Wilderness Committee

Nevada wilderness slide presentation

Tuesday, January 18 - 7 pm for regular committee meeting; 8 - 9 pm for slide show, at Sierra Club Headquarters, 85 Second Street, San Francisco (at the corner of Mission Street, near Montgomery BART/Muni station).

On Nov. 30 the president signed a bill providing nearly three quarters of a million acres of new wilderness in eastern Nevada. For the third Congress in a row, our neighboring state becomes the country's leader for wilderness designation. With the Black Rock/High Rock Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area of the 106th Congress four years ago, followed by the Clark County Conservation and Wilderness bill two years ago, and the present Lincoln County bill, Nevada has added more wilderness to its roster of protected wild places than any other state in recent history.

This latest bill, however, is not all good news. Because of its damaging provisions calling for water transfers from rural eastern Nevada to feed the already out-of-control sprawl growth around Las Vegas, the Sierra Club opposed the bill as written. As we applaud the new wilderness protection, we must decry the bill's damaging effects.

So what are these new wilderness areas? Nevada's wild areas may be the least known in the country. Certainly not many Californians and not even most Nevadans have much idea of the striking wild gems that are the Silver State's best kept secret. If you were to poll folks around the nation about their image of Nevada, only a small percentage could describe snow-covered soaring peaks, gnarled ancient bristlecone-pine forests, massive groves of spruce, fir, and aspen, lush thickets of riparian greenery, clear mountain streams filled with trout, rugged volcanic escarpments, limestone caves, hot springs, Pleistocene lakes and expansive playas, herds of bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelopes and mule deer, cougar, and numerous endemic species found nowhere else.

Come to a slide presentation by Erika Pollard, outreach director for the Nevada Wilderness Project. She was personally involved in field inventory of many of the wild roadless areas in southern and eastern Nevada. Normally based in Reno, Erika is spending this winter in the Bay Area, and we look forward to having her share with us some of her broad knowledge of the varied and extraordinary treasures of little-known Nevada wildlands.

At the meeting before her talk, help plan the Wilderness Committee's 2005 activities.

Wilderness Committee: Cache Creek Wild

Tuesday, February 15 - 7 pm for regular committee meeting; 8 - 9 pm for presentation; at 827 Broadway, #310, in Oakland (near the 12^th Street BART station); if you arrive late, call (510) 468-1577 for entry.

Come learn from Bob Schneider of Cache Creek Wild how we can work to make Cache Creek a state-designated wild and scenic river and protect it from future dam development. This river, which flows eastward from Clear Lake through the Blue Ridge, is surrounded by rolling hills and ridges covered in blue-oak woodland, chaparral, and seasonal grasslands. Cache Creek, a remnant of our wild heritage, exhibits outstanding wildlife, cultural, recreational, and scenic values. See Bob's slides and learn about this unique free-flowing river so near the Bay Area.