Core of Discovery - protecting select sites first observed by Lewis and Clark

Sierra, May, 2000

34 wild and endangered places in Lewis & Clark country

The Sierra Club is commemorating the 200-year anniversary of Lewis and Clark's expedition with a five-year campaign to protect significant wild places in eight of the states along the explorers' route. Among our goals: double the number of designated-wilderness acres, encourage land acquisition and restoration, work for smart-growth laws to manage development, and end commercial logging on national forests and other public lands. The Sierra Club has targeted 34 glorious places that capture the essence of Lewis and Clark country-and that need immediate help if we are to leave a legacy for the next two centuries of explorers. On the following pages we highlight a few of those wild lands. We hope they inspire the adventurer, and activist, in you.

* For more information, call the Sierra Club at 1-800-OUR-LAND or visit our Web site at www.sierraclub.org/lewisandclark. To help rescue 30 million acres of national forests in Lewis and Clark country, return the postcard opposite page 12.

Owyhee Canyonlands

IDAHO/OREGON/NEVADA

The greater Owyhee Canyonlands, a 3-million-acre swath of remote and rugged land where Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada meet, is the largest still-unprotected parcel in the lower 48 states. Deep gorges slice through the Canyonlands' vast sagebrush steppe, which supports one of the largest concentrations of California bighorn sheep in the West. But haphazard administration by the Bureau of Land Management places the area at risk from overgrazing and off-road vehicles. The Sierra Club is now leading the effort to permanently protect the region as a wilderness area.

Little Missouri Badlands

NORTH DAKOTA

When Lewis and Clark crossed the Great Plains, native prairie covered more than 400 million acres of America. Today a fraction remains. The Little Missouri Badlands, most of which is managed by the Forest Service as the million-acre Little Missouri National Grassland, is one of the few places where you can still see the rumpled hills, wild grasses, wildflowers, bison, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs that the Corps of Discovery encountered. Yet none of it is protected as wilderness, and oil-and-gas development is steadily encroaching onto the Badlands' roadless areas. Sierra Club activists are working to secure permanent protection for all remaining wild areas in the Badlands.

Missouri Wild & Scent River

NEBRASKA/SOUTH DAKOTA

Two segments of the last free-flowing stretches of the Missouri River in Nebraska and South Dakota--the only vestiges of the natural Missouri in the Northern Plains--have been designated as "wild and scenic." Endangered and threatened species--including the interior least tern, piping plover, pallid sturgeon, and bald eagle--all thrive here. But the Missouri's protection is only nominal. The National Park Service has not made conservation a priority, and Congress has failed to appropriate funds for land acquisition, easements, and access points along the waterway--key issues for Sierra Club activists in the region.

Black Hills National Forest

SOUTH DAKOTA

West of Lewis and Clark's route into the Dakotas rise the Black Hills, sacred to the Sioux and the highest mountains east of the Rockies. Unfortunately, Black Hills National Forest is the most heavily developed and logged forest in the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain region, with a mere one percent designated as wilderness. Approximately 50,000 acres, replete with old-growth ponderosa pine, spruce, and rare arctic-like spruce swamps, could be added to the wilderness system-or left to loggers and off-road vehicles. Sierra Club activists have been working for a quarter century to gain wilderness protection for these roadless areas, and to restore near-wild areas in the national forest, which is criss-crossed by 8,000 miles of roads.

Gallatin Range

MONTANA

North of Yellowstone National Park, Gallatin National Forest is a land of jagged peaks and glacial lakes, wildflower meadows, and trout-filled streams--as well as some of the largest elk and moose herds in Montana. The streams that course through these mountains are home to our last populations of westslope and Yellowstone cutthroat trout. But logging and other uses tear up the Gallatin-where fully 90 percent of trails outside designated wilderness areas are open to motor vehicles. To save the Gallatin, Sierra Club activists are calling for permanent protection of wild areas now languishing as "wilderness study areas."

Lemhi Mountains

IDAHO

When Sacagawea led the Corps of Discovery to the Great Divide, the explorers found not the hoped-for Pacific but a seemingly endless panorama of ranges and ridges. These included the Lemhi Mountains, Idaho's longest range not bisected by a road. Today the Lemhis remain remarkably intact. The Sierra Club proposes wilderness protection for some 400,000 acres, and safeguards against destructive grazing, logging, and off-road-vehicle use in another 200,000 acres of the land of Sacagawea's people, the Lemhi Shoshoni.

Bitterroot Range