The Power of Place
Will Roush is the Executive Director at Wilderness Workshop.
The individuals on the cover of this newsletter are just a small portion of the community that has worked for nearly two decades to protect the Thompson Divide. Literally, it’s photos of a small handful of folks we ran into around town in the wake of the April 3rd announcement of the Administrative Mineral Withdrawal, which secured 20 years of protections for this magnificent landscape. This issue of Wild Works is dedicated to all of you who wrote letters, attended rallies and town-hall meetings, signed petitions and just plain showed up for the love of a place.
In the month since April 3rd, I’ve had a moment to reflect on exactly what this achievement means. First and fundamentally, it speaks to the power of place: the sway lands and waters of home have over a community. All of us who live here are profoundly moved by the vast swaths of forests, streams and wild country that make up the Thompson Divide – the lands speak to us and so in turn we speak up for the land.
Second, this years-long effort and recent success illustrates what’s possible when the power of a community comes together, sets aside differences and speaks with one voice. Yard signs and bumper stickers rarely encapsulate the true essence of an issue as complex as protecting a quarter of a million acres of public lands, but in this case there was no truer principle than the fact that we were truly, ‘Unified for Thompson Divide.’
Third and perhaps most importantly, the 20 years of protections we have just achieved shows that the wheels of power can and do turn to benefit a local community and its surrounding ecosystems and wildlife. It can be far too easy to be cynical about government benefiting the people. The momentum and power our community built show what’s possible when a community not only knows the value of our public lands, but is willing to fight for them.
With gratitude,
Will Roush
Executive Director
