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Keep The Medicine Bow WILD
Summaries of Key aspects of the WILD Alternative
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Connecting Forest Habitat
Animals requiring large tracts of forest once lived successfully in the "big wild" forests of the Medicine Bow. Unfortunately, these large tracts are now few and far between because the Medicine Bow is being sliced into smaller and smaller pieces by clearcuts and logging roads. For this reason, the Keep the Medicine Bow WILD Plan adopts a "core and corridor" approach, based on the principles of conservation biology. This approach has two steps:
- Protect the largest tracts of forest available, which are roadless areas larger than 5,000 acres, from logging and roadbuilding.
- Designate forested corridors linking these core wildlife areas. Logging will be allowed in corridors as long as it does not harm ecosystem health. Forest roads will remain open, but no new roads will be built.
By protecting the last wild places on the Medicine Bow, and restoring forested corridors between them, wildlife will be able to move freely into new areas and migrate between their winter and summer homes.
Some of the Wildlife which will benefit from a "Core and Corridor" approach are:
- Elk - Restored corridors will benefit these animals as they travel between their high altitude summer homes and their winter range at the periphery of the forest.
- Northern goshawk - This amazing raptor is very sensitive to human impacts and requires large forested areas for survival.
- American marten - Forested corridors will allow this old-growth loving predator to travel between wild areas on the Medicine Bow.
- Lynx - The lynx once thrived in the big wild forests of the Medicine Bow. But, when these big forests disappeared, so too did the lynx. Protecting core wildlife habitat on the Medicine Bow, and restoring corridors between them, will make it more likely that this beautiful feline can be returned to the forest ecosystems of southeastern Wyoming.
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