Ruggedness not enough to protect wilderness

Regarding Jerry Stern’s letter published April 7 in this paper, I respectfully disagree.

I wish that the sheer ruggedness of the Scotchman Peaks was enough to protect the place, but I have seen the makeshift helipads built atop Vertigo Ridge between the West Fork of Blue Creek and Savage Creek where mining company geologists were dropped off to “assay” the country a couple of decades ago.

I’ve seen what Pegasus Gold, now badly disguised as Revett Minerals and encamped on Rock Creek just south of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and in the Spar Creek drainage on the east edge of the Scotchmans, did to the Little Rockies and to the folks who lived nearby.

I have also seen the roads carved into the canyon wall of the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone where some metal-hungry, ambitious soul went a-prospecting; and the cliff-hanging accesses to some of the mines in Colorado.

If ruggedness were going to protect a place, there would be no Leadville, Colo., or Jerome, Ariz. The South Platte at Fairplay would be a blue-ribbon trout stream instead of a dredged-out trench, and there would be no played-out tin mines littering the Andes in South America. Ruggedness alone will not protect anything against human endeavor, whether for personal greed or the common good.

It would be lovely if we didn’t have to designate a place Wilderness to protect it from exploitation and degradation. But, I’m afraid that if we don’t, the Scotchmans will not continue to be lovely.

SANDY COMPTON

Sandpoint