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Stand Up for Wildernesses
Editor:
The roadless areas on the Monongahela National Forest
characterize it today as a less fragmented big forest unlike lesser
forests. It could become the big, wild forest escape to Nature in a
vast landscape more and more modified by man. These unroaded,
undisturbed watersheds are rare today and if clearly preserved in
this new forest plan, will be so highly valued in the future, that
they will never again be endangered.
We have a chance now to set up 12 new congressionally protected
wildernesses scattered throughout the forest, somewhat connected.
These would set the entire Monongahela on a course for recovery and
more valuable outdoor recreational experiences.
The Monongahela has over 80 percent of West Virginias trout streams.
These could become famous with all the economics attached to them.
Its brook trout streams, protected in undisturbed watersheds and
stream-side zones, would nurture a top-down channel recovery that
might one day extend to the populated downstream reaches reducing
flooding.
As a trout biologist with 50 years of responsibility and familiarity
with the Monongahela's streams, I ask every citizen to write for
Wilderness, right away, 200 Sycamore St., Elkins, W.Va. 26241.
Don Gasper
Buckhannon
Review the Forest Plan
Editor:
Citizens have until Nov. 14 to influence the revision of the
forest plan for managing the Monongahela National Forest for the
next 15 years or so.
To keep the wild in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, urge the Forest
Service to adopt Alternative 3 and to modify that alternative to
also recommend to Congress for wilderness designation the expansion
of Dolly Sods and creation of new wilderness areas for North Fork
Mountain, Lower Laurel Fork, Roaring Plains, Little Allegheny
Mountain and Laurel Run.
As southern wilderness champion Lamar Marshall has said, the Book of
Genesis is the original forest plan. The closest we can come to that
today is to have Congress designate a reasonable amount of the
national forest as wilderness. The 15 special wild areas identified
by the West Virginia Wilderness Coalition are a reasonable proposal
already vetted with mountain bikers and other interest groups.
The Forest Service has chosen Alternative 2 as its preferred
alternative. Alternative 2 would triple the amount of timber cutting
allowed on the national forest and open presently protected areas to
logging. Alternative 2 would also triple the number of areas for
clear-cutting and raise the maximum size of each clear-cut from 25
to 40 acres. This is a very bad policy. Clear-cutting threatens
drinking water supplies, fisheries generally, trout and native trout
specifically, and wildlife. It also increases hazards of flooding,
which is the last thing West Virginia needs more of.
Write you letter today to: Clyde Thompson, Forest Supervisor,
Monongahela National Forest Headquarters, 200 Sycamore St., Elkins,
W.Va. 26241. Future generations and West Virginias economy will be
grateful to you.
Ed Zahniser
Shepherdstown
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