, Sirius LP (IL), Member

Board of Directors

David Bell, Chairman, Gyro, LLC (NY)

Mike Brown, Jr., General Partner, Bowery Capital (NY)

Coleman Burke, President, Waterfront Properties (NY)

Blaise Carrig, President–Mountain Division, Vail Resorts, Inc. (CO)

Robert Cole, Partner, Collins Cockrel & Cole, P.C. (CO)

Bart Eberwein, Executive Vice President, Hoffman Construction Company (OR)

Robert Feitler, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Weyco Group, Inc. (IL)

Barry Fingerhut, CEO/Owner, Certification Partners, LLC (AZ)

Rick Frazier, Chief Product Supply & Service Officer, Coca-Cola Refreshments, North America Group (GA)

Roje S. Gootee, Co-Owner & Manager, Rush Creek Ranch, LLC (OR)

Damien Huang, Senior Vice President, Merchandising, Eddie Bauer, Inc. (WA)

Peter Kirsch (MD)

Jeff Paro, CEO, InterMedia Outdoors (NY)

Patricia Hayling Price, President, LiveWorkStrategize, LLC (NY)

Susan Schnabel, Managing Director, aPriori Capital (CA)

Mary Smart, President, Smart Family Foundation (NY)

Thomas Tidwell, Ex-Officio, Chief, USDA Forest Service (DC)

Chad Weiss, Managing Director, JOG Capital Inc. (WY)

James Yardley, Executive Vice President, El Paso Corporation, Retired (TX)

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Treasured Landscapes - On 14 sites across the country, the NFF’s conservation campaign focuses on landscape-scale restoration.

Use the envelope enclosed to contribute or visit www.nationalforests.org/give today.

Transformative ExperiencesBy Bill Possiel, NFF President

Reflecting on wilderness as we celebrate

the 50th Anniversary of the landmark

Wilderness Act causes a rush of

memories to come to mind: In Alaska

fourteen Dall sheep rams marched toward my

wife and me on the top of Mount Wright after

a severe storm. Several adventures in the Marble

Mountain Wilderness in Northern California

and the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon were

both humbling and exciting. My first winter

wilderness camping trip in Oregon’s Eagle Cap

Wilderness and a more recent father-son backpacking trip into Montana’s

Bob Marshall Wilderness with a group of my son’s friends and their dads

helped build new bonds and reinforce old ones. Each of these wilderness

outings stands out as a transformative experience that left me with

memories etched indelibly in my mind.

The National Wilderness Preservation System is

truly remarkable, nearly 110 million acres of truly wild

landscapes spread across 758 areas from Alaska to

Florida. Just as remarkable are the people who fostered

the wilderness movement, and while you may recognize

several of their names—Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and

Arthur Carhart—you may not know that beyond their

passion for wilderness, they all worked as U.S. Forest

Service employees. That passion still exists; the Forest

Service cares for more Wilderness areas in the lower

48 states than any other federal agency, managing 33

percent of the acreage within the National Wilderness

Preservation System.

In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the

Wilderness Act, the Forest Service issued a Stewardship

Challenge, calling for all Wilderness areas in the National

Forest System to meet baseline management standards

by 2014. Ten years ago the National Forest Foundation

launched the Wilderness Stewardship Challenge grant

program to support these efforts. In 2005 only 11 percent

of Forest Service Wilderness areas met management

standards, today almost 85 percent meet those standards.

The NFF is proud to have worked with many partners to

improve the condition of our nation’s Wilderness areas

(see the article on pages 25-27).

We hope you enjoy this special wilderness issue of

Your National Forests produced to commemorate the 50th

Anniversary of a uniquely American concept. If you

haven’t visited a Wilderness area recently, or maybe have

never visited a Wilderness area, I would encourage you to

have a transformative experience that you will cherish for

the rest of your life.

Summer – Fall 2014 1

welcome letter

16

10

28

features

The Old Way is the Best WayExploring the historic ways of the Ninemile Remount Depot and Ranger Station in Western Montana

Faces and Places of WildernessStunning photographs from our photo contest

My WildernessA collection of quotes and short essays from Wilderness champions

1

3

4

5

6

8

15

18

22

25

introductionsWelcomeTransformative Experiences

departmentsWhere in the WoodsHow well can you identify your National Forests?

What is WildernessA Wilderness Primer

Eastern WildernessThe Eastern Foundations of Wilderness

Wilderness TimelineA brief history of Wilderness policy and preservation

Wilderness ManagementWhat Future for Wilderness

Kids in NatureHiking and Backpacking with Kids

Wilderness ConservationAn Olympian Search for Martens

Featured ForestAn American Original: Aldo Leopold in the Gila Wilderness

The Greater ChallengeThe difficult challenge of retaining wilderness character for tomorrow

on the coverBackpacking in the Gila Wilderness

Photo © by Richard Steinberger

steinbergerphoto.com

2 Your National Forests

Photo © C

athrine L. Walters; Ed Bernik; C

heryl Him

melstein / coyoteclan.com

inside this edition

This National Forest is home to the largest herd of bighorn sheep in the country.

See page 27 for the answer.

National Forest Foundation

Building 27, Suite 3 Fort Missoula Road Missoula, Montana 59804 406.542.2805

®2014 National Forest Foundation and Old Town Creative Communications, LLC. No unauthorized reproduction of this material is allowed.

Your National Forests magazine is printed on recycled paper with 30% post- consumer content. This magazine’s use of FSC certified paper ensures the highest environmental and social standards have been followed in the wood sourcing, paper manufacturing, and print production of this magazine. To learn more log on to www.fsc.org.

Your National Forests

The Magazine of the National Forest FoundationEditor-in-Chief Greg M. PetersContributors Tristan Baurick, Hannah Ettema, Tim Gibbins, Bill Hodge, Zia Maumenee, Marlee Ostheimer, Greg M. Peters, William J. Possiel, Marcus SeligGraphic Artist David Downing, Old Town Creative Communications, LLC

National Forest Foundation

President William J. PossielExecutive Vice President Mary MitsosExecutive Vice President Ray A. FooteEdward Belden Southern California Program AssociateSheree Bombard Director, AdministrationKaren DiBari Director, Conservation ConnectHannah Ettema Communications and Development Associate Robin Hill Controller Lisa Leonard Oregon Program ManagerAdam Liljeblad Director, Conservation AwardsZia Maumenee Conservation Awards AssociateLuba Mullen Associate Director, DevelopmentMarlee Ostheimer Development AssociateGreg M. Peters Director, CommunicationsVance Russell Director, California ProgramEmily Schembra Conservation Connect AssociateMarcus Selig Director, Colorado ProgramMichelle Singer Accountant Deborah Snyder Development Associate, Data and MembershipEmily Struss Conservation AssociateWes Swaffar Ecosystem Services Program ManagerDayle Wallien Pacific Northwest Development Manager


Photo © Louis Kam

ler

where in the woods

Today the National Wilderness

Preservation System contains nearly

110 million acres of lands enjoyed

by all Americans. These wilderness

lands all exist within our National Parks,

National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, and

Bureau of Land Management lands.

The 1964 Wilderness Act created

the National Wilderness Preservation

System and immediately protected 54

areas. The Act designated 9.1 million

acres in 13 states as Wilderness.

Included were some of our most iconic Wilderness areas:

• Boundary Waters Canoe Area

Wilderness, Minnesota

• Bridger Wilderness, Wyoming

• Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana

• Ansel Adams Wilderness, California

Today, the National Wilderness Preservation System includes:

• 758 Wilderness areas

from coast-to-coast

• 109,511,966 million acres of

protected Wilderness

• Wilderness areas in all but six

U.S. states

General Wilderness ProhibitionsMotorized equipment and equip-

ment used for mechanical transport

is generally prohibited on all federal

lands designated as Wilderness. This

includes the use of motor vehicles,

motorboats, motorized equipment,

bicycles, hang gliders, wagons, carts,

portage wheels, and the landing of

aircraft, including helicopters, unless

provided for in specific legislation.

Wilderness Facts

• The Frank Church–River of No

Return Wilderness area is the

largest contiguous Wilderness

in the lower 48 states at ap-

proximately 2.3 million acres.

• The Wrangell–Saint Elias

Wilderness area is the largest

Wilderness area in the U.S.

covering more than nine mil-

lion acres of rugged Alaskan

mountains and forests.

• The U.S. Forest Service, of all

the agencies, manages the

most Wilderness areas—439

separate areas covering

36,160,078 acres.

• The Appalachian Trail passes

through 25 Wilderness areas.

• The Continental Divide Trail

passes through 26 Wilderness

areas.

• The Gila Wilderness was the

world’s first Wilderness area,

established on June 3, 1924.

• The Forest Service manages

33 percent of the acreage

within the National Wilder-

ness Preservation System.

CORPORATE PARTNERCoca-Cola understands the value of water. That's why we've partnered with the NFF, the USDA, and the Forest Service to replenish more than a billion liters of water on our National Forests and Grasslands.

