Midwest’s Largest Block of Undisturbed Forest Targeted for Enhanced Protection

Forest preservationists in the nation’s Heartland are again pushing Congress to nearly triple the size of a Southern Indiana wildland complex in the Hoosier National Forest, guardedly hopeful it will pass this session after narrowing failing in the last.

The Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area and Wilderness Establishment Act would more than double the Hoosier’s Charles C. Deam Wilderness to 28,253 acres and add a 29,382-acre buffer, where use would be restricted primarily to backcountry recreation such as hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, mushroom gathering, hunting, birdwatching, nature photography, solitude, etc.

Introduced in the Senate in 2023 and 2024 by then Republican U.S. Senator and now Indiana Governor Mike Braun, and in the House in 2024 by Ninth District Republican Representative Erin Houchin, the bill died in the lame duck days of the 118th session as part of a package of public lands bills torpedoed by House Republican leadership.

With the governor’s full-throated support for this remarkable example of 21st century bipartisanship – in a Crimson Red state, no less – Indiana forest activists are ramping up a campaign to push the legislation over the peak this year.

“We have been trying to save this wild expanse of hardwood forest for more than 50 years,” said the Indiana Forest Alliance’s Hoosier National Forest Program Advisor Jeff Stant. “Getting it done will take a sustained effort by many determined people, but the stars are beginning to align to make this once in a lifetime opportunity actually happen.”

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The Deam and Harrison’s narrow, flat-topped ridges and steep, V-shaped valleys comprise some of the most scenic and rugged landforms in the state and form the core of the largest block of unbroken deciduous hardwood forest in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois.

The landscape is full-canopy woods returning to old growth condition and is dominated by oak, hickory, maple, tulip poplar, beech, basswood, cherry, elm, gum, and related species – featuring 200- and 300-year-old oaks and other trees in many hollows. The valleys are laced with seasonal streams with limestone, siltstone, and sandstone beds. The iNaturalist website identifies more than 200 animal and 400 plant species in the current Deam alone.

The Deam-Harrison NRA acreage is home to nearly twice as many tree species as the entire state of Washington.

An example of its underlying karst topography, a shift in the Mount Carmel Fault exposed the Deam’s Patton Cave, whose ceilings and walls are lined with geodes, which hollow, spherical rocks that often have crystal centers.

The Deam and proposed Harrison NRA’s 57,635 acres also adjoin 30,000 acres of a state park and two state forests.

“Counting the adjacent 16,000-acre Brown County State Park, this legislation would establish the largest area of protected public forest in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois,” according to the Indiana Forest Alliance (IFA).

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When the Deam was established in 1982, preservationists argued that its 12,953 protected acres were simply not enough to satisfy the outdoor recreation needs of the Middle and Lower Ohio River Valley.

Its northern border abuts Lake Monroe, Indiana’s largest waterbody and most popular recreational lake. A popular horse camp sits on the western edge.

The 90-year-old, 110-foot-tall, 133-step Hickory Ridge Lookout Tower looms over the treetops some six miles in, offering one of the most spectacular views in the Midwest – from an altitude of  a thousand feet, about as high as one can get in the Southern Indiana Uplands and still be connected to the earth.

Today, more than 5 million citizens live a 2.5-hour drive from the Deam in just the metro areas of Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Evansville. Forty-five thousand students attend Indiana University, a 20-minute drive to the northwest. Chicago is 4.5 hours away by Interstate. Ditto St. Louis.

The three parking lots at the Deam’s Grubb Ridge and Terrill Ridge Trailheads are often filled to overflowing, with parking prohibitions along Tower Ridge Road largely ignored during spring and fall peak seasons.

The walls of the Hickory Ridge Lookout cabin are covered with graffiti.

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A U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) found Indiana’s outdoor recreation industry was worth $15.7 billion in 2023 and ranked the state 12th in the nation.

“Outdoor recreation has a bigger impact on Indiana’s bottom line than that of any other Midwest state,” Axios reported in a Dec. 6, 2024, story about the BEA report.

A new report Nature’s Value in Indiana’s Wilderness from the Tacoma-based nonprofit Earth Economics builds on that economic fact of outdoor life, estimating the Deam-Harrison complex would generate $5.4 billion in economic benefits to Indiana over 30 years.

“Natural ecosystems in the expanded Charles Deam Wilderness and Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area [would] produce at least $235 million dollars in annual benefits,” the report says.

Healthy natural capital – like wilderness – provides societal and economic benefits known as ecosystem services, Earth Economics senior researcher and data manager Angela Fletcher said in a news release.

“Indiana’s forests provide clean and accessible water, clean air, and recreational opportunities, while absorbing rain and holding soil in place to safeguard downstream communities,” she said. “Fully informed land management must consider such benefits.”

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The 26-page Nature’s Value report, coproduced with the IFA, tracked 12 ecosystem services, ranging from climate stability to air quality to pollination to water quality.

Aesthetics value – “opportunities for people to enjoy nature and develop a sense of place, purpose, belonging, rootedness, or connectedness” – produced the most economic value, with Recreation ranking fourth, with a combined annual value of $90.3 million.

Jason Flickner, IFA executive director, said this “island of wild nature’s” size and scenic beauty is unsurpassed in the Lower Midwest.

“It’s no wonder that nearly 40 percent of the value found from expanding the Deam Wilderness and establishing Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area will come from protecting wild scenery and providing recreational opportunities available nowhere else in the nation’s industrial heartland,” Flickner said in the release.

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Wilderness advocates cleared a crucial hurdle in the 2023-24 bill through a compromise that would allow mountain bikers to continue using established trails in a section of the proposed Deam expansion called Nebo Ridge.

Wilderness proponents have coveted Nebo for more than a half-century now. In response to the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975 mandate that the U.S. Forest Service establish permanently protected wilderness in National Forests in the East, they proposed a 32,000-acre Nebo Ridge Wilderness Area for the Hoosier.

Nebo was not designated wilderness when the Deam was established in 1982, but it was afforded the maximum remaining protection from exploitation under the HNF’s Land Management Plan.

Mountain bikes are prohibited in protected wilderness, like the Deam, but are permitted under Nebo’s management category. So the state mountain biking community opposed the original bill because it would have eliminated the 16-mile Nebo Ridge Trail, on which the Forest Service allows bike use.

The compromise designates Nebo and five other HNF trails as “non-wilderness corridors” to allow mountain bikes and horses. In response to that modification, biking groups across the state now support the bill.

The Nature’s Value study quotes Mountain Bike Indiana: “We can hardly wait to utilize the added trails that will result through this scenic area.”

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Lake Monroe serves as the sole source of drinking water for more than 130,000 Southcentral Indiana residents and hundreds of businesses.

“Protecting old growth forest cover in the expanded Deam and NRA – and incentivizing conservation practices on private land will lower long-term treatment costs,” the Nature’s Value report says.

IFA Hoosier advisor Stant, who coauthored the study, said the expansion will generate more than $47 million annually by capturing and conveying clean water.

“Monroe Reservoir provides a foundation for the economic health of the entire Southcentral Indiana region, which is why policies that conserve undisturbed forest on steep hillsides in this lake’s watershed make a great deal of common sense,” he said.

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