West Virginia Highlands Conservancy members and friends all around the state have been responding to our newspaper ad campaign. We have a camera-ready quarter page ad that urges people to write Congressman Mollohan et al. about Blackwater Canyon National Park. The ad features a cut out letter to send to Mollohan and Brad Basil’s endangered flying squirrel art. Individuals and groups in many counties are either donating or raising the money to run the ad in their local papers. If you would like to get the ad in your local paper, copy of the ad, e-mail vivian@wvadventures.net (Or call 927-3265.) So far the ad has appeared in ten different papers.

Letters to the editor help support the ad campaign. You can visit our website at www.wvhighlands.org for ideas about writing your own letter to the editor.

On March 22 friends of the Blackwater Canyon went to Washington, DC, to talk to our West Virginia elected officials about the establishment of the Blackwater Canyon National Park. Our Canyon representatives were: WV Highlands Conservancy’s Judy Rodd; West Virginia Rivers Coalition’s Pam Moe Merritt; the Tucker County High School Environment Club members, Katrina Ray, Lauren Tigue and Elizabeth Gillespie; and the operator of Tucker County’s Granny Gear (a mountain bike racing business). Jim Bollard, president of Brooks Bird Club, came along for part of the day.

This is when they learned of the urgent need to ask Senator Byrd and Congressman Mollohan to introduce a bill authorizing a Special Resources Study from the National Park Service as the first step in creating a Blackwater Canyon National Park. So what we need is citizen action NOW. If you haven’t already done so, please call Senator Robert Byrd at (202) 224-3954 and Congressman Alan Mollohan at (202) 225-4172 and ask them to introduce such a bill as described in the previous sentence. The bill authorizing the study ought not to be a hard step for our elected officials. The study would determine the validity of establishing the Park, and would look at all the benefits and any possible drawbacks. Since we have over 13,000 signatures from people wanting to save the Canyon, this should give our elected officials an impetus for action.

The WV Congressional delegation has so far received hundreds of letters asking for Blackwater Canyon National Park. To write: The Honorable Alan B. Mollohan, 2346 Rayburn HOB, Washington, DC 20515-4801. The Honorable Jay Rockefeller, 311 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510. (We’d like to see a copy, too: Julian Martin, WVHC, PO Box 306, Charleston, WV 25321, or e-mail him at jumartin@wvwise.org.) Please help spread the word so that more letters come in.