Page 22 - Flathead Beacon // 8.3.16

Marchand Dye, weeds crew leader with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation, hangs a wilderness boundary sign along the Logan Creek trail near Hungry Horse Reservoir on July 13, 2016.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
COVER
he concluded in 1930, “The universe of the wilderness, all over the United States, is vanishing with appalling rapidity. It is melting away like the last snow bank on some south-facing mountainside during a hot afternoon in June.”
He proposed a solution: The govern- ment needed to save and defend millions of acres of land, including “superlative scenic areas” like those in the national park system and “primeval areas or tracts of virgin timber in which human activities have never upset the normal processes of nature.” But the acreage he had in mind encompassed a percentage of the nation’s timberland, and detractors fought to maintain that resource. Mar- shall responded: “What small nancial loss ultimately results from the estab- lishment of wilderness areas must be accepted as a fair price to pay for their unassailable preciousness.”
He became one of the four founding members of the Wilderness Society, a nonpro t land conservation organiza- tion. The group would go on to usher in the passage of signi cant legislation, including the seminal Wilderness Act, one of the nation’s surest demonstra- tions of commitment to the preservation of wild land.
Flanked by two Wilderness Society members, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill in 1964, protecting 9.1 mil- lion acres across the country and desig- nating the 950,000-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness. The act also o cially created the legal de nition of Wilderness, which prohibits mechanized travel and tools. Marshall passed away at age 38 of appar- ent heart failure in 1939, years before this environmental milestone, yet his role as a galvanizing force was indisputable.
“One could comfortably argue that Robert Marshall was personally respon- sible for the preservation of more wilder- ness than any individual in history,” T.H. Watkins, an editor of the society maga- zine, Wilderness, once wrote.
Marshall played no part in the cre- ation of the volunteer labor foundation that would form decades after his death, but he was an ardent user of the existing trails network in Northwest Montana, reportedly walking 60 miles in a day and
“ nish[ing] with a spring in his step, typ- if[ying] the zest with which he tackled everything,” F.A. Silcox wrote in a USFS Service Bulletin eulogy titled “Robert Marshall, Forester — Crusader.”
Trails help manage people’s impact.” Trails prevent erosion, control what type of sediment enters the watershed, and concentrate visitors by guiding where they walk and camp. A trail in good con- dition will be logged, without fallen trees crossing the path. It will have a drainage system, so that when it rains, water will be strategically channeled o the trail. It will also be wide and tall enough to accommodate usage, whether it’s a mere footpath made for backpackers or a wider
trail for pack strings.
Today, after the addition of the Scape-
goat Wilderness in 1972 and the Great Bear Wilderness in 1978, the Bob Mar- shall Wilderness Complex, managed as one unit, has 1,700 miles of trail. The network is maintained by the Hungry Horse and Spotted Bear Ranger Districts in Flathead National Forest, the Lincoln Ranger District in Helena National For- est, the Rocky Mountain Ranger District in Lewis and Clark National Forest, and
the Seeley Lake Ranger District in Lolo National Forest. The largest district, Spotted Bear, has 14 paid trailworkers this season.
As the Forest Service’s trail dollars nationwide are increasingly allocated to more urban areas and places with more users, ranger districts in the remote Bob depend heavily both on volunteers and on the foundation’s organizational infrastructure.
“You can’t do everything with Forest Service-paid employees because there’s just not enough of them and there’s not enough money,” Al Koss, vice president of the foundation, said. “It’s a balance of where can volunteers help out to stretch that program, and make a complete pro- gram, of trail maintenance and wilder- ness stewardship.”
The foundation serves as “an extra layer of administration,” Koss said, allow- ing Forest Service leaders to concentrate on their own responsibilities while still
In a 1928 article published in The Sci- enti c Monthly called “The Wilderness as a Minority Right,” Marshall argued that saving wilderness was worth any sacri ce not only for its naturalness, but because of the potential for wild, inde- scribable adventure around each turn of the trail.
“T
good for all users,” said Deb Mucklow, district ranger of Spotted Bear Ranger District, one of the ve that manages the Bob. “If we didn’t have a highway system or a road system and everyone took their vehicles wherever they want to go, you can imagine the chaos it would create.
rails are really key for keep- ing designated wilderness, and for keeping that wildness
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AUGUST 3, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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