Ancient forests, dramatic peaks and alpine lakes are what immediately meets the eye in in the North Cascades. But there is much more than beauty in this Washington mountain range.
A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging.
Anti-wilderness package also allows logging in California roadless areas, clear-cutting of old growth forests in Alaska and virtually rent-free grazing on public lands
BOISE - Conservationists today expressed disappointment in a federal district court decision this weekend upholding a federal rule that eliminates protection for 400,000 acres of Idaho’s wild backcountry and exposes more than 5 million acres in the state to greater threat of development. The ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho on the 2008 Idaho Roadless Rule allows the State of Idaho to institute its own version of a national policy that had protected some 58.5 million acres across the country when it was adopted in 2001.
We prefer to inform you about advances in wild land conservation, but this week that opportunity has been denied for Idaho’s magnificent backcountry forests.
At the end of January, a federal district court upheld a dangerous federal rule that eliminates protection for 400,000 acres of Idaho’s wild backcountry and exposes more than 5 million acres in the state to greater threat of development.
On a hot summer day last week, a group of forest scientists and managers hiked up a cool Idaho mountain ridge to look at trees in trouble. Whitebark pines are hardy, gnarly and long-lived trees at high elevations across the Pacific Crest, western Canada and the Northern Rockies of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. While these trees have long withstood wind, snows and freezing temperatures for millennium, on slopes from 5,000 to over 12,000 feet — today, a combination of conditions puts the species at risk.
