Advocates celebrate Wild Sky Wilderness
INDEX, Wash. – After years cajoling fellow lawmakers, strategizing with environmentalists and attending community meetings, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., stood on the bank of the Skykomish River and looked into the newly created Wild Sky Wilderness.
“Rick,” she declared, pointing to a forested mountain and then gleefully slapping the arm of U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, a fellow Democrat, “we did it.”
Murray, Larsen and several dozen wilderness advocates, congressional aides and Forest Service officials, many seasoned veterans of the Wild Sky campaign, gathered near the tiny mountain town of Index on Friday to celebrate the creation of Washington’s first wilderness area in more than two decades.
Wild Sky boosters said their success heralds future campaigns for creating more protected wilderness in the state.
“We broke the logjam,” said Murray, who helped lead the effort in Congress. “I think now people are saying, ‘Well, this is a doable process.’ “
But it wasn’t easy.
Environmentalists conceived it in 1999, hoping to protect a slice of lowland forest near Seattle and introduce a new generation of citizens and politicians to the idea of creating wilderness areas.
In the ensuing nine years, it weathered opposition from a powerful House committee chair, threats of a Senate filibuster and hours of careful negotiation with snowmobilers, campers and other interest groups afraid they would be shut out of their favorite places. Along the way, it shrank from a proposed 126,000 acres to the final 106,000 acres of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
The effort made the victory celebration that much sweeter for Mike Town, founder of Friends of Wild Sky and an environmental sciences teacher at Redmond High School.
“I can’t wipe the smile off my face,” Town told the crowd. “My jaw muscles are getting fatigued.”
The land includes low-lying forests, some logged decades ago, some with centuries-old Douglas firs. There are alpine ridges, sheer granite cliffs and the North Fork of the Skykomish River, where steelhead leap upstream. Town takes students to a stream flowing out of the wilderness where pink salmon still spawn so plentifully they fill the creek from bank to bank.
The wilderness designation bars virtually all mechanized activity – no logging, motorcycles, cars or new mining claims. You can’t even legally fire up a chain saw. Wild Sky advocates carefully drew the boundaries to avoid opposition from snowmobilers and heavily used Barclay Lake.
Mark Rey, a Bush appointee who oversees the Forest Service, spoke at the event, praising the Wild Sky proponents for taking a moderate approach that built broad support. He also announced plans to name a trailhead leading into the wilderness after Jennifer Dunn, the longtime Republican congresswoman from Bellevue who supported Wild Sky and died in September.
Still, today the wilderness faces obstacles of a more practical sort. One main road leading to it was cut off by flooding several years ago and has yet to be repaired.
That, combined with lingering snow on the ground, meant Larsen and Murray never set foot inside the wilderness Friday. But the weather cooperated, giving the revelers a clear view of craggy Gunn Peak and Merchant Peak, both now protected.