Wild America: Protecting the Legacy of Lewis & Clark - Brief Article

Sierra, May, 2000

IN 1804 PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON sent Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" to find "the most direct & practicable" route to the Pacific.

Over more than two years, Lewis and Clark traveled 8,000 miles, mapping prairies, forests, and mighty rivers, writing the first scientific descriptions of 178 trees and plants and 122 animals, and learning from the Indians who helped them along the way. Lewis and Clark left a record of what America looked like 200 years ago, allowing us to measure the wildlands and wildlife that have been lost, and protect what's left.

Only one percent of our native tall-grass prairies remain. Ninety percent of Washington's old-growth forests are gone. The Columbia River is no longer, in Lewis' words, "crouded with salmon." Where we once had 100,000 grizzly bears, fewer than 1,000 roam free today.

Yet a significant portion of the continent has managed to survive the last two centuries. Travelers to North Dakota's Little Missouri Badlands, Lemhi Pass on the Continental Divide, Idaho's Lolo Trail, or the Missouri Breaks along the Nebraska-South Dakota border will find a landscape nearly unchanged since the days of Lewis and Clark.

But the wildlands and wildlife that have endured need our help. You can work with the Sierra Club to protect and restore wild America--the lands and legacy of Lewis and Clark.

What We've Lost

IN LEWIS AND CLARK'S DAY, THE MISSOURI RIVER eddied and swirled, constantly shifting its channel. Farther west, the Columbia churned with falls and rapids. Two centuries later, the Missouri runs 127 miles shorter and a third as wide as it did in 1804. The Columbia has been stanched by 29 federal dams. Most of the salmon and steelhead stocks that once roamed the Columbia Basin are either extinct or listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Crossing the Great Plains, Lewis and Clark found one of the world's largest grasslands. Today, the original prairie--what Wallace Stegner called our "grand ocean of wind-troubled grass and grain"--is almost gone. Just 20 patches of federally owned prairie remain, scattered over 2 states. Even within the national grasslands, prairies have been compromised by mining, roadbuilding, and oil-and-gas drilling. Where Lewis and Clark found 50 million bison, today's explorer will find only some 20,000 wild specimens. The largest free-roaming buffalo herd in the United States, just over 3,000 head, lives in Yellowstone National Park.

When the explorers reached the Northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, they found alien forests of Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and other conifers instead of the familiar broadleaf woods of the East. After a century of relentless logging, the ponderosa pine groves that provided wood for the expedition's canoes are among the most imperiled forest ecosystems in America. Nationwide, 52 percent of national forest land has been logged, mined, or drilled. Only 18 percent of America's public forests are protected as wilderness, and the remaining wild remnants are vulnerable to development and destruction.

Protecting Wild America

TO MARK THE ANNIVERSARY OF LEWIS and Clark's journey, the Sierra Club has launched a conservation campaign as sweeping as the original expedition. Central to the effort is support for President Clinton's wild-forest initiative, which could place more than 60 million acres of national forest lands, including at least 30 million acres in the eight western states traversed by the Corps of Discovery, off-limits to roadbuilding, logging, and other destructive activities. Sierra Club activists are working hard to make sure the final policy (expected to be enacted this fall) includes all roadless areas larger than 1,000 acres as well as smaller parcels with special biological importance.

The Club also supports protecting nearly three dozen public wildlands in Lewis and Clark territory as wilderness, national monuments, or recreation and conservation areas, and supports legislation such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, which would preserve some 20 million acres of roadless land and free-flowing rivers.

To further restore essential habitat for wildlife, the Club hopes to prohibit off-road vehicles in sensitive areas and keep the grizzly bear on the endangered species list until adequate acreage is set aside for its recovery. When we save land for grizzly, we also help hundreds of other native plants and animals. Similarly, prairie chicken, sage grouse, and prairie elk will gain critical habitat when we establish bison and prairie dog reserves in the national grasslands. To restore fabled salmon and steelhead runs, the Sierra Club advocates the removal off our dams on the lower Snake River. Human needs are also key to our efforts: Along the Missouri River and elsewhere, the Club supports the acquisition of easements that will help curtail sprawl and provide open space in which contemporary explorers can embark on their own journeys of discovery.