Winter 2010

When you climb Mount Shasta, making your way up through the red fir forest, mountain hemlock and white bark pine, and eventually just shale, snow and ice, reaching places like Red Banks and Misery Hill…it’s one step at a time, which is usually doable. But there comes a point, a mystical point in making an ascent, where the Mountain begins to carry you. It may be that one has “earned one’s altitude,” or perhaps it comes from a clarity reached there, above the chattering mind and the electromagnetic waves of the human condition. But at that numinous point, you can just be in the magnificence, and it feels like the Mountain pushes against your feet and steps become effortless…at least for a while…

When the Mountain carries you…

–by Michelle Berditschevsky, Executive Director/Project Coordinator

We may have reached one of those places in our twenty-two years of climbing toward the summit of Mount Shasta protection…at least for now (always cautious, lest we lose sight of the needed vigilance). Anyway here’s how some of the big boulders we’ve encountered look from here:

•Commercial ski development could still expand unacceptably, even after our successful ten year battle against a mega-condo/resort in the 80s and 90s…but for now it’s confined to a friendly family Board and Ski Park on the south side of the Mountain. And the sacred Panther Meadows area and beyond are safe forever...we hope.

•Geothermal development was recently denied by the Forest Service and BLM, though BLM’s decision is still under appeal by Vulcan Power. And 280 megawatts, the equivalent of at least five power plants, are still on the books for Mount Shasta’s slopes, perhaps awaiting a more favorable moment. Medicine Lake is where we’re confronting the geothermal development threat, and it’ll set a precedent for Mount Shasta if we’re successful (please see the next article)

•Forest issues are on a plateau. Giving input early in the environmental review process has by and large allowed us to influence timber sales to be more favorable to forest health, though some can still involve a struggle. We are currently watching the McBride Springs Campground Diseased Trees Removal project that is in the environmental review stage.

•Periodic threats of pollution from industrial endeavors in and around the communities at the base of the Mountain are still there, such as the Roseburg Biomass proposal (please see page 6), and new ones could crop up at any time…

•Waters and springs are safe for now from Nestlé’s plans for a huge bottling plant on the south side (hopefully forever ), but there could be others and you never know…

Looking from a height …

From this place, we’re looking into the crystal ball of the future. What seems clear is that we can continue to tackle protection one threat at a time, or we can work toward a new approach aiming for long-term preservation, restoration, truly ecological and cultural management.

A more comprehensive approach

While our strategies thus far have been successful in protecting individual landscapes such as Mount Shasta and the Medicine Lake Highlands (the latter still in process), we are currently setting the stage for a proactive, more comprehensive approach to protecting our bioregion to address misdirected developments, water extraction, as well as sources of pollution. We have been meeting challenges issue by issue and now seek to enact a regional ecosystem approach in order to preserve outstanding values more effectively and move into the future in a sustainable direction.

Our new strategy will result in: 1) planning for bioregional protection; 2) earlier involvement in the review of proposals threatening the environment in order to foster a more cooperative approach between stakeholders; 3) promoting biodiversity corridors between landscapes in cooperation with other conservation groups, land trusts, private owners, and agencies; 4) involvement in regional water protection networks; and 5) advancing sustainable green practices within the communities of our region.

In order to achieve this level of conservation—which the Mount Shasta region certainly deserves as much as the Sierra Nevada and other key landscapes—we’ll need to find funding for a full-time project director, for starters. Over the past two decades, we’ve been exceptionally effective with only part-time staff and volunteers, but this has been at the expense of a few workers who cannot continue with minimal compensation and donating long volunteer hours. Therefore we are increasing our fundraising efforts to hire a full-time environmental professional to head up this larger effort and provide the support our dedicated staff needs to continue. Let’s climb to this new height together (please see the enclosed Membership Form)