The U.S. Forest Service, of all the agencies, manages the most Wilderness areas—439 separate areas.

BRIDGER WILDERNESS


Photo © Louis Kam

ler

what is wilderness

The Eastern Foundations of WildernessBy Bill Hodge

The scope and grandeur of the National Wilderness Preservation

System is often captured in stunning western vistas and soaring

snow-capped peaks. But despite this iconic imagery, the roots of

the wilderness idea have a decidedly eastern backdrop.

While the West provides the stereotype, the forests

of the East have profoundly influenced the wilderness

construct, and greatly inspired those that fostered the

birth of the wilderness movement.

Bob Marshall found his love of wild places scrambling

to the top of New York’s Adirondacks. Howard Zahniser,

author of the Wilderness Act, also found inspiration early in

his life through those same ridges. Other early champions

of wilderness, like Harvey Broome and Benton MacKaye,

prowled around the Appalachian range from Georgia to

New England. Broome was instrumental in protecting what

is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park while

MacKaye provided the vision and inspiration for the Appa-

lachian Trail. In 1935, these four visionaries and four other

like-minded individuals founded The Wilderness Society.

Despite providing inspiration to many of the early

pioneers of the wilderness ethic, the eastern United States

was not front-and-center when the Wilderness Act passed

50 years ago. Only three areas east of the Great Lakes were

protected through 1964’s landmark legislation; the Shining

Rock and Linville Gorge Wildernesses of North Carolina

and the Great Gulf Wilderness of New Hampshire.

Since the passage of the Wilderness Act, the East’s place

in wilderness legislation has grown and evolved. Eastern

Wilderness areas now play a major role in the entire system

of protected public lands. Millions of Americans have Wil-

derness areas just beyond their urban homes, up and down

the Eastern Seaboard. The relative ease of access to these

lands, and the wilderness ideals they

introduce, will continue to inspire

the next generation of conservation

leaders. The ecological challenges

faced in the East expand American

understanding of where clean water

originates and where threatened

species can seek refuge from a rapidly

changing planet.

In the East, programs supporting wilderness protec-

tions and wilderness stewardship are engaging a new

America, an America filled with a more diverse and dy-

namic population. For example, the Southern Appalachian

Wilderness Stewards (SAWS) program of The Wilderness

Society promotes stewardship and engagement through

trail maintenance. Volunteers help maintain important

Wilderness area trails while also learning leadership

skills, Leave No Trace and Wilderness First Aid skills, and

measuring and mitigating the negative impacts that close

proximity to major urban areas can have on wild places.

This immersion in wilderness fosters a life-long ap-

preciation of these incredible places and underlines how

accessible they are to residents of the East. By working

in wilderness, the volunteer stewards join the line of

protection that inspired Broome, Mackaye, Marshall, and

Frank—experiencing leading to loving, and loving leading

to protecting. Many participants take their passion to the

next level and train to become Wilderness Rangers—

patrolling eastern Wilderness areas, helping hikers,

coordinating maintenance, and working with trail crews.

In 2014, the National Wilderness Preservation System

reaches from Puerto Rico to the Hawaiian Islands. In the

East, the roots of wilderness stretch back across time to

those that first envisioned wilderness as a concept and

a special designation. Those same roots today give rise to

programs like SAWS, so that tomorrow we will have new

champions to follow.

Bill HodgeBill is the Director of Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards. He

serves on the board of the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance,

is a recipient of the Bob Marshall Award, and was recognized by the

White House as Champion of Change in building the Next Generation

of Conservation Leaders. Reach him at [email protected].


eastern wilderness

A total of 758 Wilderness areas are part of the National Wilderness

Preservation System.

1892 1920-1929 1924 1929 1930

SIERRA CLUB FOUNDED AND LED BY JOHN MUIR.

Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart

and Robert Sterling

Yard begin writing about

a national wilderness

preservation policy.

The first Wilderness in the U.S.,

the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, is established by the U.S. Forest

Service.

Forest Service establishes “Primitive

areas” within National

Forests, “to maintain primitive

conditions of transportation,

subsistence, habitation, and environment…”

Bob Marshall stated “Areas…should

be set aside by an act of Congress. This would give

them as close an approximation to permanence as

could be realized in a world of shifting

desires.”

More than 14 million acres of “Primitive

areas” are established.

1970 1975 1978 1980

Petrified Forest National Park

in Arizona and Craters of the Moon

Monument in Idaho are the

first Wilderness areas

designated within

National Park boundaries.

National Environmental

Policy Act (NEPA) passes, requiring public involvement in

land management planning and

systematic evaluation of the environmental

impacts of proposed projects.

Eastern Wilderness Areas Act passes,

expanding Congress’ ability to designate

Wilderness areas in the

East and establishes 16

new Wilderness areas east of

the Mississippi.

Endangered American

Wilderness Act signed

by President Jimmy Carter

adding 1.3 million acres of Wilderness to the system.

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation

Act is signed by President Jimmy

Carter, adding over 56 million acres to the National

Wilderness Preservation

System. This was the largest acreage addition in a single

year.

Frank Church-River of

No Return Wilderness in Idaho becomes

the largest Wilderness area in the contiguous

United States.


wilderness timeline

Photos © U

SDA Forest Service; C

ratersoftheMoonN

PS / flickr.com; The C

arter Center / cartercenter.org

Zia MaumeneeZia is the Conservation Awards Associate at the NFF. When not

in the office, Zia enjoys hiking and playing on local National

Forests with her husband, two young sons, and dog. Reach her

at [email protected].

1935 19561950 1964 1968

THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY IS CREATED.

The Wilderness Society’s Howard

Zahniser and the Sierra

Club’s David Brower, along with others, advocate for wilderness

protection by building public

support.

Wild & Scenic Rivers Act and National Trails

System Act pass.

Great Swamp Wilderness in New Jersey is

established as the first Wilderness area managed

by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

First draft of the bill preserving wilderness was written by Howard

Zahniser. Sixty-five rewrites and eighteen

public hearings follow!

San Rafael Wilderness in California

is the first “Primitive area” designated as

Wilderness following the

passage of the Wilderness Act.

The Wilderness Act formally

acknowledges the benefits

of wild places to the human

spirit and the nation in a nearly

unanimous vote by Congress.

President Lyndon B.

Johnson signs the Act into law on September 3,

1964.

201419841983 2004 2013

President Ronald

Reagan’s administration

oversees the most

Wilderness areas

designated in a single year—175.

40th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The Forest Service and the National Forest

Foundation establish

the ten-year Wilderness

Stewardship Challenge to improve

the health of Wilderness

areas by 2014.

September is declared National

Wilderness Month by President

Barack Obama. “I invite all

Americans to visit and enjoy our Wilderness areas, to learn

about their vast history, and to aid in

the protection of our precious

national treasures.”

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Wilderness area in Michigan is

the most recent addition to

the National Wilderness

Preservation System and one

of 129 areas designated since 2000.

50TH ANNIVERSARY O F T H E WILDERNESS

ACT

Bear Trap Canyon

becomes first Wilderness area

managed by Bureau of Land Management.


wilderness timeline

Photo © N

ational Park Service / nps.gov

What Future for WildernessBy Marcus Selig

Aldo Leopold once said “the richest values of wilderness lie not

in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather

in the future.” When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in

1964, it sought to protect diminishing undeveloped public

lands in the country for future generations. The Act initially designated just

over nine million acres as Wilderness, making those public lands forever

“an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by

man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Yet, looking

to the future, Wilderness areas are destined to face evermore perplexing

management challenges. An explosion of recreation in Wilderness and

limited management options for addressing overuse are threatening the

existing values of Wilderness and maybe even their future.

Today, more than 100 million acres of our public

lands enjoy Wilderness designation and the protection it

extends. While this may seem like a lot, in the lower 48

states, Wilderness represents just over two percent of the

land base. The federal agencies that oversee these pristine

areas are tasked with preserving their “wilderness char-

acter.” To do this, they manage Wilderness areas for their

unique qualities like naturalness and solitude, ensuring

that these special places retain a primitive, remote, and

unrestricted feel. Management agencies such as the Forest

Service, Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management

must ensure that Wilderness areas remain undeveloped

and untrammeled, restricting the establishment of per-

manent structures or landscape alterations. They also are

required by law to prevent the use of motorized or mech-

anized equipment, though there are a few very limited

exceptions.

These rigid management guidelines often clash with

the wants and actions of the growing population of

adventure-seeking recreationists. Over the last 40 years,

recreational Wilderness use has increased ten-fold, with

more than 12 million people visiting Wilderness areas

each year. The impacts from this increased recreation-

al use and the popularity of relatively new recreation

activities like geo-caching, mountain biking, base jumping,

and paragliding are necessitating changes in Wilderness

management now, and are heightening tensions for future

Wilderness designations. This is especially true for the

Wilderness areas managed by the Forest Service, which

manages more Wilderness areas than any other agency:

439 areas totaling 36 million acres.

