Tag Archives: eastern cascades

Wreckreation in the Teanaway?

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Another Update, 12/3/2012

Check out this Guest Editorial in the Seattle Times for another view on the Dam Project.

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UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST:

On October 11, I received an email from Michael Garrity, Washington State Conservation Director for American Rivers about this post. I followed up with a phone call to him. He said his email was to reassure me that new lands would not be opened to off-road vehicles. Actually, he said, the new agreement would protect lands that are currently closed to ORV. The new agreement would better manage lands that are currently open to ORV. When I asked him if the organizations in the letter cited below—Sierra Club, etc— were on board with the new agreement, he said yes.

This is a complicated project, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on it. I know that we cannot protect all lands from any possible human disturbances, and that “working” landscapes—forests, farms, and recreation areas—are part of the mix in planning a sustainable future with a healthy environment. So, I’ll be watching this to see how it plays out. Hope you will be, too.

Here’s the meat of the email:

I wanted to reassure you that the former American Forest Land Company land in the Teanaway that was acquired by the state will see improved management and an emphasis on conservation, recreation, and sustainable forestry rather than the unsustainable forestry and largely unmonitored recreation that have occurred there in the past.  There will be a public process to inform the management of the land.  More info is available here:  http://www.dnr.wa.gov/BusinessPermits/Topics/OtherLandTransactions/Pages/amp_teanaway.aspx

The Sierra Club report you refer to is critical of a National Conservation and Recreation Area plan for adjacent National Forest land that is unrelated to the state’s purchase of the AFLC land, which the Sierra Club supported.  That said, even the National Conservation and Recreation Area proposal has been mischaracterized by some of its critics as opening land up to off-road vehicles that is not already open to it – the fact is that is sought to allow some continued ORV use on public land where they were already used, but to manage them better and do a better job of keeping them out of places they shouldn’t be, while also adding new Wilderness designations and Wild and Scenic River designations.  More recently (and thanks in part to some of the criticism you read whether or not one thinks it’s warranted or unwarranted criticism from a conservation perspective), that proposal has been put on hold pending the completion of the National Forest planning process (still a few years from completion) in order to allow the public to weigh in on the details of management of the National Forest in the Teanaway region as well as other parts of the Wenatchee National Forest.

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Here’s the original post:

The Yakima Basin Integrated Water Resources Management Plan proposes new and expanded dams and reservoirs near Ellensburg in Central Washington. A recent article in the Seattle Times Article made it sound like a wonderful compromise: farmers would get water, the tribes fish, and the rest of us 50,000 acres of “protected” land in the gorgeous Teanaway.

Wow! I love the Teanaway area – it is prime Eastern Cascades habitat and gorgeous country!

Plus, the plan is supported by Forterra, Conservation Northwest, American Rivers, the Wilderness Society, and the Bullitt Foundation. All great organizations.

BUT…

I wondered what “protected” meant. There is quite a push in many rural Washington communities to develop public land for high-impact motorized recreation—the kind that really tears up the landscape, like ATVs, motorcycles, and 4x4s. Is this what they have in mind for Teanaway?

The Sierra Club report indicates it does.

A closer look showed that the recreation portion of the plan is strongly opposed—on the basis of increased off-road vehicles alone—by a slew of environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Seattle Audubon, Friends of the Earth, Washington Native Plant Society, Alpine Lakes Protection Society and many others.

Plus, the plan calls for destroying 1000 acres of old-growth forest near Bumping Lake,  and I certainly can’t support that. We need all the old-growth we have left to remain intact.

Bottom line: I cannot support anything that would threaten to turn the beautiful, serene Teanaway into the gouged-up mud pit that other off-road vehicle sites have become. The “protection” could end up ruining one of the greatest treasures of the Eastern Cascades.

What do you think?

 

An acrylic painting I did while perched on a boulder in the middle of the North Fork Teanaway River.

An acrylic painting I did while perched on a boulder in the middle of the North Fork Teanaway River, near Beverly Campground (US Forest Service).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can we really afford to lose more old-growth forest? We have so little left.

A child alone in the woods...almost never seen anymore.

(A watercolor I did for my Federation Forest State Park Project)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You also might be interested in reading one of my posts from last summer about a different—but no less dubious—dam proposal:

RIVERS ARE US

If you want to study a single topic to help you understand history, the environment, politics and the economy…choose rivers.

Read more….

This sketch shows the Skykomish River, one of the last wild rivers in Washington State...close to where a new dam is planned.

This sketch shows the Skykomish River, one of the last wild rivers in Washington State…close to where a new dam is planned.

 

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Moon Madness

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It’s almost the summer solstice, and almost time for our annual Supermoon (Sunday, June 23). This seems like a good time to re-run this post…originally published last fall.

