Connelly:
Thanks for saving Washington's wild places -- now stay out
BY JOEL CONNELLY, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published 09:59 p.m., Sunday, May 8, 2011
Joel
Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments
regularly on politics and public policy.
Washington passed a watershed moment in conservation when the upper Suiattle
River valley in Snohomish County, its ancient forests circling 10,536-foot
Glacier Peak, was put into wilderness by Congress.
Fifty years later, radical green groups are delivering the public a message
via lawsuit: Thanks for saving the Suiattle. Now, stay out.
The Western Environmental Law Center has filed a federal lawsuit seeking
to halt rebuilding of the Suiattle River Road, which provides access to
trailheads and campgrounds in this grand mountain valley.
The same "public interest" law firm, acting for a Montana-based
outfit called Wilderness Watch, wants a federal court to order destruction
of a newly rebuilt lookout atop Green Mountain, a hike off the Suiattle
River enjoyed by thousands of people each summer.
Several venerable conservation groups, which once publicized wild places,
now work on a broad scale to block or keep closed routes giving access
to our scenic backcountry. Big late fall storms in 2003 and 2007 washed
out chunks of roads. Lawyers are now trying to hamstring repairs.
"In violation of the law, Federal Highways failed to analyze the
environmental effects of reconstructing the Suiattle River Road on ancient
forests, protected species -- such as salmon, spotted owls and marbled
murrelets -- and a whole host of important ecological values," said
Susan Jane Brown of the Western Environmental Law Center.
Huh? The upper Suiattle would today be miles of clearcuts were it not
for trail access provided by that road, and public support in days when
the timber industry and conservationists fought over the valley. The river
would run the color of the Chocolate Glacier on Glacier Peak.
As a kid at Fairhaven Jr. High in Bellingham, I heard the U.S. Forest
Service unveil its infamous "octopus" plan for a Glacier Peak
Wilderness Area. The map showed tentacles extending out over rocky, icy
ridges, while far below forested valleys were earmarked for the loggers.
The audience wouldn't have it.
The Sierra Club published a wonderful book -- "The North Cascades:
Forgotten Parkland" -- and The Mountaineers put out their first "100
Hikes" book -- in hopes of luring visitors up the Suiattle River
road, where they could hike up Green Mountain or enjoy a long, long horseback
or backpack trip up to Image Lake.
What gives nowadays? The North Cascades Conservation Council (N3C) fought
to save the Suiattle. Now, along with the Pilchuck Audubon Society, it
is going to court seeking to block road reconstruction.
Three points on why this is folly and hyprocisy:
--Wild places need defenders, advocates, friends and "constituents"
, as former Gov. Dan Evans never ceases to say. Evans was introduced to
the wilderness as a Boy Scout at Camp Parsons on the Olympic Peninsula.
Years later, he would lead his three sons over 7,780-foot Aasgard Pass
in a storm into the Cascades' fabled Enchantment Lakes. Evans gave an
account of that hike to President Ford in the Oval Office, persuading
Ford to sign Alpine Lakes Wilderness legislation.
--Cutting off access means that "crown jewels" of Washington
can be enjoyed only by those with days of leisure time. Famed climber
Jim Wickwire argues passionately for reopening the upper Stehekin River
Road in the North Cascades National Park. The N3C, Sierra Club and National
Park Service want to keep it closed.
Listen to Wickwire: Keeping the upper 11 miles of road closed "means
that families with young children or seniors now have significantly diminished
opportunities to take shorter day hikes . . . It means only the most hardy
can journey to this area of the Cascades."
--Conservation groups, notably N3C, are now pushing to expand the North
Cascades National Park, including beauty spots left out when it was created
in 1968. They want to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, and create new
wilderness in the Columbia Highlands of northeast Washington.
How can they make a case for protecting places while at the same time
seeking to keep people out of parks and wilderness already protected?
Congress needs to lay down reality.
If the North Cascades National Park is to grow, conservation groups must
get behind legislation to move the Stehekin road away from the river and
relocate on the route of an old wagon route built a century ago.
If Washington is to get more wilderness, legal stings like the Green Mountain
lookout suit, and litigation to halt road reconstruction in the Suiattle,
must be abandoned -- right now.
As a kid, my parents used the Suiattle and Stehekin Roads -- and the Dosewallips
Road in the Olympics -- to get my legs out on trails and introduce me
to the wonders of wild Washington.
Hence, here's agreeing with a recent Tracy Warner editorial from the Wenatchee
World: "Cutting off the most glorious vistas on the continent to
families, to those with physical burdens, who lack funds and idle time,
to all but the elite, will harm the cause of conservation inevitably.