In many Wilderness areas across the country, recre-

ationists are loving their Wilderness to death. The most

significant detrimental impacts of overuse occur when

visitation is concentrated in a specific area. This is acute

among Colorado’s 14ers (Colorado has 54 peaks over

14,000 feet in elevation—14ers—many of which are in Wil-

derness areas). “We really see the effects of ‘peak-baggers’

in our Wilderness areas—degraded trails, human waste,

campsite scars,” says Ben Lara, Recreation and Lands

Program Manager on the Salida District of the San Isabel

National Forest. Lara has three Wilderness areas on his

ranger district—the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, Buffalo

Peaks Wilderness, and Sangre de Cristo Wilderness.

“We actually have had to designate some portions of

our Wilderness areas as ‘high-use areas’,” continues Lara.

Such a designation seems oxymoronic to most: high-use

Wilderness? When an area is designated as “high use”


wilderness management

on the Forest Service’s Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, the agency is able

to enhance recreation infrastructure to support larger crowds. However, when

“high-use” areas coincide with Wilderness, the only infrastructure develop-

ments allowed are the construction of more durable trails and better signage.

This leads to continued environmental degradation because the agency is still

unable to build the restrooms or established campsites that the crowds require.

The mismatch of high recreational use and limited infrastructure is leading

the Forest Service to consider alternative Wilderness management scenarios. A

fee system has already been tried in some areas. However, fees haven’t reduced

visitation, and the agency often receives substantial feedback from interest

groups opposed to fee structures on public lands. A permit system for extreme-

ly popular areas, like Colorado’s 14ers, would certainly enhance the experience

of the few lucky permit holders, but it is also likely to receive pushback from a

public accustomed to unencumbered access. A simple but concerted “Leave No

Trace” education campaign could mitigate some of the damage visitors cause,

but won’t solve all of the problems. Although none of these management

scenarios are a silver bullet for managing existing Wilderness areas, a growing

consensus recognizes that protecting wilderness character will require changes

in Wilderness management.

These issues and other stressors also weigh heavily as the Forest Service and

other land management agencies consider recommending new Wilderness ar-

eas to Congress, which has the sole authority to designate Wilderness areas. The

Forest Service is under constant pressure to provide increased opportunities for

all recreation users, but in particular, non-motorized, mechanized recreation us-

ers (e.g., mountain bikers). Such uses, however, are clearly inconsistent with the

Wilderness Act. Thus, land management agencies are understandably reticent

to run afoul of increasingly organized and engaged constituencies by supporting

new Wilderness area designations. Instead, agencies are now considering the

establishment of “special recreation areas,” which can be created by statute or

Secretarial order, in areas that are otherwise suitable for Wilderness protection.

Many argue that the creation of new special recreation areas in Wilderness

-eligible lands is a slippery slope. Could such lesser land protection mecha-

nisms eventually be applied to the 100 million acres of existing Wilderness via

legislation or Secretarial order? Such a result might be appealing to the masses

of today, but what will future generations value? Will future generations have

the opportunities, or even the desire, to experience the values of Wilderness

that Aldo Leopold envisioned? Or, will Wilderness become something of the

past, a concept that can only be explained through books or the Internet?

Marcus SeligMarcus is the NFF’s Colorado Program Director. An avid skier,

mountain biker, and angler, Marcus lives in Salida, CO with his wife

Windy and daughter Avie. Reach him at [email protected].

CORPORATE PARTNERThe Exelon Foundation is proud to support the NFF’s efforts at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Our focus on youth engagement ensures that a new generation of Americans value and support our National Forests and Grasslands.

COLLEGIATE PEAKS WILDERNESS


wilderness management

Photo © Rovers D

ream / istockphoto.com

Ruthie, ready to go.


The Old Way Is the Best WayBy Greg M. Peters

Casey Burns is a modern cowboy. A

straw Stetson perches on his head as

we rattle across the dirt roads dividing

the pastures we pass. A beaded

necklace floats high on his thick neck, moving in

rhythm with his deep booming voice. Dark blue

Wranglers and cowboy boots caked in spring

mud contrast a freshly ironed button up shirt.

My colleague Hannah and I are on Casey’s home turf, a 40-minute drive

from our offices in Missoula, Montana. Brown stubbled grass and leafless

cottonwoods stretch out under a pale blue sky on this cool April morning as

we bounce up to the “Donkey Pasture.” We’d driven up to learn more about the

Ninemile Remount Depot and Ranger Station where Casey works for the

U.S. Forest Service as the Manager of the Wildlands Training Center and the

Ninemile Pack Train.

Feeding TimeThe “Ninemile’s” historic collection of buildings is part typical Forest Service

ranger district, part tourist destination, and part working ranch. A standard

complement of Forest Service employees works at the station—a silviculturist,

District Ranger, trail crews, and others who ensure the District resources are

maintained and the public is safe. But Casey and the other cowboys we see

milling about have a very different role, one that exists only in this corner of

western Montana.

More than 200 government-owned mules and horses board here each

winter. These mules, and the horses that help wrangle them, make up the

Northern Region pack train—a collection of pack animals used to maintain

the vast Wilderness areas that stretch across Montana and North Idaho. Each

summer, these mules are loaded with food, lumber, water, crosscut saws, and

myriad other tools and packed into the Bob Marshall, the Scapegoat, the Great

Bear, the Selway Bitterroot, and the other sprawling Wilderness areas managed

by Region One of the Forest Service.

“That’s Big Mike,” Casey points to a huge brown mule. “Prozac, Hiram, Rudy,

Bones, Preacher, Red, Ben,” he continues as we bounce across the pasture.

Ranch hand Marc Pengali, stands on the back of a flatbed pickup truck slicing

orange twine from rectangular bales of hay and chunking off bits of the green

yellow alfalfa onto the ground. The line of animals stretches to the far end of

the pasture. It’s feeding time and Marc and his young partner, Eli Indreland, are

doling out rations in a tight choreography. The animals munch contentedly or


Photo © C

athrine L. Walters

unforgettable experiences

nose up to our SUV to check out the strangers. Casey tells

us it takes 400 tons of hay to feed the animals all winter.

They raise about 320 tons on site during the summer,

cutting, bailing, and storing it under an immense shed.

The rest they buy.

The Mule EraIn the 1910s and 1920s, the Forest Service relied on

horses and mules for nearly all aspects of managing its

vast territory. Roads were few and far between, and the

Great Burn of 1910 was still fresh in the young agency’s

mind. Rangers rode horses across their huge districts and

mules packed in fire-fighting tools, supplies, and rations

for the growing wildland fire-fighting efforts that had

become a primary focus of the Forest Service. In those

early years, the agency relied on hiring the pack animals

it needed from local farmers and ranchers, but by the

late 1920s, tractors and trucks did most of the farm’s

hauling, plowing, and haying, and quality animals were

scarce. Recognizing a need for self-provision, the Region

One office of the Forest Service leased a one-square mile,

run-down ranch in the Ninemile Valley, and the Ninemile

Remount Depot was born. Its primary goal: supplying the

agency with a reliable supply of sturdy, mountain-ready

mules and horses for fighting fires.

Three years later, the Forest Service purchased the

ranch, and with help from the Civilian Conservation

Corps, a New Deal program, the Remount Depot was

transformed from a run-down work-in-progress into a

shiny white-washed showpiece. The “CCC boys” worked

hard and fast. Bunk houses, Ranger offices, tack sheds and

a huge barn appeared almost overnight. Irrigation lines

were dug, fences were built and whitewashed, and mules

and horses were bred, housed, and trained for fire-fighting

and other backcountry duties.

While mules and horses proved invaluable to the

Forest Service during the 1920s and 30s, by the mid-1940s,

the agency was ready to fight fires with more modern

technology. A decade or so of successful experimenta-

tion and a sudden surplus of planes capable of hauling

men and gear into remote mountainous terrain following

World War II ushered in the era of smokejumpers. Mules

still played an important role in wildland firefighting, they

hauled out the gear smokejumpers used to extinguish

fires, but on July 1, 1953, twenty-three years to the day

after the Forest Service first leased the shabby ranch that

became the Ninemile Remount Depot, Region One issued

a press release that began:

“Services formerly rendered by the Forest Service Remount

Depot at Ninemile will be considerably reduced commencing

in July…in line with a program of economy aimed at reducing

government expenditures.”

Sharpening a crosscut saw.



While smokejumpers and aviation-based firefight-

ing played a large role in the Remount’s loss of purpose,

the post-war building boom helped too: houses required

timber and timber required roads. By the mid-1950s, areas

that were accessible only by mules and horses were now

criss-crossed with miles and miles of roads. By the 1970s,

pretty much the only areas on National Forests that didn’t

have roads were Wilderness areas.

