Bill protects ‘wild scenic river’
By Dan Coran
Of the Emerald
President Ronald Reagan recently signed a
bill which added more than 50 miles of Oregon’s
Illinois River to the National Wild and Scenic
Rivers System.
Under the new designation, the undeveloped
section of the river will be permanently protected
from mining, logging, road-building and other
human impact.
“ The river has been both protected and hurt
by its remote status. Until recently, it hasn’t been
well-known enough to have champions in
Washington selling it to Congress. This is the
third time it’s been proposed as wild and scenic,
and finally it’s gone through,” says David Atkin,
leader of Friends of the Illinois River, a Kugene
based environmental group that formed nine
months ago to lobby for passage of the river’s
wild and scenic status.
David Atkin
The Illinois River rises along the crest of
Siskiyou Mountain Range, near the Oregon
California border.
Flowing northwesterly for 98.1 miles
through broad valleys and steep canyons, the
river joins the Rogue River 27 miles from the
Pacific Ocean. The newly protected segment of
the Illinois River stretches from the border of the
Siskiyou National Forest in the south to Nancy
Creek in the north.
Under the legislation signed by Reagan, 28.7
miles of the Illinois River is designated as wild
and 17.9 as scenic. The remaining 3.8 miles is
classified as recreational.
“Most people don’t realize what a jewel
Oregon has sitting out there in the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness,” Atkin says. “It’s the most remote,
rugged and raftable river in the lower 48 states,”
Atkin says.
The October decision concluded a 15-year
struggle to have the river designated as wild and
scenic.
When Congress passed the 1968 Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, eight rivers throughout the na
tion were granted wild and scenic status, in
eluding the Rogue River, of which the Illinois is a
tributary.
At the same time, another 27 rivers were
named as potential additions to the National Wild
and Scenic Rivers System upon further study.
The Illinois River was included, and a formal
study on the river was completed by 1973.
According to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
of 1968, a “wild" stretch of river must be “free of
impoundments and generally inaccessible except
by trail, with watersheds or shorelines essentially
untouched and waters unpolluted.”
“Scenic” rivers differ from wild ones in that
they are accessible by roads in some places.
in order to be included in the Wild and
Scenic Rivers System, a river must meet wild
and/or scenic qualifications and must possess
several “outstandingly remarkable”
characteristics, according to the 1968 act. The
Forest Service granted the Illinois River wild and
scenic status based on five characteristics: scenic'
value, plant life, fish life, recreational use arid
water quality.
Although.a one-quarter mile strip along each
bank of the Illinois River will.be protected under*
the new designation, about 22 miles of the river's
29-mile wild section already flows through the
KalmiopsisWilderness, which provides addi
tional protection for an extensive area around the
river. Whether the wilderness area should be ex
tended to include the remaining seven miles is
sun uncertain.
. ‘‘The spirit of the Wild arid Scenic Rivers Act
requires that the outstanding characteristics of
the designated rivers be protected,” said
Atkin,“and this means that the view shed, main
drainage creeks and the steep slopes outside the
one-quarter mile strip (around the seven miles)
should be left alone.”
However, not everyone is in favor of exten
ding the status.
Dick Felgenhour of the Industrial Forestry
Association says extension could possibly lead to
the loss of valuable timber.
“One-quarter mile doesn’t sound like
much,” he says,“but the federal agencies become
too conservative. They put in a buffer area around
the strip which limits production even more.”
“There are other ways of preserving the area
around the Illinois besides pure protection,”
Felgenhour says. "You can forest an area and still
protect it through conservation steps. That’s what
repairing zones are all about. I agree that the Il
linois should be protected, but not 20 miles on
both sides.”
On Nov. 17, the Forest Service will hold
public meetings at high schools in Grants Pass,
Gold Beach and Myrtle Point, starting at 1 p.m.,
to consider policy alternatives for the Siskiyou
National Forest. The future of the" Kalmiopsis
Wilderness will be one of the issues discussed.
While the meetings are in progress, several
members of the Friends of the Illinois River plan
to celebrate the new designation of the Illinois
River with a rafting trip down its challenging
rapids.
“We want to have a general cleanup of the
comrnon campsites along the river as kind of a
birthday present,” Atkin says.
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