A New Conservation Organization is Now Established to Fight for Wilderness Preservation

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TO NATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

A New Conservation Organization is Now Established to Fight for Wilderness Preservation

Pew Wilderness Center Works to Elevate Public Awareness of the Need To Protect the Nation's Remaining Wilderness

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Feb. 6 -/E-Wire/-- Established by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pew Wilderness Center has been formed to collaborate with local, state and national environmental groups to prevent development from unnecessarily marring publicly owned parks and wilderness, or harming wildlife dependent on this habitat. Its mission is to rejuvenate the public's interest in the wilderness by educating a broader spectrum of the populace about the need for increased wild lands protection.

The Pew Wilderness Center will also lend support to citizen-led efforts across the country to protect more public lands as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. It will accomplish its mission through commissioning new research; conducting symposia; building public education campaigns; collaborating with federal agencies, academics, environmental organizations, other organizations; and producing an annual publication entitled The State of the Wild that will chart progress in securing wilderness protection.

"The general public remains steadfastly supportive of national parks and wilderness and Americans are aware of the opportunities to protect more landscapes, but decisions-makers aren't listening very well. We aim to change those circumstances," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Pew Wilderness Center. A recent national Mellman poll shows overwhelming support across political and regional lines for permanently protecting places of 1,000 acres or more from road building, off-road vehicles, mining, oil-drilling, logging and other developments.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Pew Wilderness Center also maintains offices in Seattle, Washington; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and Boulder, Colorado. "Our goal is to bequeath to future generations the ecological, geological or other features of scientific, educational, scenic and historical value that wild places contain. America's wilderness is a place for horseback riding, canoeing, hiking, hunting, and fishing; and also a natural place for wildflowers, mountain lions, grizzly bears, deer, antelope, caribou, and birds that must be protected for us today and for those who follow us," said Matz.

The Pew Wilderness Center collaborates with local, state and national environmental groups to broaden public interest in and support for the concept of wilderness and to enlist a new generation of proponents to protect an enduring resource of America's wilderness. Visit the Pew Wilderness Center on the web at http://www.pewwildernesscenter.org .

Pew Wilderness Center

Herma Percy-McDaniel of the Pew Wilderness Center,

[REDACTED-PHONE], ext.132 or [REDACTED-EMAIL]

http://www.pewwildernesscenter.org

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