Today, land managers still need access to Wilderness

for trail maintenance, bridge building, and fighting small

wildfires, so the horses and mules that spend their winters

at Ninemile are used almost exclusively for maintaining

these remote, roadless spaces. Were it not for Wilderness,

these animals, and perhaps more importantly, the skills

needed to string a pack train and march into some of the

most remote and rugged terrain in the U.S. would have

likely vanished decades ago.

Sharpening, Setting, and SawingThe sound of hammer striking metal ripples through

the room. The air smells like WD-40 and metal shavings.

A half-dozen folks stand upright behind long wooden

racks, intent on the shiny metal saws affixed firmly to the

tops of the handmade racks. We’ve discovered the crosscut

saw sharpening class and are getting an introduction to

another unique service that Ninemile offers.

In addition to wintering more than 200 mules and

horses, Ninemile runs the Wildlands Training Center. The

Center offers a series of Traditional Skills classes to agency

professionals and hobbyists from across the country. The six

students in this session—one of the weeklong crosscut saw

sharpening classes throughout April—are a mix of Forest

Service employees or contractors and everyday Americans.

They’re here to learn how to maintain crosscut saws so

they can clear Wilderness trails or cut firewood for their

homes without the noise, stench, and danger of a chainsaw.

We get a quick lesson from Arden Corey, the class

instructor. The saw’s large, jagged teeth cut across the

wood’s grain, hence the “crosscut” name. Depending on

the saw design, a group of sharp teeth alternate with the

raker, a half-inch wide spout of metal notched in a v that

chisels out the wood cut by the teeth. Each component

needs to be skin-slicing sharp to operate as efficiently as

possible. The tips of the raker are hammered and filed

so that they’re five one-thousandths of an inch shorter

than the teeth. The teeth, in turn, are “set” eight one-thou-

sandths of inch outside of the plane of the saw. This keeps

the saw from binding in the log but also maintain efficien-

cy and ease of cutting. Too much set and the saw cuts too

large a swath through the tree, wasting energy. Too little

set and the saw binds in the log, disrupting the smooth

rhythm of the sawyers.

While it’s Arden’s first year teaching the class, he’s

definitely not new to crosscut sharpening. Wearing

a waxed canvas apron, he moves about the class, helping

the students with their saws. He learned how to sharpen

crosscut saws from Warren Miller who literally wrote the

book. Casey hands me a copy as we mill about, chatting

with the students. Miller passed away suddenly this

winter, a sad reminder of how important these classes,

and their instructors, are for the agencies that manage

Wilderness. Without the skills to properly sharpen a

crosscut saw or string a pack mule—Ninemile offers both

introductory and advanced packing classes—the Forest

Service, the Park Service, and other public land agencies

wouldn’t be able to clear trails, build bridges, and effi-

ciently fight small fires in remote areas.

There are a handful of old timers like Arden who

have this knowledge, and the Forest Service sends many

of its saws to them to sharpen during winter’s cold, dark

months. But as they age and as recreational Wilderness use

increases, there is a real need to teach a new generation of

sharpeners and sawyers the intricacies of maintaining and

operating these simple but effective tools.

“Without Wilderness, we wouldn’t be here,” Casey tells

me on the phone prior to our first meeting. “You can’t use

a chainsaw in the Wilderness, and you can’t drive there

either, so the mules and the crosscut saws are integral to

our ability to maintain these areas.”

Casey Burns tying up a pack box.



Photos © C

athrine L. Walters

Hannah and I get a turn bucking a log when the class

heads outside to see how their saws perform. Tim Fetterer,

a friendly Midwesterner from Indiana, lends us his. “That

was my grandfather’s saw. He was a logger in Washington

in the 1930s.” He grins, “It took me about 20 hours to clean

the rust off of it, and it’s taken the better part of the week

for me to sharpen it.” Other students nod in appreciation.

There’s more than one grandfather’s saw in the class,

shined and sharpened by a new generation of homestead-

ers who purposefully eschew more modern technologies.

Tim’s grandfather’s saw works amazingly. The first

pull slices through the reddish brown bark, and with

each subsequent pass, we send small slivers of pale tan

wood drifting through the air. In less than thirty seconds,

a round disk of wood thunks to the ground. It’s a small

tree—only about ten inches in diameter—but the saw’s

efficiency and cutting power is impressive. I smile at

memories of spending an hour swearing at a sputtering

chainsaw, cleaning spark plugs, spilling chain lubricant,

and dealing with last year’s water-fouled gasoline. A big

part of me sees the appeal of the old way.

We accept the “nice job” and “there you go” accolades

with a flush of mild embarrassment. We shake hands with

the class members we’ve met—Sam Andrews, a quiet,

steady Coloradan woman who works as a Forest Service

contractor clearing trails; Bill Hardin, the Intel engineer

from Oregon; Michael Raney, a gregarious Canadian from

Saskatchewan; Jeremy Watkins, a young Forest Service

trail boss based out of tiny Elk City, ID, and Corey Crone,

who maintains a Youtube channel devoted to modern

homesteading called “Wrangler Star” and from whom

many of the attendees learned about the class. With this

final exchange, we’re off to watch Casey “pack” a mule

name Ruthie.

Mule Era ReduxIt’s abundantly clear Casey has both packed a mule

and taught scores of others how countless times before.

Before he lifts a piece of gear or touches a saddle, he loads

some grain into a green mesh sack and places it over

Ruthie’s head. In an instant, she’s contentedly munching

away on the oats and corn. With Ruthie occupied, Casey

begins. First he brushes her flanks and then a fleece

blanket free of dirt, pine needles, and other bits that could

rub raw on a long pack into the Wilderness. The fleece

blanket goes on first and then with a practiced expertise,

he gently sets a forty pound “Decker” saddle on Ruthie, ex-

plaining not only how it works, but who invented it, when

it became the standard mule packing saddle, and why.

Half-hitch knots appear magically from the coils of rope

he handles; leather straps pass through shining metal

buckles, are cinched and cinched again.

To the uninitiated, it might seem arbitrary and un-

polished, but every movement and piece of equipment

has a purpose—often more than one. Boxes full of gear

are wrapped with a “manny,” a canvas sheet that Casey

deftly folds into place creating a self-binding wrap that’s

virtually waterproof. He ties it up in a series of binding

hitches with 35 feet of rope, which can be used in camp to

tie horses, set up an impromptu corral, or hang food from

a tree. The canvas sheet becomes a ground cloth, a rain

tarp, or a sun shade once the mule is unloaded for the

night. In sixty short seconds, he’s hoisted the bundle onto

the saddle and with a couple more magical half-hitches,

the load is secure and ready, perched vertically along

Ruthie’s right side, waiting for its mirror image to appear

a few minutes later on her left. Almost every knot is quick

release in the event of a spill—these mules travel through

some of the most unforgiving country in the U.S.

Casey finishes the lesson with a short definitive dec-

laration, “In horsemanship, the old way is the best way.”

Based on what else we’ve learned at Ninemile, it seems this

is true in more than just horsemanship. From dutch oven

cooking, to axemanship and crosscut saw maintenance, to

packing mules deep into the backcountry, the old ways are

not only the best, they’re becoming hip again. The Wild-

lands Training Center’s classes are becoming more and

more popular every year as a new generation of Wilderness

rangers, rural and urban homesteaders, and niche Internet

video producers connect the past to the present.

As we pile back into my car to drive back to the future—

Missoula, the office, emails, and phone messages—Hannah

wonders if they need someone to spend

the summer at Ninemile, posting to

Facebook, sending daily tweets, and

starting a blog. I wonder if they need

another Wilderness Ranger and how

my wife will feel about my latest career

fantasy.

Visit nationalforests.org/blog/ninemile to

see additional photos from this story

GREG M. PETERSGreg is the NFF’s Communication Director. When he’s not lost

in a mountain of paperwork at his desk, Greg enjoys skiing,

hiking, canoeing, and getting home after dark. Reach him at

[email protected].



Hiking and Backpacking with KidsBy Marlee Ostheimer

At the point in parenthood when a

“walk” consists of wandering in

several large circles—off to the left

to inspect a rock, over to the right

to follow an ant, punctuated by a diaper that

needs changing—the thought of a hike, let alone a

backpacking trip, may feel daunting. Don’t despair!

With some extra planning, an outdoor adventure with

your child is easier than you think.

A front carrier can be a great way to pack the youngest children. You can

wear clothing or a jacket over the carrier, keeping your child toasty warm and

freeing up shoulder space for a backpack. Remember a hat for your little one,

especially if he or she will be perched up high in a pack on your shoulders. For

longer trips, some parents enlist a "sherpa" to help carry gear—a friend or furry

companion who can carry extra food, water, diapers, or other essentials. Be

sure to have older kids carry some very light gear in their own backpack too. It

will help them feel like they’re part of the adventure.

