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Check out our upcoming events and announcements. Monongahela National Forest needs your help! Click here to find out why. Protect the Seneca Creek Backcountry Located within the highlands of West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest -known locally as "The Mon" - the 25,000-acre Seneca Creek Backcountry represents one of the largest and wildest areas of contiguous federal land left in the eastern United States. The proximity of the Seneca Creek Backcountry to Spruce Knob, a highly popular scenic destination and the highest point in West Virginia, makes protection of the natural integrity of the surrounding area essential. Currently only 4 percent of the National Wilderness Preservation System lies east of Mississippi where over 60 percent of U.S. population resides. There is a clear need for more Eastern wilderness, and not many opportunities. Some of the best remaining wild land in the east is found in the wild and wonderful Monongahela National Forest. Because of a lack of designated trails, no legal off-road vehicle (ORV) use has been permitted on the Monongahela National Forest. However in recent years, ORV proponent groups are trying to open trials to ORV use. The Seneca Creek Backcountry is a USFS Inventoried Roadless Area. The current administration has recently destroyed the protections that this designation meant, again opening the area to development possibilities. The coalition of environmental groups working on the Monongahela National Forest Plan revision is committed to keeping ORVs off the Monongahela. The Sierra Club is part of the West Virginia Wilderness Coalition which has developed a Citizen's Wilderness Proposal over the past two years for 15 areas covering 143,000 acres within the 917,000-acre Monongahela National Forest. The Seneca Creek Backcountry is a highly significant eastern natural treasure, and hopefully, will soon become one of the five largest Wilderness Areas east of the Mississippi River. For more information about how to help the efforts to protect the Seneca Creek Backcountry as Wilderness, contact Mary Wimmer at mwimmer@hsc.wvu.edu or Vicky Mattson at Vicky.mattson@sierraclub.org or 304-342-3182.   Sign me up to help protect our community's environment and public health. Together we can put in place solutions that work for our families and our future.   Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use