Rio Grande Chapter Sponsors Conference Celebrating Wilderness Protection

Our Rio Grande Chapter, along with many other organizations and Sierra Club chapters, helped sponsor the Western Wilderness Conference, held April 8-11 in Berkeley, California. It was a very rewarding experience to be amongst a large number of enthusiastic fighters for wilderness and other public lands protection, a large number of whom have been involved for many, many years.

My only regret was that there were six or so breakout sessions scheduled between the plenary presentations and I could only attend one each time!

Of note among the major speakers was Roger Kaye, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, providing the history of the fight to protect the pristine landscape in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and an eloquent plea for designating all of it as wilderness; Rick Ridgeway, CEO of Patagonia, describing his company’s major efforts through their Freedom to Roam Program to save the world’s large wild animals, like grizzlies, caribou, and wolverines, through migratory corridors; and Dave Foreman, of the Rewilding Institute, giving the final presentation with the cautionary note that we, and all our critters, are interrelated earthlings, each with the right to exist for their own sake, not ours, and ending the session with his iconic wolf howl.

The concept of resilient habitats and wildlife corridors was a major theme throughout the conference. The director of the Sierra Club’s Resilient Habitats Campaign, Bruce Hamilton, presented his updated slideshow on this new concept, which he first tested out at our Chapter meeting several years ago. I was pleased to find out that each of our federal land agencies (Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife, National Parks) has a wilderness staffer in DC who has overall responsibility for all of the agencies’ wilderness, all of whom were at the conference and gave presentations. I was able to speak briefly with Carl Rountree who directs the BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System, and once worked in New Mexico – he is very supportive of the protection of special places.

Kudos to Vicky Hoover, a longtime Sierra Club activist, who was the primary force behind getting this conference together. May there be another one soon! We need to remember that while necessarily fighting coal, oil and gas, and other exploitive and highly polluting industries, and strongly encouraging energy efficiencies and green energy, we must not forget our special landscapes and their wildlife, which give us hope, rejuvenation, and the strength to continue our many environmental battles.
—Norma McCallan