It’s always good to start with small trips. A car-camping (or backyard over-

night) adventure to get your tykes used to sleeping in a tent and sleeping bag is

a great first step. Bring some toys and books and a few changes of clothes—kids

are experts at finding water and dirt. Special “camping” treats like marshmal-

lows, chocolate bars, or other sweets will help kids remember camping fondly.

Once you’ve mastered the overnight, you can expand to longer day trips or

hike-in camping trips.

Children are more sensitive than adults to altitude, sunburns, windburn,

and bee stings. Whether you are a mile from the trailhead or two days out in

the backcountry, be prepared with a small bag of “just in case” items including:

baby or junior Tylenol, sunscreen, teething ointment, lots of wipes and tissue,

diaper rash treatment, Benadryl, and plastic bags for trash. Treats, sketchbooks,

and a field guide or two can also help get kids excited about hiking and camp-

ing as well.

Whatever your destination, be safe, have fun and be prepared!

Visit nationalforests.org/blog/hikingkids to find additional resources for safely

and enjoyably hiking and backpacking with your kids.

Marlee OstheimerMarlee is the NFF’s Development

Associate. Her young son, Ellis,

keeps her pretty busy whether

he’s checking out rocks, leaves,

planes, or dirt. Reach her at

[email protected].

FLATHEAD NATIONAL FOREST


Photo © Lisa N

esic

kids in nature

Faces and Places of Wilderness

Our National Forests feature serene and breathtaking

Wilderness areas. To help celebrate the 50th Anniversary of

the Wilderness Act, the National Forest Foundation hosted the

“Faces and Places of Wilderness” Photo Contest featuring stunning

images of Wilderness areas on our National Forests. We thank all who

entered and look forward to hosting another photo contest soon! Follow

the NFF on Facebook at facebook.com/NationalForestFoundation.

Photo Tips“Pop.” That’s what we photographers strive for in our

images, but how do you get it? First, know your subject. In

most cases, simplifying your composition will strengthen

the image. Second, use focus carefully but aggressively:

a plant or animal in sharp focus against a soft background

gives tremendous punch.

Third, “paint with the light.” Use bright areas to draw

attention, and dark areas to create mood and context.

Fourth, pay very close attention to edges so you can elimi-

nate distracting clutter. Finally, experiment! Electrons are

cheap, and lots of trial and error will sharpen your eye.

Happy shooting!

Landscape Winner“Tidioute Island” by Ed Bernik of

Pennsylvania. Taken on the Allegheny

National Forest, Allegheny Islands

Wilderness area.


wilderness special

People Winner “Robert Marek, Camp 3” by Ehren

Epperson of Oklahoma. Taken on

the Tongass National Forest,

Kootnzoowoo Wilderness.

Wildlife Winner“What are you looking at?” by Carol

McCallion of Wyoming. Taken on the

Sequoia National Forest, Monarch

Wilderness.


A Pacific Marten.


Photo © D

an Font / National Park Service

An Olympian Search for MartensBy Tristan Baurick

On a chilly January morning, a group of hikers set off into

Olympic National Forest in search of a furry little carnivore

that gets fewer reported sightings than even Bigfoot.

The Pacific marten hasn't been seen in this wild and wet

corner of Washington State since 2008. "Are there any left? We just don’t

know,” noted Olympic National Forest biologist Betsy Howell.

Helping Howell find some answers is Adventurers and

Scientists for Conservation (ASC), a Bozeman, Mon-

tana-based nonprofit that puts volunteer climbers, divers,

paddlers, and other outdoor athletes to work gathering

data for scientists in far-flung areas around the world.

ASC's recent expeditions had mountaineers plucking

microbes from rocks in the Himalayas and sailboaters

scooping water samples off the Chilean coast.

On the Olympic National Forest, ASC trained volun-

teers to set up and maintain monitoring stations in the

remote, high-elevation habitats martens prefer. Eight out

of twenty camera stations are in Wilderness areas on the

Olympic, including four cameras in the Mount Skokomish

and four in the Brothers Wilderness areas. The stations

have two basic components: bait—usually chicken—and

a motion-triggered camera that snaps photos of anything

that moves within its view.

Last year, the project generated thousands of photos

of bobcat, skunk, coyotes, and mountain lions—but no

martens. ASC returned this year with a bigger team and

more cameras thanks to $15,000 grant from the National

Forest Foundation.

Twenty-four volunteers were selected. Selection cri-

teria included screening for backcountry experience—a

critical component of this project—because so many of

the sites are far from trailheads and require significant

distances that must be covered on foot.

Their first weekend of training had them waking early

at a crowded Forest Service bunkhouse. They packed in

an odd assortment of gear—hammers, saws, chicken wire,

and raw chicken.

“Who’s packing the lure?” someone asked during the

dark morning.

“Don’t pick the lure; it’s nasty,” another volunteer said.

Stored in an amber-colored bottle, the lure is a

pungent mixture of skunk, castor, and muskrat musk.

Apparently, martens can’t resist it.

“My cat gets very excited when he smells it on me—

rolls around, attacks me,” Howell said.

Jace Barkley from Vancouver, Washington, volunteers

to take the lure, just as he did the day before.

“My olfactory senses might be blown out now anyway,”

he adds.

After checking and rechecking their backcountry

maps, they broke up into groups and piled into trucks and

vans. Howell thanked several of them as they left.

“This wouldn’t happen without them,” she said. “With

the Forest Service’s declining budget and personnel, we just

don’t have the people to do wildlife surveys like we used to.”

The Forest Service and ASC pairing happened when

ASC founder Gregg Treinish began calling around asking

what his organization could do on the Olympic Peninsula.

Howell jumped at the chance to have ASC round up

a crew of "extremely fit and extremely motivated" volun-

teers help her with the monitoring project.

Along with the NFF grant, ASC’s involvement is

covered by a $15,000 matching donation from a private

funder and $5,000 from the Forest Service, along with a

few gear sponsorships from companies like Osprey and

Kahtoola. The volunteer labor comes at a value of about

$150,000, according to Treinish.

Howell emphasized the significance of this research.

While marten populations appear stable in the Cascade

Range of Oregon and Washington, they’ve plummeted on

the Olympic Peninsula and other coastal areas. Conse-

quently, populations of coastal martens have recently

been listed with NatureServe, a nonprofit organization

that provides conservation status rankings, as “critically


wilderness conservation

imperiled” in Oregon and Washington. This designation

may help the species gain status as a Forest Service

sensitive species, a change that could lead to future funds

directed toward their conservation.

“Where martens exist, they readily come to camera

stations, so the lack of them during these many (Olympic

Peninsula) survey efforts would seem to be a cause for

concern,” Howell wrote in a report last year.

On the trail, Treinish, who worked as a tracker in

Montana, kept his eyes open for

signs of martens as he led one of

the volunteer groups. He poked into

rocky nooks and peered at scratch

marks on trees, but found only signs

of mice, squirrels and bobcat.

It’s this sort of thing—enjoying

the outdoors but having a purpose

beyond his own enjoyment—that led

him to found ASC in 2011.

“I was hiking the length of the

Appalachian Trail, somewhere in

Pennsylvania, when I thought ‘what

the hell am I walking six months

for?’” he said. “It was an awful

moment. I was in tears. Who am

I doing this for? It felt so selfish.”

He realized that “tens of thou-

sands of people were playing” in

remote areas every day. Why not team them up with

scientists who can’t—for lack of time, funding, or skills—

get there to take a water sample or set up a camera.

ASC grew faster than Treinish could have imagined.

“Right now, we have 847 volunteer athletes on all

seven continents,” he said.

Treinish led the group above 3,800 feet before he start-

ed looking for the right pair of trees. A marten monitoring

station must be beyond earshot of the trail and have two

thin trees that are no more than twenty feet apart.

On one tree goes the camera, which must face north

to reduce glare, and on the other goes the bait. Volunteer

April Ann Fong, a community college instructor, pulled

the chicken wire and chicken from her pack.

“This is how we make chicken burritos,” she said while

folding three drumsticks into a sheet of wire.

Mason White, who works in technology marketing,

nailed the burrito to a tree and then dropped to the

ground to do his best marten impression while a few

test photos were shot. Barkley logged all the details and

marked the station’s coordinates on a GPS.

Doing Science in Wilderness

The 1964 Wilderness Act ensures that Wilder-

ness areas remain free of almost all modern tech-

nologies. The Act prohibits wheeled conveyances

like bicycles, ATVs and motorcycles, machines

and mechanical technologies like chainsaws and

motor boats. It prohibits hang gliders, helicopters,

airplanes (except where expressly

allowed), and other such intru-

sions on natural, wild places.

So how do scientists conduct

their studies in Wilderness areas,

where the typical assortment of

machines and devices that aid

scientific study are either expressly

prohibited or too heavy, cumber-

some, or expensive to transport via

foot or mule?

