Mount Baker Wild! is a group of volunteers in Whatcom and Skagit counties in northwestern Washington State organizing to protect wilderness through public education, outreach and mapping of the unprotected special places of our region.
Saving these unspoiled areas depends on strong public support. The principal goal of Mount Baker Wild! is to protect wild areas in the Mount Baker region through wilderness designation in the Congress.
Many people assume that the recreational areas in the forests around Mount Baker are protected for future generations. Indeed, the Mount Baker Wilderness Area does include and protect a good number of hiking trails, but generally only at the higher elevation levels, above tree line. The lower elevation forests, for the most part, were not included in the original wilderness designation in 1984, so significant portions of the trails are in areas that have no more protection from road building, logging and other mechanized activities than other general National Forest lands.
Wilderness in the Mount Baker region contributes to our lives in many ways:
- Critical habitat for wildlife and plants
- Beautiful places to hike, camp and recreate
- Clean drinking water and healthy ecosystems
- Game and fish for hunters and anglers
- A diversified, sustainable economy
Imagine cathedral forests, clear rushing streams, soundless lakes and the diverse creatures that depend on these places, all wrapped in the arms of spectacular peaks, glaciers and subalpine parklands of the North Cascades. Then think about the rapid rate of population growth in the Northwest and the nation as a whole, and you should have a fair image of what is at stake.
In wildness is the preservation of the world. —H.D. Thoreau
Revised 8/19/08
years ago, Lewis and Clark were struggling up the Missouri, intent on opening the Northwest to American exploitation and settlement.
years have passed since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who gets credit for selling to the American people the idea of protecting wild and scenic places from industrial development.
years ago, on September 3, 1964, Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, the greatest single leap in the wild lands protection movement since Roosevelt. This anniversary will be the focus of a major conference this fall in upstate New York: www.Wilderness40th.org
years, nearly a generation, has gone by since a band of hardy and intrepid wilderness enthusiasts struggled to bring about passage of the Washington Wilderness Act on July 3, 1984 in a political atmosphere far less friendly to preservation than before. Included in that act, among others, were the Mount Baker Wilderness and the Noisy-Diobsub Wilderness.
hour! Despite the hostile conditions in the federal Administration, now is the time to press for the expansion of these wildernesses. See how you can get involved in saving our magnificent natural heritage for future generations.