NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
October 31, 2006

Book Reading of Wind River Wilderness to
Feature Local Writers

Contact Information

LARAMIE – Local writers will offer readings from the new book, Wind River Wilderness, at the Second Story Bookstore in historic downtown Laramie at 7 p.m this Friday, November 3rd. Chip Rawlins and Erik Molvar, two local writers who contributed essays to the book, will be present to read their work. The event is timed to coincide with the monthly Gallery Walk, and will also feature a short slide show on Adobe Town, a proposed wilderness in the Red Desert that is featured in the book.

Wind River Wilderness is a large-format book with spectacular photographs by Tom Mangelsen, David Meunch, and Jeff Vanuga, among others. Essays by Gretel Ehrlich, Terry Tempest Williams, and a number of other Wyoming writers round out the volume.

The lands featured in the book are increasingly threatened by oil and gas development.

“In the late 80s, visibility was decreasing in the Wind River Range and high lakes were on the brink,” said Chip Rawlins, who for seven years monitored air quality for the Forest Service in the Wind River Range. “The rush to drill in the Jonah Field and the Pinedale Anticline has made things worse. Those hundred-mile views and trophy trout might soon be nothing but memories.”

“The direct impacts of bulldozers and drilling rigs are also taking a toll on special places in the basins surrounding the Wind River Range,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Wilderness in the Jack Morrow Hills and Adobe Town, and big game migration corridors and winter ranges throughout the region are particularly at risk.”

A cooperative effort by publisher Ronald Chilcote with photographers and writers, Wind River Wilderness is a testament to the beauty and solitude of the range and the surrounding high desert, one of the jewels in Wyoming’s crown.