Volunteer afternoon of Badlands Wilderness Restoration

TRADITIONAL MOUNTAINEERING ™
www.TraditionalMountaineering.org ™ and also www.AlpineMountaineering.org ™

Bend businesses sponsor a Badlands "Wilderness Restoration" Day

Our group of eleven volunteers was tasked with installing a map at the more remote Larry Chitwood Trailhead.

Part of our large group of volunteers was taken on a short hike while five of us worked on the map installation.
The Fobbit leader of the hike became lost in the Badlands Wilderness,
stranding those of us volunteers waiting at the Trailhead. The group returned more than one and a half hours overdue
with the help of cell phone instructions. (Larry Pennington, the Fobbit Leader, had a trailhead map but reportedly, no one in the group used a compass or GPS
to return from the wild. Unfortunately, the need for more sign posts in the Wilderness was The Fobbit's lesson learned.)

This is one of the "ways" leading away from the Larry Chitwood Trail Head.
This obtrusive “woody debris pile method” of closing trails and ways has been a discredited management practice for many years.
The gathering of wood artifacts from the last 100 years damages the area plants and wildlife and puts a heavy handed human mark on the wilderness.
One of the sponsors of the afternoon wrote: "On Friday, May 8, we hosted an event in the new Badlands Wilderness near Bend, Oregon.
75 volunteers showed up for an afternoon of work, raising trail signs, "camouflaging old roads and cleaning up trailheads".

Recently, a Forest Service trails expert was employed by the BLM to manage “restoration” of old roads and ways in the Crooked River Wilderness Study Area (WSA).
The packed ways were broken up and raked by volunteers while “relocating plants and debris to re-vegetate and disguise closed roads”. Clumps of desert plants were
carefully placed to mimic the natural distribution. ONDA Managers participated in the volunteer day, March 4, 2009.
This informed process should be used in The Badlands Wilderness.

The apple green and dark maroon spray paint in aerosol cans provided by The Fobbits was "festive" we decided, but not the
traditional BLM logo-colors of natural wood, brown and yellow. BLM Managers need to provide The Fobbits with more direction.

From our popular calendar of interesting local events:
Friday, May 8, 2009, Volunteer Day and fun at The Badlands Wilderness
Thank Teague Hatfield' FootZone, Rod Bien's Patagonia by Pandora's Backpack, ONDA and The Conservation Alliance for a day in the field on Friday, May 8 in the NEW Badlands Wilderness from 12pm - 4:30pm. Please RSVP or stop by the FootZone to sign up. The FootZone will provide lunch for the first 15 people that sign up! Remember, you must RSVP through one of the sponsors!

THE REST OF THE STORY

After our first experience with the discredited, outmoded "woody debris method" of closing excess roads and ways in the Badlands WSA, I posted the page Badlands Wilderness Trail Closure Methods "Trammel" Required Values.

I talked on the phone in 2007 with the responsible BLM Badlands WSA Field Manager whom I had known for several years. I also talked on the phone with the Manager of the BLM Prineville Office who was fairly new and actually had not had an opportunity at that time, to see The Badlands WSA.

ONDA's Badlands Wilderness political campaign ramped up in 2007. I dropped my discussion of BLM's obtrusive Badlands Wilderness Management practices until such time as Senator Wyden's Bill might become law and create the Oregon Badlands Wilderness.

It was clear that Conservation of Wilderness Values was secondary to the standard BLM Management goal of stopping illegal motorized incursions. Other good work was being done by the Fobbits Meetup Group between 2007 and 2009, so I joined in and helped pull fence, toured with new folks and avoided being part of the Fobbit's enthusiastic work on closing old roads and ways with piles of woody debris, gathered from the surrounding ecosystem.

Following ONDA's day of celebration for local businesses at the Oregon Badlands Wilderness and my posting of the several pages found under Read More, below, BLM Prineville informed us that all new activity at the new Badlands was stopped, pending a new Management Plan and interested public participation (Scoping).

Environment
BLM announces new policy for Wilderness quality lands
BLM ordered by Court to cease illegal development in the Steens
Skull Hollow campground becomes a recreation fee case study
Our Deschutes Basin Land Trust Donation
Wildland Fire Use in the Three Sisters Wilderness
Polycarbonate bottles may be bad for your health
US Forest Service to gut Recreation Budget to pay fire fighting costs
Leave no Trace with Restop bags
Mountaineering blue bag, WAG bag and Restop bag waste solutions in 1985
"Climbing is a Quantum Experience"
Skyline Forest progress reported by Deschutes Basin Land Trust
Theft of ponderosa pines in the National Forest near Bend, OR
Skyline Forest should be purchased by Deschutes Land Trust!
Hunters who use ATVs are hurting Oregon's elk population
Outdoor folks can help Katrina incident victims now!
An update on the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge in Oregon
The Store Wars best with broadband!
TraditionalMountaineering adopts the Crooked River through Smith Rock State Park
The Republican Political Party is responsible?
Times Up, by Yvon Chouinard
Nation's forests might be on the road to ruin, by President Bill Clinton
Wilderness at risk from new Bush policies
Steens management scandal may affect wilderness study areas
BLM outsourced Steens Management Plan to mining industry leaders!
Owyhee River wilderness study area inventory with ONDA
OHV vandals charged in Yellowstone
Oregon's B and B Complex fire closure modified
Senate says NO to Big Oil in Alaska
Gloria Flora - Environmental Hero
Re-introducing wolves into Oregon
George Bush overlooking the environment