Wilderness Update
Wilderness Committee update.. Bob Hoehne
Congratulations go out to Wilderness Committee member Dan Amos! Dan is the recipient of the Umpqua Watersheds’ “Volunteer of the Year” award. We are grateful to have Dan share his 
appreciation for wild places and his wonderful talent for photography with our organization.
The Wilderness Committee is keeping busy building more support for the Crater Lake Wilderness Proposal. Thanks to Tony Cannon as well for his great documentation of the Umpqua through his talented photography skills. Diana Pace has been doing a great job as chair of the committee and is very much appreciated. She’s also been connecting UW members to some of the other ecological issues around the state of Oregon. It is important for us to know what is going on outside of our own watershed so we can support other groups in their projects also. Diana has recruited several more business endorsements for the Wilderness Proposal and continues leading hikes to various wild areas of the Umpqua National Forest.
If you know of any businesses that would be interested in supporting C.L.W.P. please let us know. Contact Diana Pace or myself, Bob Hoehne through the UW Office at 541-672-7065. At this time, we are near 100 business endorsers and we hope to have 100 by Jan. 1st, 2021.
The Wilderness Committee recently approved the idea of producing a documentary explaining and promoting the C.L.W.P. to the public and our elected officials. A subcommittee has been tasked with writing a story line for the documentary and formulating ways to pay for documentary. Dan Amos and I have been making trips to Crater Lake and the headwaters of our rivers, planning out a strategy, talking with rangers at the lake and to some of the 750,000 people who visit the lake in an average year. We recently had a nice talk with some people visiting the lake at the top of Watchman Tower. They were a family from Brazil. We asked them if they thought Crater Lake was one of the wonders of the world, like the Iguazu Falls in Brazil? They all nodded their heads “yes”!
There are too many amazing features about Crater Lake to mention here, although I would like to highlight what stands out to me: Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and its water is considered to be the cleanest and clearest water in the world! The whole Crater Lake National Park, its volcano, Cascade Ridge and the head waters of six iconic South West Oregon Rivers all deserve Wilderness Protection.
There are many ways to help with this project: Adopt a Wilderness project – which is citizen research, letters to the editor, help us gather business endorsers or write a check to UW / Wilderness committee to help fund our ongoing efforts.
If you have any ideas or comments we would like to hear from you. We always welcome new volunteers to join the Wilderness Committee meetings held on the last Wednesday of each month.
