Thought the group might find this of interest. --Katharine English, San Francisco --------------------- Forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Alfred Thieme III) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 95-06-16 14:09:06 EDT --- Forwarded mail >From "The Columbian", SW Washington's daily propaganda rag, on Thursday, June 15, 1995, page A2. International park proposed along border Cascades International Park woulkd combine U.S., Canadian parks Seattle(AP)-A coalition of conservationists wants to link parks and recreation areas across the U.S.-Canadian border into a jointly managed Cascades International Park. The new preserve would include only existing parks. On the U.S. side, it would include North Cascades National Park, and Ross Lake and Lake Chelan national recreation areas. On the Canadian side, the park would include all of Manning Provincial Park and a large area west and north of Manning, as well as Cathedral Provincial Park, whcih begins at the border on the Canadian side of the Okanogan Valley. The plan also calls for a surrounding "stewardship area" that in Washington would include all other federal lands, mostly national forest, in the Cascades north of Snoquallmie Pass. The Cascades International Alliance, the coalition of 15 U.S. and Canadian environmental groups behind the proposal, said the proposal would lead to better-coordinated management of U.S. federal lands and Canadian public lands in the North Cascades and improved protection of natural habitats on their fringes. Mitch Friedman, executive director of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance and a coalition member, said, "The people upstream need to know what the people downstream are doing, and vice-versa." The plan, on the drawing board for about two years, isn't a grand scheme to bar most development on all public and private property from Interstate 5 east to the Columbian and Okanagon rivers, coalition members said. Chuck Cushman, a national "wise use" anti-environmentalist leader, had said that would be the case. The proposal also doesn't sat anything about turing the vast area over to the United Nations of throwing out current residents. Don Kehoe, a Monroe landscape contractor, had described the plan as part of a global plot to dismember the United States and impose one-world government. Friedman said maps and outline of the plan "should put to rest once and for all the wild rumors of the lunatic fringe about black helicopters or massive, private land grabs or U.N. takeovers. No private lands would be involved. Backers said management of most of the stewardship area probably would change little. But they said about 750,000 scattered acres of wildlife habitat would be designated "conservation areas" where logging probably would be further restricted. The concept has run into vocal opposition from people who believe it will curb logging, mining, ranching, hunting and recreation in the North Cascades. Ron Arnold, executive vice-president of the Bellevue-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Tuesday criticized the concept of expanding public lands - which isn't proposed - and curtailing the rights of people who own property or use resources inside federal lands. "It's an effort to remove economic activity from as much land as they possibly can," he said the plan is "a takeover by our own home-grown environmentalists." --- End of forwarded mail -- Al Thieme EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
