WILDLANDS
The Wild Clearwater Country
The northern half of central Idaho's Big Wild, the Wild Clearwater Country, contains many unprotected roadless areas and wild rivers, and provides crucial habitat for countless rare plant and animal species. The entirety of the Clearwater River drainage is found here. Important headwater streams that give home to chinook salmon and steelhead, bull trout and west-slope cutthroat trout, harlequin ducks and tailed frogs are here.
Click for full size image.
Friends of the Clearwater strives to protect these areas.
According to recent research by World Wildlife Fund, the Clearwater River drainage and vicinity is the most important for forest carnivores in the entire U.S. portion of the Yellowstone to Yukon Rockies region.
Learn more about Visionary Legislation that could protect the entire Wild Northern Rockies.
Logical additions to the Gospel Hump Wilderness: John's Creek, Boulder Creek, et al.
Location
This is one of the remaining potential additions to the Gospel Hump Wilderness on the South Fork Clearwater drainage. Large ponderosa pines and steep open grassy slopes characterize this roadless gem known for its important anadromous and inland fishery. Bull trout, Chinook, and Steelhead spawn here. The Otter-Wing and Mackey Day timber sales, carried out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ecologically devastated this portion of the Gospel Hump's northern boundary.
This split into half the most intact and healthy steelhead and west-slope cutthroat trout producing tributaries on the South Fork Clearwater. The South Fork Clearwater suffers from decades of strip mining, overgrazing, and road-building. It is imperative that healthy tributaries like John's Creek remain to benefit this imperiled watershed.
Regional Map
This page shows a satellite map overlayed with shapefile information from various agencies. (600kb image)Weir - Post Office Proposed Wilderness
This wild section of land is remote with no trails. It has unique features like Ashpile Peak and Weir Creek Hot Springs and is adjacent to Indian Post Office. The Forest Service has yet to produce a desired future condition because the plan has been delayed on the Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forests. A draft policy has been circulated through the county roadless meetings. It is Clearwater National Forest policy (the three-prong approach) to not log or road roadless areas.Wildlands
Big Wild Action Report #4, July 2005
with permission from Big Wild Advocates
As the new century unfolds, America faces a profound opportunity to be seized or lost, depending upon the collective size and generosity of our hearts; The America first experienced by Europeans was a teeming wilderness with an unbelievable profusion of life. Over sixty-million bison ... a couple hundred thousand griz ... giant elk herds across the plains and from coast to coast ... billions of passenger pigeons blackening the eastern sky ... billions of spawning salmon ... unbroken virgin forests and unplowed prairies ... living flood plains and deltas nourished by rich silt-laden floodwaters .... So great was the pre-Colombian American wilderness that folks today can only imagine the magic squandered in just a few generations.
Big Wild Action Report #4, July 2005
with permission from Big Wild AdvocatesAs the new century unfolds, America faces a profound opportunity to be seized or lost, depending upon the collective size and generosity of our hearts; the last chance to save and restore a significant chunk of the dwindling American wilderness. The opportunity of the ages, it's fraught with dangers from foes who respond only to the promise of profits and to the perpetuation of empires. Since Congress enacted the 1964 Wilderness Act, creating a National Wilderness Preservation System, conservationists have worked to protect as designated Wilderness undeveloped public wildlands--generally known as Roadless Areas. National forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administered lands all include millions of acres of roadless areas that should be designated Wilderness by Congress. In many cases, these wildlands are under attack like never before. When Congress designates a public wildland as a Wilderness Area, it is generally protected from industrial development as a natural wild landscape. Roadbuilding, logging, resort development, new mining entry, new livestock allotments and motor vehicles are all outlawed in designated Wilderness. Today, attacks upon the wilderness concept reverberate. Bureaucrats create euphemisms such as "ecosystem management," "forest health," and other buzzwords designed to convince the gullible that roadless areas and related wildlands need more intensive management, not less. . . . NOW IS THE TIME FOR WILDLAND CONSERVATION TO RENEW AND REDOUBLE ITS COMMITMENT TO WILDERNESS! The America first experienced by Europeans was a teeming wilderness with an unbelievable profusion of life. Over sixty-million bison ... a couple hundred thousand griz ... giant elk herds across the plains and from coast to coast ... billions of passenger pigeons blackening the eastern sky ... billions of spawning salmon ... unbroken virgin forests and unplowed prairies ... living flood plains and deltas nourished by rich silt-laden floodwaters .... So great was the pre-Colombian American wilderness that folks today can only imagine the magic squandered in just a few generations. Yet relative to Europe and many other areas, America is lucky. Though depleted, a vestige of wilderness remains, harboring some of the magic, and containing the genetic seeds of a potentially wilder, healthier tomorrow. According to many of the world's foremost scientists, any effective strategy to maintain wild native life on Earth must include as a basic fundament saving unprotected roadless areas and restoring big wilderness.
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