First, you find the right part-

ners. The ASC-trained volunteers

who helped Betsy Howell with

her marten monitoring were fit,

athletic and ready to cross-country

ski for miles, then snowshoe more

miles, and then camp for the night

to access the spots where Howell

wanted to monitor. They were willing, and able, to

carry large loads with cameras, raw chicken, bea-

ver carcasses, chicken wire, hammers, and other

assorted gear. And they were willing to do it for

several weekends over the winter, skiing, show-

shoeing, and scrambling back to the stations to

retrieve images and refresh batteries, lure, and bait.

Second, you cross your t’s and dot your i’s. In

2010, when Howell began marten surveys with

other volunteer groups, she completed a “Minimum

Tools Analysis” to ensure that the monitoring

would not permanently impact the Wilderness

areas on which they set up stations. This formal

analysis of required tools and methodology details

not only how the stations would be set up, but how

they’d be dismantled and packed out as well. Once

completed and approved, Howell’s band of vol-

unteers could set up the camera stations without

running afoul of Wilderness rules and add valu-

able insight to the management of wild animals

throughout the Olympic National Forest.

“…we don’t know if we’ll come back with anything to show. But I’m excited to see if we do.”



At the last possible moment, Allison Osterberg, a county planner from

Olympia, Washington, slipped on surgical gloves and set the lure. The team

packed up quickly as the musky odor caught hold of the breeze.

White and his hiking partner, Bill Agnew, a retired homebuilder, will return

to this station four more times during the winter and spring to check the bait

and download the camera’s images. Treinish expects that the next trip will

require snowshoes and cold-weather camping gear.

“Having people give up two weekends for training and then four more

weekends to hike up here—it’s a big commitment,” he said. “It’s also a huge

workforce that can accomplish a lot.”

Agnew is looking forward to his return trips.

“There’s a lot of sweat in the execution,” he said. “But I like that it’s about

going into the unknown. You don’t know what the conditions will be, and we

don’t know if we’ll come back with anything to show. But I’m excited to see if

we do.”

Visit nationalforests.org/blog/pacificmarten to see additional photos and watch

a great video from ASC about this project.

ASC Volunteers setting up a camera.

Tristan BaurickTristan works as a reporter for the

Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, WA. A Ted

Scripps Environmental Journalism

Fellow, Tristan’s writing can be found

at his blog, Trails & Tides. Find him

online at tristanbaurick.com.

CORPORATE PARTNERSouthern California Edison proudly supports the NFF’s work on the Angeles National Forest. From creating sustainable recreation opportunities to restoring watersheds, SCE recognizes the critical role National Forests play in our country today and in the future.


Photo © Tristan Baurick


An American Original:

Aldo Leopold in the Gila WildernessBy Tim Gibbins

Years before the Gila Wilderness existed on a map, Aldo

Leopold shot a wolf from atop a rimrock canyon in New

Mexico. He reached the still breathing wolf and saw something

that forever changed him. In his classic text, A Sand County

Almanac, Leopold describes the experience, “We reached the old wolf in

time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.”

Aldo Leopold sitting on rimrock with quiver and bow.


Photo © C

ourtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation

featured forest

“I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was

something new to me in those eyes—something known only to

her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch;

I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no

wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die,

I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

The year was 1912—the same year New Mexico was

annexed from Territory to statehood—and Leopold was

only 24-years old. With his round-frame glasses and

tobacco pipe, he looked more like a naturalist professor

than a trigger-happy hunter. He grew up sketching fawns

and flowers along the banks of the Mississippi River in

his boyhood home of Burlington, Iowa. He had earned

a degree from the Yale School of Forestry before the U.S.

Forest Service appointed him Supervisor of the Carson

National Forest in New Mexico. “In

those days,” Leopold said, “we had

never heard of passing up a chance

to kill a wolf.”

Leopold’s boss, Gifford Pinchot,

the first chief of the nascent Forest

Service, instructed his agency to

manage its vast natural resources for

the betterment of mankind. Leopold

shared this opinion at first, but as he

traveled by horseback through his

nearly 500,000-acre jurisdiction, the

conservationist began to have ideas

of his own. The wolf-killing policy, for

instance, he likened to sharpening

the pruning shears of God, because

plants in wolf-less regions were

grazed to the ground by deer and cattle. It dawned on him

that healthy ecosystems required biodiversity, wolves and

all. He called the concept “thinking like a mountain.” And

after watching the fire fade in the dying wolf’s eyes, he

believed that sometimes the natural world would be most

wisely managed if mankind simply left it alone.

Leopold thought the Gila (Hee-la) River landscape in

southwestern New Mexico made a prime candidate for

wilderness preservation. His tenure at the Carson National

Forest had provided him ample opportunity to know the

area intimately. He liked how the Mogollon Mountains,

the peaks of the Black Range, and the San Francisco

Mountains all converged with the Chihuahuan and

Sonoran Deserts to create a topographic fortress against

the pioneers’ axe or plow.

A place where ecological worlds collide, the Gila

captivated Leopold. The pinyon-juniper woodlands of

the Mexican desert mingle with the spruce-fir forests of

the Rocky Mountains. Aspen trees and prickly pear cacti,

herds of elk and elusive Gila monsters, rattlesnakes and

white-nosed coatis, wolf packs and javalinas all haunt the

Gila as they did in Leopold’s day. In a single river bend,

you can hook a catfish on one cast and the endemic Gila

trout on another.

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things

were taken for granted until progress

began to do away with them. Now we

face the question whether a still higher

'standard of living' is worth its cost in

things natural, wild and free.” ~Foreword to A Sand County Almanac (1949)


featured forest

When cattle ranchers proposed a road to improve grazing access into the

undeveloped core of the headwaters in 1921, Leopold penned an article to the

Journal of Forestry asserting America’s need for wilderness. He argued for

“a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state.” He also wrote

a wilderness proposal and mailed it to his superiors in Washington, D.C.

On June 3rd, 1924, the Forest Service accepted Leopold’s proposal and set

aside more than 500,000-acres of mountains, rivers, and desert surrounding the

Gila River. It became the first federally-recognized Wilderness area in the coun-

try, and it would serve as a model for wilderness preservation to come.

The Wilderness ActForty years later, on September 3rd 1964, Secretary of the Interior Stewart

Udall, Idaho Senator Frank Church, and other dignitaries gathered around

President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House Rose Garden as he signed the

Wilderness Act into law.

The Wilderness Act immediately placed 54 areas within the National

Wilderness Preservation System, including some of America’s most iconic

Wilderness areas: the Bob Marshall in Montana, the Boundary Waters in

Minnesota, the Ansel Adams in California, and, of course, the Gila Wilderness.

Congress later protected 202,016 acres adjacent to the Gila Wilderness,

naming it the Aldo Leopold Wilder-

ness. Together, these two areas form

an uninterrupted wilderness the size

of Rhode Island. It’s a continuous

sweep of country that stretches for

27 miles north to south and 39 miles

east to west. Hunters stalk bighorn

sheep and Rocky Mountain elk in

the highlands each fall. History buffs

flock to the numerous cliff dwellings

that Mogollon people built around

1300 AD. Hikers can follow the 800

miles of trail to the 10,895-foot sum-

mit of Whitewater Baldy, the area’s tallest peak, or along a rushing creek in

a canyon only ten feet wide.

Most importantly, the Gila Wilderness protects the relative abundance of

what the region lacks—water. The West Fork, Middle Fork, and East Fork of the

Gila River elbow through twisting canyons as they tumble down the west slope

of the Continental Divide. Each fork is over 30 miles long, and they are the

longest free-flowing rivers in New Mexico. Sycamore, walnut, cottonwood, and

willows grow along their banks offering luxurious shade to native grasses and

habitat to over 300 species of birds.

The Gila Wilderness today is as healthy as it was in Leopold’s time. After

decades of absence, four healthy packs of Mexican wolves again prowl the Gila

through successful reintroduction efforts. To celebrate the Wilderness Act’s

50th Anniversary this year, you can still disappear into the Gila Wilderness and

hear the wolf’s howl at a quiet, moonlit camp and contemplate, as Leopold did,

“the hidden meaning within the howl of the wolf, long known among moun-

tains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Tim GibbinsTim works as a copywriter for The

Clymb in Portland, Oregon. In his

spare time he runs his 20-year old

raft down the Pacific Northwest’s

rivers, looks at birds, and tries to

catch trout on a fly. His articles have

appeared in Outside Magazine and

The Oregonian.

Plan Your VisitThe Gila Wilderness is located in

the Gila National Forest, with road

access from the historic Silver City,

New Mexico. From town, it’s 44 miles

on Highway 15 until it dead-ends

at the Gila Cliff Dwellings National

Monument, and the many trailheads

that access the Wilderness. Soak in

Jordan Hot Springs, an eight-mile

hike. Walk the Catwalk Trail up

the canyon used as a hideout by

Geronimo and Butch Cassidy. Hike

along the Continental Divide. Or visit

the eerie ghost town of Cooney. Call

the Gila National Forest for more info

to plan your visit: 575-388-8201.

