A sad day and great loss to the wilderness community...

From: George Nickas, Executive Director, Wilderness Watch
Sent: Monday, December 26, 2011 6:33 PM

Dear friends:

It is with great sadness that Wilderness Watch announces the death of Bill Worf, our founder, long-time board member, president emeritus, and inspirational leader. He was 85. Bill died of natural causes at his home in Missoula, Montana.

Bill dedicated his life to making certain the ideals expressed in the Wilderness Act would live on in the National Wilderness Preservation System. No one alive, then or now, worked as hard or with such great principle toward that goal.

Bill was raised on a homestead in Rosebud County, Montana, during the Great Depression where he learned the lessons of hard work and perseverance that were hallmarks of his life. He joined the Marines at 17, and soon found himself in the thick of combat in the invasion of Iwo Jima. After the war, he returned home, married Eva Jean Batey, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry from the University of Montana, and started a storied 32-year-career with the U.S. Forest Service.

Bill began his 50-year affair with wilderness in 1961 when he was appointed forest supervisor overseeing the Bridger Wilderness in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. In typical fashion, Bill jumped into wilderness stewardship with a fervor that attracted the attention of all around him. He initiated the first wilderness management program and hired the first wilderness rangers. He became an outspoken proponent for the wilderness bill at a time when the Forest Service was lukewarm to the legislation. His advocacy for wilderness led the Chief of the Forest Service to select Bill as one of a small group to write the regulations and policies for implementing the Wilderness Act of 1964 shortly after it passed. Bill was then asked to lead the agency's wilderness program in the Washington Office, which he did for many years before getting his feet back on the ground in the regional office in Missoula, Montana.

Like many of his peers, Bill initially saw wilderness as a recreation resource. He saw his duties as a manager primarily to promote it as a backcountry playground. He often told the story of standing on the shore of Island Lake, gazing out at hordes of tents surrounding that wilderness gem. "We were making use of the country, and it made my Forest Service-heart swell with pride," Bill would recall with a laugh. But a pack trip with the Wilderness Act's author, Howard Zahniser, started an evolution in Bill's understanding. Wilderness stewardship was about much more than recreation. His understanding continued to grow as he worked with congressional leaders and their staffs while writing the policies to implement that visionary law.
As Bill often noted, "Those of us writing the policies had to forget much of what we knew about wilderness management in order to understand the higher goals the Wilderness Act was trying to achieve."

Upon his retirement from the US Forest Service in 1981 and with the active support of Eva Jean, Bill vowed to dedicate his remaining years to working for sound stewardship and protection of Wilderness.

In 1989, he and two colleagues founded Wilderness Watch, the only national citizens' organization dedicated solely to protecting designated wildernesses and wild rivers. As a measure of Bill's tremendous credibility, it wasn't long before former Secretary of Interior, Stewart Udall, and former Secretary of Agriculture, Orville Freeman, accepted Bill's invitation to join the Wilderness Watch Board of Directors. Bill remained active with Wilderness Watch and wilderness issues until his death. "I shall not perish from this earth without doing everything within my realm to save its most precious non-human resource," he wrote.

Bill was the right person in the right place at the right time, and he made the most of it. He inspired an entire generation of wilderness rangers and wilderness advocates and was a hero to many.

All of us, but especially future generations of American citizens, are the fortunate recipients of Bill's dedication to the wilderness cause.

Bill Worf will be sorely missed, but his spirit lives on in all those who believe in the principled stewardship and defense of wilderness in America.

George Nickas
Executive Director
Wilderness Watch

Training for Wilderness Pros

With another field season in the books it's time to look ahead (with a small peek over the shoulder for good measure). The backwards glance is to June 2010 and a week-long training session in the High Uintas Wilderness. Nearly a dozen Wilderness Rangers donned heavy packs and hiked northeastern Utah's high country learning the rudiments of trail maintenance, contacting visitors and developing wilderness skills...


Skill development is particularly apropos looking ahead to 2012 and the Society for Wilderness Stewardship's flagship program, the tentatively titled Wilderness Ranger Academy. Designed in conjunction with the Carhart Wilderness Training Center, the course is expected to feature online, classroom and field modules including Travel & Safety, Visitor Use Management and Resource Stewardship.

While it won't replace local unit training and orientation, the 4-6 week academy will eventually offer an accreditation/certificate which should give graduates a competitive advantage in the job market. With field sessions including map/compass/gps training, crosscut saw certification and river crossing techniques it sounds like a lot of fun too!

And so as Summer 2011 dissolves in the rear-view we're excited about offering wilderness professionals a comprehensive program of training and development sometime before 2013 nicks the horizon. Stay tuned...

Water or wilderness - Why not both?

Battles over water in the west continue. This time it involves the Arkansas River in Colorado. This past week, The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy Board voted 13-1 in opposition of federal expansion of wilderness areas in the Arkansas River basin. The Board has no current plans but is concerned that wilderness designation will prohibit future water development. What does this mean for wilderness?

