On the Road in Arizona

Mid May finds me traveling in Arizona. I'm here near the U.S. Mexico border for a four day gathering of 22 Colorado River specialists from both countries working to find common ground on protection and restoration actions for the Colorado River watershed in the U.S. and Mexico. It is a small and impressive group of scientists, lawyers, policy wonks, restoration specialists, artists, funders, and river runners facilitated by the great Jose Acevedo of the Rockwood Leadership Program. The gathering was conceived and organized by RFA's own board chair, Pamela Hyde. Pam gathered support from the General Service Foundation and collaborated with Rockwood Leadership Program on the design of the week. Pam has dedicated her adult life to the Colorado River and this gathering is the beginning of the next stage of her work in the basin, both as a consultant and key leader of the Rivers Foundation. Though the details of the week are confidential, the goals of increasing communication and effectiveness within the environmental community were easily achieved, and the spin-offs will continue far into the future. I left the meetings at the closing today with a sense of great opportunity and optimism for the future of the peoples and ecosystems of the Colorado River watershed and its delta.

Thoughts on Wilderness

Prior to the Rockwood gathering, I had the good fortune to attend a quarterly colloquium at Prescott College where students and guest speakers present on wide variety of topics. I first sat in on a panel of guest speakers talking about the controversial pluses and minuses of recent wilderness proposals and designations around the U.S. Speakers on this panel included Linn Kincannon, Idaho Conservation League, Jeremy Garncarz, The Wilderness Society's BLM Action Center, Janine Blaeloch, Western Land Exchange Project, George Nickas, Wilderness Watch, and Doug Scott, Campaign for America's Wilderness. The core of the controversies on the panel revolve around differing perspectives on what it takes to pass wilderness bills in Congress today, and on what may be the long-term implications for the wilderness movement. Recent wilderness designation proposals offer a stark contrast to past designations in single purpose wilderness bills. Examples include the Steens Mountain (Oregon) Cooperative Management and Protection Act of 2000, the Clark County (Nevada) Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002, the Lincoln County (Nevada) Conservation, Recreation and Development Act of 2004 and the proposed Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act of Idaho which would, among other purposes, designate approximately 300,000 acres of wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds region of Idaho. The differences in the new wilderness proposals are evident in their titles. Rather than single purpose wilderness designations like Oregon's Opal Creek wilderness bill in the mid 1990s, these newer efforts intertwine with public-private land exchanges, public lands giveaways, protection of motorized uses of federal lands and other provisions. In short, they are more like traditional public works bill pork barrels. Many contexts have changed since the classic wilderness battles of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Changes include vast growth in the human population of the United States and subsequent pressures to drive, ride and destroy wilderness through even well meaning uses; greater ecosystem knowledge and subsequent moves to designate many different ecosystems as protected wilderness rather the earlier predominantly 'rocks and ice' designations like the vast majority of the 1980 designations in Alaska; the abolition of the federal "Fairness Doctrine" which ensured access to the public airwaves for many different points of view and the subsequent rise of corporate dominated, single view, right wing media conglomerates; changes in composition of the federal judiciary now dominated by Reagan and Bush 1 and 2 appointees and their narrow interpretations and outright dismissal of mandated environmental protections under various statues; and finally the Democratic party's willful abandonment of once strong (and progressive) rural constituencies. What hasn't changed is the need for protection and restoration of our few remaining wildlands. More on these topics in coming weeks. Meanwhile it is time for stargazing in Arizona's dark, clear and starlit spring skies. I see the most beautiful crescent moon calling me from the glare of this dimly lit portable computer. Hasta luego amigos.