WELCOME

The Wilderness Society is pleased to unveil a distinctive new look for WildAlert in this second edition of our monthly newsletter. Of course, WildAlert remains your best source for news and actions to take relating to Wilderness issues.

In our New Year issue below, The Wilderness Society's conservation experts look back at the Notable Achievements of 2004 and a look ahead at the Challenges and Opportunities for 2005. Enjoy, but please first take action if you haven't already!

Kathy Kilmer
Director, Electronic Communications
The Wilderness Society

Take Action

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Arctic Refuge: During the first four months of 2005, the risk of losing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling is very high. Because the Senate knows they can't pass Arctic Refuge oil drilling through their usual process for controversial proposals, drilling proponents in Congress may try to use a backdoor maneuver to attach hypothetical revenues from drilling into the Budget Bill, which requires fewer votes to pass the Senate.

Our job is to keep Arctic Refuge squarely out of the Budget Bill. With your help, we will do it. If you haven't taken action in the last month, click here and tell your members of Congress to keep the Arctic Refuge out of the budget bill:
http://ga1.org/campaign/Arctic/wd8ks5x4l7jtmjk

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon: Do your part to improve the visitor experience on the Colorado River. Tell the Park Service before the February 1st deadline to improve their management plan for the river:
http://ga1.org/campaign/GrandCanyon/wd8ks5x4l7jtmjk

Inside Story

Notable Achievements Over the Past Year

These are very challenging times for conservationists, with both Congress and the president pushing for more development across some of Americans' most cherished landscapes. Even so, action taken by WildAlert subscribers, along with the capable work of our professional staff and many allies, has helped produce a number of significant achievements in the past year. Here's one prominent example:

• Despite a relentless, four-year campaign by the administration to eliminate protection of roadless areas in our national forests, no commercial logging or road building has occurred on those lands.

Click below for the whole list -- it is truly impressive!
http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Magazine/2004/Achievements.cfm

The Year Ahead: Challenges & Opportunities

We start the new year with hope in our hearts and challenges on the road ahead.

Our hope stems in part from knowing that there is a groundswell of support for conservation in America: In the past election, pro-conservation initiatives across our nation were more than 75 percent successful. Once again, the vast majority of Americans have shown their strong support for protecting our nation's heritage of wild places for present and future generations.

Sadly, this has not deterred anti-conservation ideologues within the Administration and Congress. They continue to work on behalf of big industry to open up America's most treasured lands to oil development and logging. However, together, we can stop these giveaways, while advocating more positive solutions in their place.

Click below for a "2005 Outlook" from The Wilderness Society's conservation experts:
http://www.wilderness.org/OurIssues/2005outlook.cfm

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified..."

President Theodore Roosevelt

Photos

Top photo: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. US Fish & Wildlife Service.
Second photo: Cherokee Park Roadless Area, Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, CO. Eric Swanson.