January Meeting + Wildlife/Forest Issues

Dear Mountaineers:
The Conservation Executive Committee (CEC) held its January meeting on the 21st, and I am pleased to announce that we had four guests who are interested in becoming active members of the CEC: Sarah Owens, Sandy Bowman, Jessie Dye, and Greg Barnhouse. Greg has volunteered to work as communications issues for the CEC, which will greatly help us keen connected wwith the club membership. We also welcomed Peter Teigen, who is a graduate student in the Evans School at the UW. Peter will be working with the CEC as an intern as part of his graduate work at the UW. We are honored by Peter's willingness to work with the CEC and the Mountaineers.
The CEC is likely to take action on two important issues in the next few weeks. Gov. Palin of Alaska has sued the Fish & Wildlife Service over the agency's listing of the Beluga Whale as endangered. CEC member Dyche Kinder is drafting a letter to Gov. Palin that the CEC will likely approve and ask President Eric Linxweiler to sign. The CEC has a long history of work on wildlife issues in Alaska, so a letter on whales should be within the parameter of our previous wildlife issues. The other issue is signing on to a letter about the workings of the state's forest management at the Department of Ecology (DOE). The Environmental Caucus seeks our support for a letter to the new Public Lands Commissioner, Peter Goldmark, about some forest practices of the DOE and the conduct of its meetings where important forest decisions are made.
The next CEC meeting is Wednesday, February 18Th at the clubhouse at 7 PM. Join us!
Cheers,
Michael Shurgot

Dear Mountaineers:

As chair of the Mountaineers Conservation Executive Committee I want to welcome you to a blog that Leesa Wright, our Public Policy Associate, and I hope to update frequently. We will post minutes of the CEC meetings, as well as news about the conservation division's activities and ways that you can join us to advance our conservation agenda.

For beginners, the next open meeting of the CEC will be Wednesday, Feb. 18th at the Magnuson clubhouse at 7 PM. All members of the Mountaineers are welcome to join us. Contact me at mwshurgot@earthlink for an agenda. You may contact Leesa for information about the conservation activities at Leesaw@mountaineers.org. Please also see every month in The Mountaineer the section "Conservation Currents," which contains essays by CEC members on recent conservation issues and information on how you can get involved.

Wild Sky Wilderness Area Becomes a Reality

On Tuesday, April 29, the U.S. House of Representatives put to rest any question about the fate of the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness Area - they passed it. The first new wilderness area in over two decades, the Wild Sky covers around 106,000 acres of forest in the Cascades around Index and Skykomish. This is a momentous occasion for the many outdoor groups and individuals who have devoted their time towards securing the wildereness designation. The president still has to sign the bill that Wild Sky is attached to, but he is widely expected to sign.

Read the Seattle Times article on Wild Sky's passage.
Read Joel Connelly's article in the Seattle P-I
Representative Rick Larsen's website has news about Wild Sky

2008 Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival

May 1-4, 2008
Johnson Hall, University of Washington, Seattle

Over a decade ago, a group of dedicated environmentalists and filmmakers organized the first environmental festival in the heart of the Wenatchee forest near Leavenworth, WA. It was the beginning of a decade-long convergence of filmmakers, activists, and concerned citizens to experience, create, and share environmental films. Inspired by their success, organizers formed a board of directors in 2002 and created the nonprofit organization, Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Network (HWEFN). The organization is named in honor of the passionate and much-loved local activist, Hazel Wolf.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Hazel Wolf Film Festival, and we would like to invite you to attend. The Mountaineers is sponsoring the opening night event of the festival, a screening of "Oil + Water." This film is a jaw-dropping white water adventure film about two kayakers embarking on the longest-ever, biofuels-only road trip road trip through 16 countries in a retro-fitted Japanese fire truck named "Baby." Kayaker/filmmaker Seth Warren, founder of the Biofuels Education Coalition, will attend the screening and answer questions. Also joining the discussion is UW associate professor Martha Groom, lead author on a recent study quantifying differences in biofuel crops and their impacts on the environment.

Over the course of four days, the festival features over 50 films, animations, speakers and family programming. Films explore environmental justice, appropriate technology, wilderness adventure, urban wildlife, mining, wolves, rivers, youth activism and more. The festival also offers filmmaking workshops and expert panels focusing on sustainability and controversial environmental issues and campaigns happening locally and around the world.

Get more information about the Hazel Wolf Film Festival and buy tickets through their website.

Revel in the Mid-Fork’s Recovery

If you remember the days when jaunting up the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River sometimes involved sidestepping tossed beer cans, fire rings full of everything but wood, and flinching at the all-too-frequent blasts from young guns testing their prowess with repeater firearms aimed at targets along and across the stream, you can appreciate how far the Mid-Fork Valley has come. Thanks to concerned organizations such as The Mountaineers, the Sierra Club, Cascade Land Conservancy and Mountains to Sound Greenway—just to name a few—the Mid-Fork has recovered from its dark days and become a sanctuary for the entire public to enjoy. You can celebrate the success of the Mid-Fork preservation effort at a function sponsored by Cascade Land Conservancy on Sat., May 31.

Read what the Cascade Land Conservancy has to say about it.