Wildlands at Risk:
Places

Choose a place from the list at the left to find out more about specific places.

Eastern Forests: The last vestiges of America’s eastern forests: the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, the Lamb Brook Forest in Vermont and the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia.

Mid-Western Forests: Forests in the Midwest: Minnesota’s Superior National Forest and Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Western Forests: A handful of Western forests: stretching from the Kaibab National Forest near the rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, winding along the spine of California’s Sierra Nevada and up into the Tongass National Forest in Alaska – the world’s largest remaining coastal temperate rainforest.

Memorial Lands: Places named in memory of people: the Zane Grey roadless area in Oregon named after the famed Western writer and fisherman and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, named after the great conservationist President.

Wildlands Icons: Those places already etched in our national memory, whose names alone conjure up the vivid images of wildness: Yellowstone National Park, Giant Sequoia National Monument and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Grand National Landscapes: Places that, over the last few years, have come to symbolize the latest conservation battles – those that pit extraction and development against protection and balance: Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Fisher Towers, Teshekpuk Lake in the Western Arctic, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Padre Island National Seashore, Dinosaur National Monument, and the Rocky Mountain Front, Powder River Basin and Upper Green.

Regional Icons: Outside the definition of "places," places and wildlife that define regions: salmon in the Pacific Northwest, the streams of Appalachia, and the Owyhees Canyonlands of the Idaho-Oregon-Nevada tri-state region.

Wildlands at Risk addresses why each of these places is special and worthy of protection; how Bush administration and other policies threaten their beauty, integrity and sustainability; and how we can do better so that future generations can explore these same wild places.

What is clear in “Wildlands at Risk” is that America is at a crossroads. Americans need to ask the Bush administration to consider some important questions about the future of our great nation’s wild heritage:

• Will the logging trucks, oil rigs and destructive off-road vehicles know no borders?
• Will the salmon that have nurtured generations and symbolized a region go extinct?
• Will centuries-old trees fall to line the pockets of the administration’s timber industry allies?
• Will industry trump recreation, wildlife, clean water and other uses of our lands at every turn?

Wildlands at Risk confirms that the answers to these and similar questions should be a resounding no. There is a better way. We can protect and restore America’s wild forests; we can take a more balanced approach to resource extraction that limits development in environmentally sensitive spots; and we can ensure that wilderness and other protections are afforded these special places.