The Wild Cascades - coming soon to members!

Featuring:

• President’s report
• MBS meeting focuses on “temporary” Monte Cristo Road
• Unpoached: Protecting the North Cascades — A utopia no more
• Introducing new board member David Gladstone
• Chelan meeting shows happy motoring dreams linger for Stehekin
• Reader approval
• A good burn: The South Fork Cascade River fire, 14 years later
• Corvid’s eye
• Whitebark pine: Jewel of the alpine
• Earth Day 2017: Celebrating 60 years of N3C in North Cascades National Park
• Remembering Charles Ehlert, 1937-2017
• Mike Lowry: a remembrance
• North Cascades Conservation Council celebrating 60 years
• Of grizzly bears and big spaces
• Last minute change to grizzly EIS comment
• New clearcutting
• What might have been: The Ice Peaks National Park proposal
• The plight of the Cascade red fox
• Yes, Hugh Jackman, there really are wolverines

UW Environmental Science majors visit our board meeting to tell us about the Cascade Red Fox

The Cascade Red Fox is imperiled by invasive lowland fox species and climate change. This team of women from UW College of the Environment explained the situation to us at our board meeting. A good candidate for the next "charismatic megafauna" to gain a constituency after wolves, grizzlies, wolveries and fishers, the Cascade Red Fox currently seems to have been largely overlooked except in Mt. Rainier National Park where it's become so accustomed to people it's seen with some regularity by visitors, who tend to ignore warning signs and feed them. Which only leads them to spend more time near parking lots and roads where they get run over frequently. Rangers in Rainer Park are now armed with squirt guns to try to deter them from begging!

Elsewhere in the North Cascades sightings are very rare, but it's not known if that's because there are so few or because they are so naturally reclusive.

Their professor is John Marzluff of corvid research fame:https://environment.uw.edu/faculty/john-marzluff/

Watch for the full report in the next issue of The Wild Cascades!

Winter 2017 issue of The Wild Cascades is now online

Enjoy the new issue of our journal!

• President’s report
• N3C actions
• Online backcountry permit reservations program begins
• David Brower remembered
• Draft EIS released for grizzly bear reintroduction to the Cascades
• The Chilliwack River: Salmon in the Cascades
• We will resist any privatization of public lands
• In Memoriam: Polly Dyer, 1920-2016
• Corvid’s eye
• DNR initiates trail planning process for Morningstar NRCA
• A passion for preservation: How dreams become a reality at the  President’s desk
• SAM sculpture honors real tree in the real Middle Fork
• Back issues of The Wild Cascades now online

Here's an excerpt from David Brower Remembered:

"I find it interesting that many of the hardliners who bickered with Brower’s impatience, fiscal irresponsibility and other foibles have come, in retrospect, to an appreciation of the significance and influence that Brower exerted on the Sierra Club and the planet. Brower was taller, stronger, more forceful and more compelling than most of us can ever hope to be but he always accepted us for who we are and encouraged us to do our best. Read and be inspired. Read and be reinvigorated."

We will resist any privatization of public land

Click the above image to expand it...
It's from the new Winter 2017 edition of The Wild Cascades, coming to our website soon...

Want your copy of TWC as soon as it's published? JOIN US!

Meanwhile, here are some back issues to peruse:
http://www.northcascades.org/wordpress/the-wild-cascades

What are we gonna do? #CallCongress!

What are we gonna do? #CallCongress!

When are we gonna do it? Every day!

Here's the number of the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121. The operator will connect you with your member of Congress.

After your phone call, please also write Congress here: http://bit.ly/2j82bkr

Specifically, tell your senators and representative that you strongly oppose:

• All legislation that would sell off, transfer or give away America’s federal public lands;

• Any version of a "Sportsmen" Bill that weakens the Wilderness Act by allowing temporary road construction, water developments, or any kind of habitat manipulation or modification in Wildernesses by state or federal agencies;

• Efforts to weaken the Wilderness Act to allow mountain bikes or other mechanical transport in Wilderness;

• Attempts to overturn new regulations adopted by the USFWS and NPS that help protect bears, wolves, coyotes and wolverines in national wildlife refuges, national parks and preserves;

Folks like you have often been the last line of defense standing between America's National Wilderness Preservation System and those who would harm it.

Together, with your help, we’ll continue fighting anti-wilderness and wildlife-destroying proposals in Congress, in order to defend the Wilderness and public lands we all love, especially the North Cascades!

Write Congress here: http://bit.ly/2j82bkr

Call Congress here: (202) 224-3121

Thank you for taking action!

[Thanks to our friends at Wilderness Watch!]

Grizzly EIS released - comment until 3/14!

COMMENT NOW UNTIL MARCH 14th: 

Tell the Park Service and Fish & Wildlife Service to actively restore grizzly bears into the North Cascades ecosystem.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement for grizzly bear recovery in the North Cascades was just released. It lists proposed alternative methods of bringing the grizzly back. The full draft EIS is available at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/grizzlydeis. The alternatives are listed in the "Executive Summary."

NCCC favors Alternative "D" because it has the best chance of success by bringing in the most bears. We'd also like to see it spelled out that bears brought in should only come from populations that clearly are not at risk themselves. Considering that the FWS may take the Yellowstone grizzly off the Endangered Species List soon, having additional habitat is crucial to grizzly survival. The North Cascades is the last region of sufficient size and wildness in the lower 48 states to support grizzlies.



Submit your comments at:
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=77025

Also, public open houses will be held from 6-8 p.m. at the following locations:

• Cle Elum – February 13 at the Putnam Centennial Center
• Cashmere – February 14 at the Riverside Center
• Winthrop – February 15 at the Red Barn
• Omak – February 16 at the Annex Facility at Okanogan County Fairgrounds
• Bellingham – February 21 at the Bellingham Technical College
• Darrington – February 22 at the Darrington Community Center
• Sultan – February 23 at the Sultan High School
• Renton – February 24 at the Renton Community Center

We encourage you to join one of these public meetings and/or submit comments. 

CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF PROTECTING OUR "WILD NEARBY" - peruse our journal back to our founding!

In celebration of our 60th year, we’ve digitized many back issues of our journal! 

Click HERE to view PDF back issues of our journal online. Back issues are hosted by NPShistory.com and include many issues, dating back to our founding in 1957! Issues prior to 2001 have never before been available online to the general public!

Want to own a collector's item? Email philf@northcascades.org to see if an original paper back issue is available for purchase and for a price quote.