Conservation lessons on the trail of Lewis and Clark

The historic trail of Lewis and Clark traverses several states, including Montana, pictured here. The rock pile marks the scene of a final smoke after tobacco supplies were depleted

By Environmental News Network staff

The hills and the river cliffs which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance ... Here it is that nature presents itself to the view of the traveler vast ranges of walls of tolerable workmanship, so perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry had I not noticed that she had first began her work. As we passed on, it seemed as if those seens of visionary enchantment would never have an end." - Meriwether Lewis May 31, 1805

Seasoned conservationist John Osborn, a senior physician at Veteran's Hospital in Spokane, Washington, knows you can't make a diagnosis without knowing a patient's history.

The same goes for saving the health of the environment.

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As conservation chairman of the Northern Rockies chapter of the Sierra Club, Osborn believes history is a vital tool for preservation.

That notion is the shaping principle of a five-year campaign launched by the Sierra Club in conjunction with the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. The campaign aims to protect 33 places along the trail by banning new road building, removing outdated dams, limiting off-road-vehicle use, reducing polluted runoff to improve water quality in rivers and streams, and expanding habitat for endangered species such as the grizzly bear.

"Two hundred years ago, when Lewis and Clark passed through here, the world was a different place," Osborn told a group of writers gathered on the Lolo Trail at the Idaho-Montana border during a three-day workshop hosted by the Sierra Club. "Since then, a series of environmental problems have surfaced. The opportunities presented by Lewis and Clark are in many ways a choice for the American people. We can eulogize what's lost or we can work very hard to protect what is left."

It's a different message than the theme of industrial conquest that highlighted the 100-year Lewis and Clark celebration at the turn of the 20th century.

President Thomas Jefferson estimated that it would take 100 generations of Americans to settle the area that Lewis and Clark explored. Two hundred years later, less than 5 percent remains undeveloped. Ninety percent of Washington's old-growth forests no longer exist. The salmon that Lewis described as "crowding" the Columbia River are in critical condition. Grizzlies, which numbered 100,000 in the lower 48 states when the explorers first encountered them, have been reduced to a population of less than 1,000.

Yet much of the landscape endures. Along the Lolo Trail, one of the conservation hot spots earmarked by the Sierra Club, you can still glimpse many of the wonders of nature that Lewis and Clark saw. The country is so remote and rugged that, nearly two full centuries later, it remains virtually uninhabited. Here, large tracts of roadless forest with ancient cedar groves and clear, fast rivers remain.

In Montana, many areas along the trail Lewis and Clark followed have been logged

But the area is also threatened by clear-cuts on private and public land and by roads built on steep, unstable slopes, often near streams. Currently, there are several U.S. Forest Service proposals to increase clear-cutting and road building in the area.

The Sierra Club is encouraging the American public to retrace the less traveled path of Lewis and Clark.

"Lewis and Clark came to this place as informed careful observers and chronicled this amazing territory. They noticed 178 trees and plants alone," said Kathryn Hohmann, director of the Bozeman office of the Sierra Club. "America is in many places the same as when Lewis and Clark came through here. But there are a lot of people in power who don't understand Lewis and Clark and what is still here. If we don't tell folks how wonderful a place it is, there won't be a contingency left to save it. If we don't tell Americans what is left in America, it will be gone."

Attention and hype around the bicentennial is already brewing. Lewis and Clark explorers are featured on advertisements for Alaska Airlines and Nissan Pathfinders, among others, and the U.S. Forest Service expects at least 25 million people to follow part of their route during the celebration.

For the past 12 years, Wayne Fairchild has focused his recreational guide business on Lewis and Clark. In some areas along the Lolo Trail, such as the Sinque Hole area where Lewis and Clark camped on Sept. 17, 1805, Fairchild's clientele accounts for most of the 100 visitors per year.

"I hate to think there will be hundreds of people racing across here," Fairchild said. People need to be prepared to enter a wild area. It is up to the different outfitters who care to educate them."

Members of the Nez Perce tribe, who once welcomed Lewis and Clark to their homeland, also wonder about the environmental costs of the added foot traffic.

While the event is expected to present economic opportunities to local communities and the tribe, Nez Perce member Ira Jones worries that many of the tribe's sacred places will be trampled and exploited for souvenirs.

In anticipation of the event, the Forest Service is adopting a permit system based on a lottery beginning in 2002.

"I am hoping that security measures will be taken to the highest level so none of these things happen," Jones said.

The Sierra Club wants people to walk away from the Lewis and Clark bicentennial with something more than a woodcarving or a postcard. The club hopes visitors will come away with a greater appreciation and political will for conservation.

"It is easy to acknowledge the bicentennial by renaming parks and making interpretive trails around camp grounds," said Osborn. "We want more far-reaching things to take place."

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Sierra Club
  • Northern Rockies chapter of the Sierra Club
Lewis and Clark Bicentennial
U.S. Forest Service

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