Read full article here: http://www.istockanalyst.com/business/news/5370177/conservancy-boards-wary-of-wilderness-laws

Using fire as a management tool in wilderness

A fire in the Washakie Wilderness southwest of Meeteetse, WY has burned 15,000 acres since it was started by lightning on July 22. It's been a slow moving fire that agency personnel have let burn as a "resource benefit" to help thin out stands of beetle killed trees. It's good to see this kind of wilderness management in action. The wilderness gets what it needs and it continues to reinforce to the public that not all wildfire is a bad thing.

From an article in the Billings Gazette:

CODY, Wyo. — After a lengthy period of inactivity, the Norton Point fire heated up again last week, sending smoke and ash into the Bighorn Basin. Burning in the Washakie Wilderness southwest of Meeteetse, the fire has burned 15,000 acres since it was started by lightning on July 22. The blaze had seen little growth since the beginning of August. But late last week, winds drove the fire back into heavy timber, allowing for additional growth.

“It was inactive for quite a while,” said public information officer Carl Jungck. “But just last Thursday, the conditions lined back up with the wind.” On its most active day last week, the fire made another run up Caldwell Creek, burning around 1,700 acres. Since then, the blaze has slowed, with cooler temperatures in the forecast.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_29d49b6b-db1d-5d3f-8d84-549bf3423258.html#ixzz1VCSjvSMS

The Wilderness Act and the pine beetle battle

To save trees or to honor the intent of the Wilderness Act? This is the question.



Linda Merigliano, with the U.S. Forest Service, removes old verbenone patches on trees near Goodwin Lake in the Gros Ventre Wilderness on July 30. The patches, which were placed by TreeFight volunteers last year, have to be removed from trees each year. TreeFight is working with Merigliano and the Forest Service on balancing the issue of saving the trees while still honoring wilderness areas.

BRIDGER-TETON NATIONAL FOREST — Nestled in the Gros Ventre Wilderness, only a few miles from a trail head, Goodwin Lake attracts hikers on their way to Jackson Peak, families on overnight backpacking trips and fishermen staking out their favorite spots. It is an escape from Teton County’s more popular destinations.

The shore winds large enough for visitors to claim their own space. Prime real estate, though, is on a rocky peninsula with a landmark whitebark pine tree.

On July 28, David Gonzales cut into the bark and read the tree’s death sentence in the form of signs of pine beetle chambers. Then the founder of TreeFight sat with other volunteer members to discuss joint efforts with the U.S. Forest Service to save trees like this one in wilderness areas.

TreeFight is a volunteer organization that staples pheromone pouches onto whitebark pines to deter beetles that otherwise might burrow in and kill trees. Last year, in the group’s first summer, they placed the patches on trees near Goodwin Lake without thinking of the area’s wilderness status.

The federal Wilderness Act, established in 1964, includes the language “untrammeled.” It means wilderness is meant to remain as free as possible of human influence, said Linda Merigliano with the Forest Service. The act calls for allowing insect and plant diseases to run their course, to even avoid fire suppression unless it is human-caused.


Read more: http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_80409a5e-25e3-5802-ab0a-91f6db65e5d4.html#ixzz1UZ4kEN7h

Read more: http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_80409a5e-25e3-5802-ab0a-91f6db65e5d4.html

Trappers Lake - Cradle of Wilderness

Trappers Lake - Cradle of Wilderness

In the summer of 1919, the Forest Service dispatched its first landscape architect to Trappers Lake with instructions to survey 100 planned summer home sites and a road around the lake. The 27 year old surveyor, Arthur H. Carhart, completed his plan and returned to Denver. But he closed his report with a strongly-worded recommendation that the area remain roadless and undeveloped:

"There are a number of places with scenic values of such great worth that they are rightfully the property of all people. They should be preserved for all time for the people of the Nation and the world. Trappers Lake is unquestionably a candidate for that classification."

In an unprecedented move, the Forest Service set the plans aside for further study and the proposed road was never built. Mr. Carhart went on to work with conservationist Aldo Leopold. The memorandum detailing their shared approach to preservation became the foundation and heart of the Wilderness concept.

In 1964, the Wilderness Act was signed into law. It set aside nine million acres of National Forest lands for the use and enjoyment of future generations. Since then, the system has grown to encompass lands in National Parks, Forests and Wildlife Refuges, as well as properties managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Flat Tops Wilderness, home to Trappers Lake, was designated in 1975.

Pew: Wilderness release act would ‘open area size of Wyoming to industrial activity’

The Pew Environment Group today came out in opposition to a bill introduced last spring by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that would open up a “Wyoming-sized” chunk of national forest and Bureau of Land Management land to resource extraction, road building and motorized vehicle traffic.

“This legislation would undo decades of public land protections by opening up an area the size of Wyoming to new industrial activity,” Pew Environment Group Deputy Director Tom Wathen said in a prepared statement. “It would allow some of the country’s most pristine and spectacular landscapes to be exploited, including the vast majority of undisturbed national forests.”

Technically, McCarthy’s H.R.1581, the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, would “release wilderness study areas administered by the BLM that are not suitable for wilderness designation from continued management as defacto wilderness areas,” according to the bill’s summary.

Read the full article here: http://coloradoindependent.com/95024/pew-wilderness-release-act-would-open-area-size-of-wyoming-to-industrial-activity

Hear McCarthy's testimony: