NEWSBYAUSTIN BILLINGS

I took my first trip to Yellowstone National Park last week, and it was spectacular. I’d been in the park for less than half an hour my first day when half a dozen of the country’s oldest and largest public bison herd merged with traffic and held our speed to 2.5 mph. I took pictures of a black bear up close, saw an elk sow while alone on a hidden lake hike, and saw—rather than read—the history of a still-active volcano.

One park ranger told us that she’d been in the park for 42 seasons, and each one was different than the last. This year what everyone noticed was the water levels – after a heavy snowpack and near-record spring rainfall, the Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone River have been at or near flood stage for weeks. This made for some fun marina stories and gorgeously full waterfalls – but there’s a downside to the heavy rains, too, as the nation learned last week.

Thanks to these near-floods, ExxonMobil’s Silvertip pipeline spilled 42,000 gallons of oil into the river last week. Response teams haven’t been able to get close to the leak yet to give it a proper exam, but one theory is “that the flood scoured out the riverbed, laid bare the pipe, and exposed it to all manner of hurtling debris.” Residents in nearby towns were evacuated immediately, and the slick has since spread hundreds of miles to North Dakota. Cleanup will be delayed, thanks again to the flooding.

Last month, the non-profit American Rivers announced its annual list of the country’s ten most endangered rivers, complete with ten Change.org petitions working to save each one. Less than three weeks later, that campaign is already making a difference.

American Rivers and other activists declared victory this week for the Chicago River, which had been number four on the list. The problem here was that Cook County was dumping 1.2 billion gallons of wastewater into the river every day. While reclaimed water is a good thing, refusing to sanitize it is not, and Chicago was the only city in the country to dump its wastewater without disinfecting it first.

But local officials were listening, and thanks in part to American Rivers, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago voted earlier this week to begin disinfecting the wastewater.

This is a huge step forward – but it’s not enough. From Alaska to Virginia, nine other rivers across still need our help. That’s nine sources of drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat.

I recently interviewed Zack Porter of All Against the Haul (AATH), a group of Montana organizers fighting against Big Oil’s “megaloads.” Porter and his colleagues are as talented and committed as they come, but alone, they stand no chance of defeating the world’s second largest corporation.

And that’s perfectly alright – because they’re not alone. AATH is just one of what Porter calls “an incredible assortment of groups, not just across this region but across the country” that have banded together to defeat ExxonMobil. This coalition includes National Forest supervisors, prominent Indian tribes, local authors and politicians, national environmental groups, and more - and they are winning.

The megaloads in question are 200 enormous trucks that haul foreign-made refining equipment through the northwest to the Alberta Tar Sands, one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel operations. When I say enormous, I mean three-stories tall, 200-feet long, and 650,000 pounds each. These megaloads are turning the Idaho and Montana portions of Highway 12 – a mountainous National Scenic Byway – into a permanent industrial corridor, cutting both National Forest trees and local electricity as they move. And all in the name of Exxon profits, global climate change, and Korean jobs.

“We are winning this campaign.”

These were not the words I was expecting to hear when I sat down with Zack Porter, campaign coordinator for All Against the Haul (AATH), at the Power Shift climate conference in Washington, DC last month. Porter and his team of Montana organizers are going to toe-toe with the second largest corporation in the world: Exxon Mobil. Their battle isn’t just David and Goliath; it’s David’s little brother and the guy who beat Goliath at his last wrestling match.

But Porter’s right – AATH and their allies across the northwest are winning this campaign.

At issue are Big Oil’s “megaloads” – over 200 trucks, three-stories high and 650,000 pounds each, transporting Korean-made oil equipment through rural communities and pristine National Forests to the Alberta Tar Sands. The megaloads have been on the road for less than three months but are wreaking havoc everywhere they go – cutting power to local towns, blocking traffic for hours at a time, putting the area’s rivers at risk (including the famous river that runs through it), and forcing forest supervisors to cut back trees on scenic byways.

Last December, I wrote about Big Oil’s proposed “megaloads"—207 gargantuan trucks from Exxon and ConocoPhillips, three-stories high each, which are now hauling Korean-made refining equipment hundreds of miles across the narrow mountain roads of the northern Rockies—territory once explored by Lewis and Clark.

The ultimate destination of this dangerous corridor? The Canadian tar sands, home to one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel operations. And to no one's surprise, Big Oil started breaking its promises on day one to keep the journey safe.

But there is hope. A coalition of local activists is making strong headway in the courts and in the court of popular opinion.

Lend them a hand by signing the new petition here at Change.org asking officials in both Idaho and Montana to stop the megaloads and prevent the creation of a permanent industrial corridor.

The way the megaloads are supposed to work is that they block the entire highway, pulling over into special turnouts every 15 minutes to let stopped traffic – including emergency vehicles – pass. This is the law: 15 minutes only. Yet the very first truck to roll out in February stalled traffic for at least 29 minutes five times in one night. It happened against last week when another truck snapped a guy wire, closed the highway for a full hour, and cut power to the entire town of Orofino, Idaho.

Legendary conservationist Edgar Wayburn once observed, “Nature doesn't divide herself into measured plots. A watershed encompasses the chain of life; if any part is developed, the integrity of the whole ecosystem is threatened.”

There may not be much water in southeastern Utah, but Dr. Wayburn’s point still stands – neither wildlife nor wildlands are helped by setting aside just a few acres here and there. Habitat fragmentation, air pollution, and sprawl ensure that environmental damage spreads across entire ecosystems. From national parks to national forests, when it comes to Mother Nature’s whims, human-drawn lines on a map are generally meaningless.

That’s exactly what’s happening to the remarkable landscapes and archaeology of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. The Park itself may have the highest federal protection, but much of its surrounding ecosystem is in trouble. The area’s wildlife, iconic buttes and mesas, and solace have all come under threat from oil and gas leases east of the park and tar sands oil plans to the west and the south.

As a first step in this larger battle to protect Canyonlands, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) has launched a Change.org petition targeting off-road vehicle (ORV) use. The petition asks Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, to ban ORVs on over 1,000 miles of trails through sensitive habitat, streams, and archaeological sites outside the Park.

Last month, I wrote about the Wilderness Society’s petition to stop Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP) from installing 130 new gas wells in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. My post focused on the beauty of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and the most gorgeous road trip I’ve ever taken – but PXP’s plans to frack with Yellowstone are just as ugly as Wyoming is beautiful.

Natural gas may be less carbon-intensive than coal or oil, but it’s only a viable option when the relevant drilling operations cause less harm than the equivalent coal mine or oil well. That just doesn’t seem to be the case with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the type of drilling PXP wants to do outside the Grand Tetons.

PXP – a company recently fined by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management – would employ fracking in what Citizens for the Wyoming Range calls “the first [drilling project] to advance deep into wildlife habitat vital to the whole Yellowstone area.” And what exactly is fracking? As the New York Times explains, it's a drilling process that allows energy companies to get at gas previously too-deep by “injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.”

Utah is probably best known for its conservative politics and religion – but its outdoors are pretty notable, too.

One of the films nominated at the Oscars last weekend for Best Picture, “127 Hours,” is set in Blue John Canyon, just north of Canyonlands National Park. If you haven’t seen “127 Hours,” perhaps you’ve seen “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” – the edge of the world is really Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats.

Best of all, the western state has even made its way into Calvin & Hobbes, one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Artist Bill Watterson has credited southern Utah as the inspiration for the legendary “Spaceman Spiff” landscapes.

Despite the fact that Spiff’s southern Utah is home to five spectacular National Parks, barely any of the state is protected as Wilderness by the Bureau of Land Management. You can help change that by signing the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance's Change.org petition to pass America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act (ARRWA).

Without a doubt, the prettiest drive I have ever taken was on U.S. Highways 191 and 89, through the Bridger-Teton National Forest, a part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

I’ve seen prettier five mile stretches, but nothing this spectacular stretching this far. For nearly two hours from Pinedale, WY to the Palisades Dam in Idaho, I was sure that each turn in the road would finally bring an end to the spectacular hills and tall pine forests – but it just kept going. It was unbelievable: Every bend through the narrow Hoback River Canyon brought more lodgepole pines, more streams, more deer, and more beauty.

But if the Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP) gets its way, that beauty and the wildlife that accompanies it could wind up devastated. PXP plans to drill more than 130 natural gas wells in the forest, installing 17 new well pads and 29 miles of new or upgraded roads just south of Jackson Hole. According to Citizens for the Wyoming Range, “the project will also include pipelines, compressor stations, industrial water wells, truck staging areas, and other industrial features.”

Environmentalists, like most liberal constituencies, are prone to frequent schism. The best – and perhaps most troubling – recent example is over clean energy. Those focused mostly on climate change love it, while environmentalists with other focuses often…don't.

Massachusetts' Cape Wind project would be the first off-shore wind farm in the country – but Cape Cod conservationists like the late Senator Ted Kennedy want to preserve the shore exactly as it is, and two local Wampanoag tribes have cited legitimate cultural concerns with the project. And in Nevada, Advocates for the West is opposing the 75-turbine Spring Valley Wind Energy Facility because of its closeness to Great Basin National Park and an important Mexican free-tailed bat cave.

Climate hawks, on the other hand, argue that it doesn’t matter how bad wind and solar projects may be to local wildlife; the status quo is even worse. The mountaintop removal and strip mining that fossil fuels require destroy far more habitat than clean energy facilities ever would, and climate change-driven drought would only add to the problem. Throw in human concerns, like the risk of 185 million deaths in Africa, and wildlife or culture-based criticisms start to seem not unimportant or irrelevant, but certainly beside the point.