34 wild and endangered places in Lewis & Clark country
The Sierra Club is commemorating the 200-year anniversary of Lewis and Clark's
expedition with a five-year campaign to protect significant wild places in eight of the
states along the explorers' route. Among our goals: double the number of
designated-wilderness acres, encourage land acquisition and restoration, work for
smart-growth laws to manage development, and end commercial logging on national forests
and other public lands. The Sierra Club has targeted 34 glorious places that capture the
essence of Lewis and Clark country - and that need immediate help if we are to leave a
legacy for the next two centuries of explorers. On the following pages we highlight a few
of those wild lands. We hope they inspire the adventurer, and activist, in you.
For more information, call the Sierra Club at 1-800-OUR-LAND.
Owyhee Canyonlands
Idaho/Oregon/Nevada
The greater Owyhee Canyonlands, a 3-million-acre swath of remote and rugged land where
Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada meet, is the largest still-unprotected parcel in the lower 48
states. Deep gorges slice through the Canyonlands' vast sagebrush steppe, which supports
one of the largest concentrations of California bighorn sheep in the West. But haphazard
administration by the Bureau of Land Management places the area at risk from overgrazing
and off-road vehicles. The Sierra Club is now leading the effort to permanently protect
the region as a wilderness area.
Little Missouri Badlands
North Dakota
When Lewis and Clark crossed the Great Plains, native prairie covered more than 400
million acres of America. Today a fraction remains. The Little Missouri Badlands, most of
which is managed by the Forest Service as the million-acre Little Missouri National
Grassland, is one of the few places where you can still see the rumpled hills, wild
grasses, wildflowers, bison, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs that the Corps of Discovery
encountered. Yet none of it is protected as wilderness, and oil-and-gas development is
steadily encroaching onto the Badlands' roadless areas. Sierra Club activists are working
to secure permament protection for all remaining wild areas in the Badlands.
Missouri Wild & Scenic River
Nebraska/South Dakota
Two segments of the last free-flowing stretches of the Missouri River in Nebraska and
South Dakota - the only vestiges of the natural Missouri in the Northern Plains - have
been designated as "wild and scenic." Endangered and threatened species -
including the interior least tern, piping plover, pallid sturgeon, and bald eagle - all
thrive here. But the Missouri's protection is only nominal. The National Park Service has
not made conservation a priority, and Congress has failed to appropriate funds for land
acquisition, easements, and access points along the waterway - key issues for Sierra Club
activists in the region.
Black Hills National Forest
South Dakota
West of Lewis and Clark's route into the Dakotas rise the Black Hills, sacred to the Sioux
and the highest mountains east of the Rockies. Unfortunately, Black Hills National Forest
is the most heavily developed and logged forest in the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain
region, with a mere one percent designated as wilderness. Approximately 50,000 acres,
replete with old-growth ponderosa pine, spruce, and rare arctic-like spruce swamps, could
be added to the wilderness system - or left to loggers and off-road vehicles. Sierra Club
activists have been working for a quarter century to gain wilderness protection for these
roadless areas, and to restore near-wild areas in the national forest, which is
crisscrossed by 8,000 miles of roads.
Gallatin Range
Montana
North of Yellowstone National Park, Gallatin National Forest is a land of jagged peaks and
glacial lakes, wildflower meadows, and trout-filled streams - as well as some of the
largest elk and moose herds in Montana. The streams that course through these mountains
are home to our last populations of westslope and Yellowstone cutthroat trout. But logging
and other uses tear up the Gallatin - where fully 90 percent of trails outside designated
wilderness areas are open to motor vehicles. To save the Gallatin, Sierra Club activists
are calling for permanent protection of wild areas now languishing as "wilderness
study areas."
Lemhi Mountains
Idaho
When Sacagawea led the Corps of Discovery to the Great Divide, the explorers found not the
hoped-for Pacific but a seemingly endless panorama of ranges and ridges. These included
the Lemhi Mountains, Idaho's longest range not bisected by a road. Today the Lemhis remain
remarkably intact. The Sierra Club proposes wilderness protection for some 400,000 acres,
and safeguards against destructive grazing, logging, and off-road-vehicle use in another
200,000 acres of the land of Sacagawea's people, the Lemhi Shoshoni.
Bitterroot Range
Idaho/Montana
The Bitterroot Crest threads through unprotected wildlands that are critical to connecting
the wild country of western Montana and central Idaho. One key section, the 200,000-acre
Great Burn, has already been recommended by the Forest Service for wilderness protection.
Though the area has largely recovered from a devastating 1910 fire, new threats abound,
including a huge increase in snowmobile use, which is noisy, pollutes, and disrupts animal
migration. In addition, there is pressure to log old-growth cedar and hemlock groves. The
Sierra Club is working for wilderness designation in all of the Bitterroots' roadless
areas and restoration of logged sites to link important wildlife habitat.
Kettle Range
Washington
For thousands of years, Indians of the upper Columbia Basin used the land of present-day
Colville National Forest for fishing, hunting, and foraging. The salmon runs at Kettle
Falls, like those at Celilo Falls farther down the Columbia, provided a major source of
food; wildlife was so abundant that the Hudson Bay Company established a fur-trading post
at Fort Colville in 1825. Today's Kettle Range is an island of wildness surrounded on the
south by the wheat fields of the Columbia Basin and by clearcuts, roads, and farms to the
west and east. Over the past three decades, the Forest Service has allowed commercial
development to encroach upon the roadless expanses. Despite its ardent wilderness
advocates, eastern Washington's Kettle Range was omitted from the Washington Wilderness
Act in 1984; those activists have been working ever since to give the area the protection
it deserves.
Hanford Reach
Washington
Protected from development as part of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the last
free-flowing nontidal stretch of the Columbia River runs for 51 miles in Washington State.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls Hanford Reach one of the two most important fish
and wildlife habitats in Washington. Just as impressive is its surrounding 90,000 acres of
upland sagebrush steppe, which once predominated in the Columbia Basin. Last year,
management of Hanford Reach was transferred from the Department of Energy to the
Department of Interior. Activists are now aiming for the next step: permanent protection
for the river and adjacent lands.
Steens Mountain
Oregon
Steens Mountain's phantasm of jagged outcroppings, sheer cliffs, hot springs, and steam
vents rises dramatically from southeast Oregon's high desert. Little seems to have changed
here in 200 years - except for the threats from overgrazing, destructive
off-road-vehicle use, geothermal development, and mineral exploration. To protect the
area's wild character, the Sierra Club supports designating Steens Mountain a national
monument.
More Places to Protect
The Sierra Club's Wild America Campaign to preserve wildlands in Lewis and Clark country
also includes:
Nebraska Sand Hills Region, Niobrara River
South Dakota Fort Pierre National Grasslands, Buffalo Gap National
Grasslands
North Dakota Sheyenne National Grasslands, Garrison Reach of the Missouri
River
Wyoming Beartooth Plateau, Little Bighorn, Red Desert, Mt. Leidy
Highlands