“ He argued for ‘a continuous stretch of

country preserved in its natural state.’ On

June 3rd, 1924, the Forest Service accepted

Leopold’s proposal and set aside more than

500,000-acres of mountains, rivers, and desert

surrounding the Gila River.”


featured forest

The Greater ChallengeBy Hannah Ettema

Designating a Wilderness area is often a long and complex

legislative process that when successful, deserves celebration.

But after the votes are counted and the reporters leave, the

landscape is forever protected—at least on paper. Despite the

political wrangling required to designate a Wilderness area, the greater

challenge becomes retaining the wilderness character that makes these

places special for today and tomorrow.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 declared Wilderness

necessary “for the American people of present and future

generations” and mandated that Wilderness “retain its

primeval character and influence.” But Wilderness areas

do not always remain “primeval.” Human impacts, even

when well-intended, frequently threaten the health and

character of Wilderness areas.

A Call for ActionFast forward nearly forty years: many Wilderness

areas were overrun with invasive species. Visitors created

trails that degraded habitat. Management agencies strug-

gled to devote the necessary resources to these special

places. Something had to be done.

In 2002, a group of National Forest managers and

academics took action. They formed the Wilderness

Information Management Steering Group to streamline

methods used to measure the ecological health of Wilder-

ness areas, reducing the 200 tasks that had been in use for

decades to ten distinct elements (page 26). They estab-

lished a new definition of determining Wilderness health

by imposing a scoring system for Wilderness areas based

on the ten new elements. Under this new protocol, only

eleven percent of the 406 Wilderness areas on National

Forests passed.

The Steering Group’s efforts eventually made it across

the desk of the 15th Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Dale

Bosworth, who recognized that Wilderness areas needed

help. Humbly, the Chief couldn’t claim that the idea for

the Wilderness Stewardship Challenge was his own. “I

knew there were a lot of Wilderness areas that weren’t

up to snuff so I thought it was a great idea. It was simply

recognizing a good idea when you hear it.”

Under Bosworth’s leadership, the Forest Service

resolved to make the 40th Anniversary of the Wilderness

Act a pivot point for its Wilderness areas, launching a

decade-long stewardship challenge for all National Forest

System Wilderness areas designated on or prior to 2004.

With the celebration of the Act came a challenge: Nation-

al Forest managers were to ensure areas under their care

met baseline management standards by 2014, the 50th

Anniversary of the Act.

While some wished the challenge would increase

Wilderness budgets, Bosworth knew it wasn’t all about the

money. “We can do more than what we’re doing if we fo-

cus with the dollars we have,” he said. Looking back on the

beginning of the Challenge Bosworth notes, “I think [the

Wilderness Stewardship Challenge] just helped people

focus on getting this done.”

As the Congressionally-chartered partner of the Forest

Service, the National Forest Foundation played a key role

in helping to meet the Challenge. By providing grants and

technical assistance to nonprofit organizations, the NFF

helped the Forest Service make measurable progress to-

ward the Challenge. At the end of 2013, nearly 85 percent

of the 406 qualifying Wilderness areas met the standards

of the Challenge. The Forest Service, nonprofit partners,

and the NFF have made an even more concerted push this

last year of the Challenge to help meet the standard.

CORPORATE PARTNERVail Resorts, Inc. salutes the NFF. From California to Colorado, we work with the NFF and local partners to improve the National Forests that provide our guests with a lifetime of memories.


wilderness special

Coming TogetherSince the beginning of the Challenge, the NFF has distributed 189 grants

to 74 organizations, investing nearly $3.8 million in federal and private funds.

For example, the Arizona Wilderness Coalition (AWC) has received six grants

through the Wilderness Stewardship Challenge. Such NFF funding helped AWC

establish their Wilderness Stewardship Program, Wild Stew.

“The NFF has been the primary funder of Wild Stew and allowed it to start,”

said Sam Frank, AWC Central Arizona Director. Wild Stew hosts group volun-

teer days on Wilderness areas and provides training for individual wilderness

stewards. Citizens volunteered more than 7,500 hours for Arizona’s Wilderness

areas, translating to $166,000 of donated time.

Recently, AWC has taken on not just monitoring non-native species but

removing them. On the Prescott National Forest, the Apache Creek Wilderness

area is now almost completely rid of tamarix plants, a priority species of Forest

Service Region 3. Frank explained, “We had to get to some really, really tough

places. And then one by one, we cut and sprayed individual plants.”

Despite the Wilderness Stewardship Challenge ending, AWC will continue

to support the health of Wilderness areas through the state, including those

managed by the Bureau of Land Management. AWC also plans to expand their

work with veteran groups.

Another partner with immense on-the-ground results is Friends of Nevada

Wilderness (FNW). Nevada’s only National Forest, the Humboldt-Toiyabe, is the

largest National Forest in the lower 48 and has 1.2 million acres of Wilderness.

To boost the efforts of FNW, the NFF has awarded eight grants for Nevada’s

Wilderness areas. FNW has significantly leveraged those grants with cash and

in-kind contributions exceeding $1.1 million in conservation impacts.

From 2006 to 2013, FNW has stepped up to help the state’s Wilderness

areas meet standards. They have engaged more than 1,100 volunteers in

on-the-ground restoration, donating more than 12,900 hours back to the

Humboldt-Toiyabe. Among the organization’s many accomplishments, FNW

worked with the Forest Service to develop a noxious weed management plan

for the Mount Rose Wilderness, and their diligent work continues in 2014.

Looking ahead, the official Challenge will end, but the greater challenge

remains. Wilderness is “an area where the earth and its community of life are

untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain,” as

stated in the Wilderness Act. We do not remain, but that doesn’t mean we don’t

lend a hand to keep these places wild.

The Ten ElementsSuccess of the ten-year Wilderness

Stewardship Challenge means:

• Fire managers consider a full range of

responses with the goal of restoring

natural fire

• Invasive plants are successfully

treated

• Air quality trends are measured

• Recreation site inventory is completed

• Opportunities for solitude or

primitive unconfined recreation are

protected

• Priority actions identified in a wilder-

ness education plan are implemented

• Outfitter/guides model wilderness

practices and incorporate apprecia-

tion for wilderness values to clients

• Adequate direction exists to protect

wilderness character

• Information needs are met

• Baseline workforce is in place

Hannah EttemaHannah is the Communications and

Development Associate at the NFF.

When she’s not running the NFF’s

Social Media program or lending her

design skills to fellow staff, she’s

out exploring Montana’s National

Forests. Reach her at:

[email protected].

JOHN MUIR WILDERNESS, INYO NATIONAL FOREST


Photo © D

amara M

ullens

wilderness special

3 Questions with Dale Bosworth, Chief of the U.S Forest Service

Dale Bosworth served as the 15th Chief of the U.S.

Forest Service from 2001-2007. He was instrumental in

implementing the Wilderness Stewardship Challenge in

2004, which has improved the health of dozens of Wilder-

ness areas across the country in just ten years. The NFF’s

Hannah Ettema caught up with Chief Bosworth for a short

Q&A about his long-standing love for Wilderness.

NFF: Where did your connection and passion for Wil-

derness develop?

Bosworth: When I became a ranger on the Powell

District of the Clearwater National Forest, we had about

200,000 acres of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and

that’s what really got me caring about Wilderness. Having

that Wilderness on my district, going out into the Wilder-

ness, and understanding and learning more about the Wil-

derness Act just started making a big difference to me.

NFF: What are some things visitors can do when

they’re in Wilderness areas to help steward these places

to make sure they stay healthy?

Bosworth: Well I think the things they need to do are

‘Leave No Trace.’ People that go into Wilderness areas

need to make sure when they leave, it’s as if they were

never there.

And that means when you’re building a fire that you

put a rock ring around, and that you put it back when

you’re done so it doesn’t look like someone was there

building a campfire. People need to educate themselves by

reading and understanding ways to Leave No Trace.

Some like to cut the trail at the switchback and pretty

soon you’ve got a new trail, which is a problem. Obviously

leaving any kind of trash and paper is a problem.

But I think people that want to use Wildernesses

should try to educate themselves and make it a person-

al challenge, “I’m going into this Wilderness, but when I

leave, I’m not going to leave any trace that I was there.

Now how can I do that?”

NFF: Do you have a favorite Wilderness area?

Bosworth: I guess I’d have to say my favorite is the

Selway-Bitterroot because that’s the first Wilderness area

I had the opportunity to manage part of. It’s a beautiful

Wilderness. Big. Wild.

Every Wilderness, every place I’ve been is really

special. But if I had to pick one, I’d say Selway-Bitterroot.

wilderness50th.org

Our Common Heritage& ResponsibilityJoin us for the

October 15–19, 2014Albuquerque, NM

The Forest Service’s fi rst wilderness, the Gila, was

designated in 1964 © NATHAN NEWCOMER

Join us for the

October 15–19, 2014

National Wilderness Conference

CelebratingAmerica’s

Wilderness legacy

Answer from page 3This National Forest is home to the largest herd of bighorn sheep in the country.

Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest was

originally protected as part of the Yellowstone

Timberland Reserve in 1891. Bordering Yellowstone

National Park, the Shoshone is home to a variety of

wildlife including bighorn sheep, gray wolves, and

grizzly bears to name a few. More than half of the

forest is designated Wilderness, including the Popo

Agie (pictured on page 3). The area features several

mountains exceeding 12,000 feet, including the

famed Cirque of the Towers. The landscape hasn’t

changed much since explorers first laid eyes on the

majestic peaks, valleys, and canyons.


wilderness special

Estella B. Leopold is the daughter of famed

conservationist Aldo Leopold. A noted

conservationist and botanist, Dr. Leopold

is a Professor Emeritus at the University of

Washington, Seattle. She has served on the

board of a number of conservation organizations

including the National Forest Foundation from

2003-2005.

Back in 1924 it must have been

difficult to foresee or imagine the

possible loss of our wild lands in

America. How fortunate we are that

Aldo Leopold did consider that. Such

a loss was indeed developing in the

ensuing decades, and the threat

became a real danger. We need to be

grateful to all those stalwart giants

who gathered together in 1935 to start The Wilderness Society; this group

paved the way for the work of Howard Zahniser, and the passage of the

Wilderness Act in 1964.

My colleagues and I testified at the Denver hearing on the Wilderness Act

and both Mother and I handed in testimony. I remember that it was this ex-

perience that moved me toward activism in conservation, and I am aware this

was also the experience of many others. How proud we all were when the bill

became law. This national act became the very first major conservation legis-

lation in our entire history. We are aware that the Wilderness Act set the stage

for the environmental movement that developed in the 1970’s. I think the Act

really did inspire humanity and gave us an “ethical rudder” for the protection

and treatment of our wild areas.

Dr. Leopold graciously provided this recollection for this issue of Your National Forests.

My Wilderness

The following excerpts from authors,

politicians, scientists, and historic

figures speak to what Wilderness

means to them. We hope you enjoy

them and find inspiration to discover your own

Wilderness.

Estella B. Leopold


Photo © U

niveristy of Washington Photo

voices from the forest

“As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowledge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as a spiritual one.”

Terry Tempest Williams is an author,

activist, and conservationist based in

Southwest Utah. Known for her lyrical

and impassioned prose, Mrs. Williams’

books include Leap, Red: Patience and Passion in

the Desert, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When

Women Were Birds, Desert Quartet, and others. In

2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall

Award from The

Wilderness Society.

I believe we need wilderness in

order to be more complete human

beings, to not be fearful of the

animals that we are, an animal who

bows to the incomparable power of

natural forces when standing on the

north rim of the Grand Canyon, an

animal who understands a sense of humility when watching a grizzly overturn

a stump with its front paw to forage for grubs in the lodgepole pines of the

northern Rockies, an animal who weeps over the sheer beauty of migrating

cranes above the Bosque del Apache in November, an animal who is not afraid

to cry with delight in the middle of a midnight swim in a phosphorescent tide,

an animal who has not forgotten what it means to pray before the unfurled

blossom of the sacred datura, remembering the source of all true visions.

As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowl-

edge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as

a spiritual one, that the language of law and science used so successfully to

define and defend what wilderness has been in the past century must now

be fully joined with the language of the heart to illuminate what these lands

mean to the future.

From “A Prayer for a Wild Millennium,” copyright © 2000 by Terry Tempest Williams.

Appears in her book Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, published by Pantheon

Books in 2001. Used by permission of Brandt and Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. Any

copying or distribution of this text is expressly forbidden. All rights reserved.

Terry Tempest Williams


Photo © C

heryl Him

melstein / coyoteclan.com


Bob Marshall is a lion of the wilderness

movement. He founded The

Wilderness Society in 1935 with

several other like-minded activists and

worked as the head of recreational management

for the Forest Service in the late 1930s before

his death in 1939. The Bob Marshall Wilderness

area in Montana bears his name as does

Mount Marshall in the

Adirondacks where he

spent much of his youth.

There is just one hope of repulsing

the tyrannical ambition of civilization

to conquer every niche on the whole

earth. That hope is the organization of

spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness.

In a civilization which requires most lives to be passed amid inordinate

dissonance, pressure and intrusion, the chance of retiring now and then to

the quietude and privacy of sylvan haunts becomes for some people a psychic

necessity.

The preservation of a few samples of undeveloped territory is one of the

most clamant issues before us today. Just a few more years of hesitation and

the only trace of that wilderness which has exerted such a fundamental in-

fluence in molding American character will lie in the musty pages of pioneer

books…To avoid this catastrophe demands immediate action.

F rank Forrester Church III

represented Idaho as a

Senator from 1957-1981. Senator Church was the floor sponsor

of the Wilderness Act in 1964, and in 1968, he sponsored the Wild and

Scenic Rivers Act. In 1980, he played a key role in establishing the

Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness area, the

largest Wilderness in the nation outside of Alaska.

The great purpose is to set aside a reasonable part of

the vanishing wilderness, to make certain that generations

of Americans yet unborn will know what it is to experience

life on undeveloped, unoccupied land in the same form and

character as the Creator fashioned it. It is a great spiritual

experience. I never knew a man who took a bedroll into an

Robert “Bob” Marshall

Senator Frank Church

This quote is widely available on the

Internet. It is generally uncited. Most of

the lines are from Marshall’s seminal

essay, “The Problem of the Wilderness”

published in Scientific Monthly (30) 2,

February 1930.

Idaho mountainside and slept there

under a star-studded summer sky

who felt self-important that next

morning. Unless we preserve

some opportunity for future

generations to have the same

experience, we shall have

dishonored our trust.

Senator Frank Church during a

1961 Senate debate on the

Wilderness Act.


Photo © C

ourtesy of Wilderness.net; N

ational Archives Photos


Howard Zahniser served as the

executive secretary of The

Wilderness Society and editor of

The Living Wilderness from 1945

through 1964. Widely recognized as an eloquent

and persuasive writer, Zahniser authored the

Wilderness Act beginning with a first draft in

1956. Eight years and more than sixty drafts

later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill

into law. Tragically, Zahniser died a few months

before The Wilderness Act became law.

We are a part of the wildness of the universe. That is our nature. Our

noblest, happiest character develops with the influence of wildness. Away from

it we degenerate into the squalor of slums or the frustration of clinical couches.

With the wilderness we are at home.

Some of us think we see this so clearly that for ourselves, for our children,

our continuing posterity, and our fellow men we covet with a consuming inten-

sity the fullness of the human development that keeps its contact with wild-

ness. Out of the wilderness, we realize, has come the substance of our culture,

and with a living wilderness—it is our faith—we shall have also a vibrant vital

culture—an enduring civilization of healthful, happy people who, like Antaeus,

perpetually renew themselves in contact with the earth.

This is not a disparagement of our civilization—no disparagement at all—

but rather an admiration of it to the point of perpetuating it. We like the beef

from the cattle grazed on the public domain. We relish the vegetables from

the lands irrigated by virtue of the

Bureau of Reclamation. We carry in

our packs aluminum manufactured

with the help of hydroelectric power

from great reservoirs. We motor

happily on paved highways to the

approaches of our wilderness. We

journey in streamlined trains and in

transcontinental airplanes to confer-

ences on wilderness preservation. We

nourish and refresh our minds from

books manufactured out of the pulp of our forests. We enjoy the convenience

and comfort of our way of living—urban, village, and rural. And we want this

civilization to endure and to be enjoyed on and on by healthy, happy citizens.

Our only hope to avert this loss is in our deliberate effort to preserve the

wilderness we have. The ramifications of our developing mechanical enter-

prises are such that only those areas which are set aside for preservation will

persist as wilderness.

Howard Zahniser

“It is this civilization, this culture, this way of living that will be sacrificed if our wilderness is lost. What sacrifice!”

From “The Need for Wilderness Areas,”

The Living Wilderness, Number 59,

Winter-Spring, 1956-57.


Photo © C

ourtesy of Wilderness.net



National Forest System Wilderness Areas

The Forest Service

manages 33 percent of

the acreage within the

National Wilderness

Preservation System. Spread out

across the country, these wild

landscapes offer solitude, beauty,

and respite from the modern world.

This map shows National Forests and Wilderness

acreage managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Managing

439 Wilderness areas, the Forest Service is responsible for

more Wilderness areas than any other federal agency.

Alaska contains more Wilderness acreage than any

other state—more than 57 million acres—but much of it is

managed by the National Park Service. In the entire coun-

try, Wilderness areas represent about five percent of the

total landscape. In the lower 48 states, Wilderness areas

make up only 2.7 percent of the landscape.

Wilderness Areas on National Forests

National Forests

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A M E R I C A ’ S B A C K Y A R D

Your National Forests Summer/Fall 2014

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