Wilderness Advocates: It's Time to Gather Together!

On Saturday, September 6, old hands and new faces from across the state will meet at the Missouri Wilderness Conference in Salem, MO to learn about and take action on the new Missouri Wilderness proposal. Fun will be had by all as we plan the next steps in the effort to designate seven wild, spectacular places as Wilderness areas. You won't want to miss it!

Comments are due by May 16 on the Southwest Project in the Cedar Creek District of the Mark Twain National Forest. This project includes heavy logging, cattle grazing, road development, building two parking areas, fence building, and other activities in the proposed Smith Creek Wilderness. Read more about it here.

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Forest Service Plans Logging and Development in Proposed Smith Creek Wilderness: Your Comments Needed Now!

Situated in the midst of mid-Missouri’s population centers of Columbia, Fulton, and Jefferson City, the Cedar Creek District of the Mark Twain National Forest is much-used and much-beloved. And no portion of the Cedar Creek District is mor e special or better loved than the beautiful and still surprisingly remote Smith Creek proposed Wilderness Area above and below the old Rutherford Bridge connecting Boone and Callaway Counties. For more than 25 years, conservationists have worked with the Forest Service to respect and protect the authentic wilderness character of Smith Creek’s streams, bluffs, pinnacles, forests, wildlife, and solitude. In 2007, Smith Creek was included in a statewide proposal along with six other Missouri areas for designation as a federal Wilderness Area.

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why

By TINA KELLEY
Published: March 25, 2008

Al Hicks was standing outside an old mine in the Adirondacks, the largest bat hibernaculum, or winter resting place, in New York State.

It was broad daylight in the middle of winter, and bats flew out of the mine about one a minute. Some had fallen to the ground where they flailed around on the snow like tiny wind-broken umbrellas, using the thumbs at the top joint of their wings to gain their balance.

According to an Associated Press release of Feb. 8, 2008, a frog new to the scientific community, has been discovered by Emily Lemmon, who found the quarter-sized, ground dwelling amphibian while studying for her doctorate in evolutionary biology.
The Cajun Frog, as it is commonly called, resides in western Mississippi, eastern Texas and Oklahoma, all of Arkansas, and southern Missouri, and is kin to the Spring Peeper and Green Tree Frog.
So now there is yet another reason for encouraging people to throw away that Roundup (safely).

What is Wilderness?

Setting aside the many cultural meanings of the term “wilderness,” the term “Wilderness”here refers to a particular designation of public lands set forth in the Wilderness Act of 1964, and augmented by the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975. The Wilderness Act describes wilderness as a place of certain scale where “in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape... the earth and it’s community of life are untrammeled by man.”

The recent effort to protect seven of the last roadless areas in Missouri as Wilderness Areas has received a lot of press and controversy over the past two months. You can read an essay about why we need more Wilderness protection in Missouri here and at www.mowild.org. What are your thoughts?

The Forest Service is approving about 10,000 acres of salvage logging a year on the Mark Twain. Nearly the entire forest is open to this type of management for "forest health." Unlike protected Wilderness Areas, each of the seven newly proposed Wilderness Areas are open to this type of management. The pictures here are from the Henderson Creek sale near Bixby, part of a 27,000 acre salvage logging project the Forest Service approved and completed across the Salem and Potosi Ranger Districts.

This editorial by Tom Kruzen was printed in the Springfield News-Leader and other newspapers.

Wilderness status is crucial for national forest's protection
By Tom Kruzen