FUTURESAVERS

[Home][Daily][New FS][FSs][New Twit][Twits][Freedom][Site map][Noms][Mail]

FUTURESAVER OF THE WEEK ENDING 2-13-99

Bethanie Walder is the executive director of the Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads. Her organization is a clearinghouse for activists working to reduce roads into what is, or should be, wild country. Wildlands CPR is working to reduce the web of wild habitat-destroying roads the US Forest Service/others have built and to prevent road construction into the small amount of wilderness that still exists. Walder organizes workshops to help citizens and the Forest Service inventory which roads are causing the most damage and on the ways and means that can be used to remove them. They have a bi-monthly newsletter, an extensive bibliography and an expanding staff. For being clear on what is environmentally wrong and for developing/organizing effective ways the environment can be improved, Bethanie Walder has been named Futuresaver of the Week. Click the links below for more information.

Links to other sites on the Web

Scroll down for Mary O'Brien about Bethanie Walder (click for latest Eugene Weekly)
Bethanie Walder (Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads)

Natural Resistance: The Activist Mind by Mary O'Brien

Part 2: Bethanie Walder keeps her priorities clear as she sidesteps politics in the environmental movement.

In this corner of some wildlands: salmon, lynx, most native birds, tortoise, some hunters, some public lands agency employees, biologists, people who appreciate wildlands on wildlands' terms ... and Bethanie Walder.

And in this corner: cowbirds, noxious weeds, snowmobiles, jetboats, RVs, all-terrain vehicles, trucks, sports utility vehicles, Yamaha, Exxon, Plum Creek Timber, some public lands managers, some hunters, the Federal Highway Administration, and many congressional representatives.

The issue that divides them is whether they oppose or promote the onslaught of roads, motorized recreation, and the resource extraction that is facilitated by roads in otherwise wild lands.

In our national forests alone, there are 440,000 miles of road. The public lands within the Bureau of Land Management, national parks, and wildlife "refuges" are likewise riddled by roads. The combined length of all Forest Service roads would carry you 17 times around the Earth. And now motorized trails are engulfing public lands, as foot trails are converted or as motorized recreationists simply punch in new "user-created" trails.

The results are disastrous: sedimentation, landslides, off-road damage, fragmentation of habitat, wildlife harassment, noise, pollution, roadkill, and introduction of weedy species. Take, for instance, cowbirds: They like roads because they can lay eggs in native birds' nests while finding food in the openings that roads create in the forest. And noxious weeds spread out from tires and roads like kids fanning out of school buildings the day summer vacation starts.

So, what has Bethanie Walder got to do with all this? She's the 30-year-old, quick-to-laugh executive director of Wildlands CPR (Center for Preventing Roads), a national clearinghouse for citizen activists working to close, or prevent opening, roads that reach into otherwise wild country.

Walder remembers her first consciousness of public lands roads. She was completing a spring backpack trip in a North Carolina national forest with some college friends. They had hiked the same trail for the previous three years together, but this fourth year, the last leg of the hike was confusing. A web of logging roads had appeared in the woods. The group couldn't figure out where they or the trail were. Until then, Walder says, she had been under the impression that the primary mission of the Forest Service was to protect national forests.

Now, nine years later, Walder spends her time organizing workshops for citizens on how to inventory public lands for unacknowledged roads, and workshops for Forest Service managers and citizens on how to effectively remove wild habitat-destroying roads. She oversees production of an impressive bi-monthly newsletter and the continuous updating of a huge bibliography on the ways roads and motorized recreation harm nearly everything and how to reduce both. She coordinates an expanding staff, and works on strategy with dozens of citizen organizations throughout the nation as they take on the juggernaut of motorized recreation and roads as part of their efforts to retain and restore wild lands.

Walder's approach to being an executive director of a key activist organization, however, is not only competent, but uncommon. First of all, she's clear that the future of the land matters more than her ego, or top billing and credit for her organization. Also, she's more interested in who's making a difference, on the ground, for the land, than on whether they consider themselves environmentalists.

Activist conservation organizations often fight over the best approaches to save isolated tracts of roadless land. Meanwhile, Walder is focused on the ultimate goal: to save ALL the pieces, even if they aren't roadless. As a result, Wildlands CPR has been bringing together activists who ordinarily won't work together after years of friction and controversy.

Of conservation organizations and their leaders, she observes, "It's too often about dominant power structures and gaining individual power. Then the organizations only mirror the larger society."

Does being a woman have anything to do with Walder's approach to leadership? Probably, though there are male activists who keep their ego and personal power moves out, and women activists who don't. What is undeniable, however, is that women aren't often on the roster of conservation organization directors.

"As a society," Walder says, "We're going to have to listen more to the land. We have to listen to what a forest interior bird is saying; what a road-shy animal is saying. But we also have to listen more to what some person we thought we knew, but didn't, is saying."

Listening isn't the first trait one thinks of when describing the leaders of most conservation organizations. As Walder sees it, "One of the problems in conservation organizations is that there are certain set ways to be recognized as leaders, and it takes ego, or a loud voice, or a drive for personal power. As a result, other types of people, women especially, end up staying away. And then we've lost the ability to hear the ideas that could help us be more cooperative, more diverse in our actions and strategies."

"If conservation group leaders were more open to all kinds of voices, then all kinds of voices in our society would be active in our organizations."

That sounds like a road that is worth taking.

Mary O'Brien has worked as a public interest scientist for 17 years. Her column is supported by a grant from the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation. Wildlands CPR can be reached at P.O. Box 7516; Missoula MT 59807; (406) 543-9551; www.wildrockies.org/WildCPR