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About Campaign for America's Wilderness

Celebrating its six-year anniversary, the Campaign for America's Wilderness works to protect the nation's remaining wild lands to ensure an enduring legacy of wilderness for future generations.

We join with state and local partners to raise public awareness of our special wild lands and to secure dependable, permanent protection for wild lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other federal agencies.

Since the Campaign was launched in 2002, Congress has added 158 new or expanded wilderness areas totaling nearly 5 million acres across 14 states and Puerto Rico.

Our work includes campaign planning and implementation, strategically placed resources for opinion research, communications and public education initiatives, grassroots organizing, electronic outreach, leadership training, and advocacy.

Our staff, a highly skilled group of 14 professionals, has decades of leadership experience in every aspect of wilderness preservation. Members of our team have played key roles in the passage of every major piece of wilderness legislation in the last 35 years.

We work to help Americans become involved and effective in our nation's democratic process -- helping citizens successfully win preservation of the special wilderness areas they know and love.

By: Barbara Theroux
Fact & Fiction
for Headwaters News
June 17, 2009

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature---the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea, sky and their amazing life."

- Rachel Carson, "The Sense of Wonder"

As I write this review, I can look out my apartment window and see Mount Sentinel in spring coats of green.

Last week I was visiting my son in New Jersey and marveled at the lush greens of Jockey Hollow National Historical Park that surrounds his apartment.

We are fortunate to live in two different parts of the country with a sense of nature, places to hike, places to reflect upon and places to preserve.

More and more people want to be close to nature; to live with wilderness areas on their horizon. Americans choose to live in rural places, often near national forests or other federal lands, to enjoy the abundant recreational opportunities they offer.

OUR WILDERNESS is a visual reminder of our country's natural beauty and our place in it.

In addition it is a primer that examines what wilderness really means to individuals and why we should remain vigilant in our protection of these lands.

Readers will learn how and why The Wilderness Act was passed 45 years ago, and how people from all backgrounds and regions of the country are continuing to use this tool to protect more of the wild places they love.

This 64-page booklet is the perfect campaign piece; a political fact sheet; a brochure that addresses the reasons why wilderness is so important to us.

It comes as no surprise that Doug Scott has been a lobbyist for many wilderness preservation campaigns and is currently a policy director for the Campaign for America's Wilderness. He is passionate about his work and America's wilderness and after spending time with this book you will be too.

The environmental, educational, economical, spiritual and historical reasons why wilderness is so important are beautifully examined in these pages.

Visiting wilderness areas, we are reminded of the deep influence the wilderness frontier played in our history.

Here you may trace age-old Indian trading trails, the route of Lewis and Clark , the pathways of Spanish conquistadors or the ruts of pioneer wagons across the prairie grasslands.

The goal of civilization was to vanish wilderness, not cherish it. Indigenous hunting-and-gathering societies saw themselves as part of the natural world.

The earliest European settlers brought with them to North America all the age-old fears of wilderness. Through the use of art, scenic photography, quotes from environmental writers, and historic photographs we are reminded why we need to protect our lands for future generations.

Barbara Theroux manages and is a buyer for Fact & Fiction, part of the Bookstore at the University of Montana.

Fulcrum Publishing
March 2009
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-55591-641-1
Pages: 64

Doug Scott will be reading, discussing and signing
OUR WILDERNESS
Monday, June 22nd
7:00 pm
at Fact & Fiction,
220 North Higgins
Missoula, Mont.

About the Author

Doug Scott is a policy director for the Campaign for America's Wilderness, based in Seattle.

Doug formerly managed a local environmental group in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, worked at The Wilderness Society, and for 17 years for the Sierra Club, including as conservation director and associate executive director.

Doug was involved in enactment of the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act (1975), The Endangered American Wilderness Act (1978), the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (Idaho, 1980), The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980), and the California Desert Protection Act (California, 1994), among others. He is also the author of The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act.

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