(I’ll be back soon with new posts. I’m buried in deadlines right now.)

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The night had been dead quiet, but as soon as the full moon rose, so did the noise level. I was sleeping under the stars on a crisp summer night in the Eastern Cascades–or at least I had been sleeping, until the din of what seemed like thousands of chattering creatures woke me up.  I lay curled in my sleeping bag for hours, listening to the echoing chorus and watching the silvery moonlight play across the meadow.

From: Moon Madness

A watercolor sketch I did of Camas Meadows, in the eastern Cascades.

 

I tried to identify the animals I was hearing, but it was all a-jumble. If I had to guess I would say frogs, toads, crickets, coyotes, and owls. Possibly others, but who knows?

It was a crazy sound—hooting, yelping, buzzing—animals driven into a frenzy by the glare of the moonlight. Were they glad to have the light…or frustrated by it?

The moon dropped slowly behind the snowy peaks and the sky grew darker. Then, the instant the moon disappeared, everything fell silent—as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. No moon, no chattering.

I stayed awake for a few more minutes marveling at the lunar effect on animal life. It made me think of wolves—an animal I’ve yet to hear—or see—in the wild. I’ve read that wolves howling is unlike any other sound…soulful, magical and frighteningly beautiful.

I wondered if there were wolves mixed into that chorus of wildsong. It’s not impossible…they’ve started to come back into these lands they once inhabited. Slowly. Tentatively. Carefully. Not without casualties.

I’ve been thinking about wolves lately—they’ve been in the news a lot recently. Last year, California got its first wolf in nearly a century—a lone wolf from the Imnaha pack in Oregon; in Washington, an entire pack was recently killed by the state for depredation of livestock; several western states and most recently Wisconsin and Minnesota now allow wolf hunting and trapping.

Wolves are symbolic in many ways—of struggle to survive, of decline or recovery of natural systems, and of difficulties we have as Americans to understand each other and to live together in an increasingly “hot, flat and crowded” world.

These days, it seems like everybody is mad about something. Maybe we’re not unlike the creatures of the night—mad at the moon for making it too hard to be nocturnal. Maybe if we quieted down and listened for a change—to each other and to Nature and what it’s trying to tell us…we’d all have a better chance of survival.

 

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Moon Madness

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2

The night had been dead quiet, but as soon as the full moon rose, so did the noise level. I was sleeping under the stars on a crisp summer night in the Eastern Cascades–or at least I had been sleeping, until the din of what seemed like thousands of chattering creatures woke me up.  I lay curled in my sleeping bag for hours, listening to the echoing chorus and watching the silvery moonlight play across the meadow.

A watercolor sketch of Camas Meadow, a forest-ringed meadow just east of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

 

I tried to identify the animals I was hearing, but it was all a-jumble. If I had to guess I would say frogs, toads, crickets, coyotes, and owls. Possibly others, but who knows?

It was a crazy sound—hooting, yelping, buzzing—animals driven into a frenzy by the glare of the moonlight. Were they glad to have the light…or frustrated by it?

The moon dropped slowly behind the snowy peaks and the sky grew darker. Then, the instant the moon disappeared, everything fell silent—as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. No moon, no chattering.

I stayed awake for a few more minutes marveling at the lunar effect on animal life. It made me think of wolves—an animal I’ve yet to hear—or see—in the wild. I’ve read that wolves howling is unlike any other sound…soulful, magical and frighteningly beautiful.

I wondered if there were wolves mixed into that chorus of wildsong. It’s not impossible…they’ve started to come back into these lands they once inhabited. Slowly. Tentatively. Carefully. Not without casualties.

I’ve been thinking about wolves lately—they’ve been in the news a lot recently. Last year, California got its first wolf in nearly a century—a lone wolf from the Imnaha pack in Oregon; in Washington, an entire pack was recently killed by the state for depredation of livestock; several western states and most recently Wisconsin and Minnesota now allow wolf hunting and trapping.

Wolves are symbolic in many ways—of struggle to survive, of decline or recovery of natural systems, and of difficulties we have as Americans to understand each other and to live together in an increasingly “hot, flat and crowded” world.

These days, it seems like everybody is mad about something. Maybe we’re not unlike the creatures of the night—mad at the moon for making it too hard to be nocturnal. Maybe if we quieted down and listened for a change—to each other and to Nature and what it’s trying to tell us…we’d all have a better chance of survival.

 

 

Want to know whenever I publish a new post?  Sure you do! Just enter your email address in the “subscribe” box in the left-hand sidebar on my home page. You’ll get an email notice each time a new post is published. That’s all there is to it! Your email will never be shared.

If you like the blog, please tell your friends about it or “share” or “like” it on Facebook. (See button in sidebar).

And, leave any comments or questions in the box below. I love hearing from you!