| In the latter half of the twentieth century, federal wilderness preservation remade the geography and politics of Washington State. Several wilderness preservation organizations, such as the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Sierra Club, the North Cascades Conservation Council, and the Washington Wilderness Coalition, convinced liberal lawmakers to expand the state's inventory of federal wilderness. Timber worker labor unions were an early ally of the wilderness preservation movement, but structural changes in the timber industry and the rise of modern environmentalism provoked a populist backlash against federal wilderness preservation and liberalism in Washington State. Beginning in the 1970s, timber-dependent workers and communities argued that wilderness preservation was a major threat to their way of life. In the early 1980s, populist anti-wilderness activism constrained the scope of federal preservation policy in Washington. |
