Applegater Fall 2016
21
OPINIONS
Behind the Green Door: Mixed messages from BLM
BY CHRIS BRATT
Twenty-two years ago, in what
started as a community opportunity,
federal land-management agencies
invited rural local people to take a
more active role in public forestland
management decisions here in the
Applegate. Through the new science and
thinking developed in the Northwest
Forest Plan (NFP), our community
had the chance for more flexible and
innovative approaches to public forest
management and “extensive public
participation.”
Many of us, having accepted the
invitation, began participating with the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
and the US Forest Service in their
planned actions that affected our local
environment. We informed ourselves
about all our native plants and animals.
Our local community became recognized
nationally for our volunteer involvement
and dedication to helping these agencies
make improved analyses and decisions.
From my perspective as a
participant, this proactive public
participation greatly improved the
management of public forests by
emphasizing a more ecological and
restorative approach to managing public
forests in our area. It has altered previous
agency behaviors, increased cooperation
among participants, brought forward new
information, helped design experimental
projects, and identified desired future
conditions that encourage making future
forest management projects even better.
And perhaps most importantly, this
collaboration had a working document,
the Applegate Adaptive Management
Area (AMA) Guide, which outlines
how the federal agencies expect to do
business with groups and individuals
in our 500,000-acre Applegate River
Watershed.
But as I reported in the summer
issue of the Applegater, all of the above
successes and collaboration with the
BLM are in jeopardy. Without a firm
commitment from the Medford District
of BLM to continue with the Applegate
AMA process, its statements about
continuing collaboration with the public
sound hollow and insincere. Unless the
BLM receives some different Department
of Interior or congressional direction, it is
hell-bent on going it alone and managing
our forests strictly for “increased resource
production” (cutting more trees at the
expense of other resources and the
environment).
As if to show us it is serious about
making community collaboration more
difficult and to keep the public more
confused, the BLM has now released
the Nedsbar timber sale Environmental
Assessment (EA) for the Little and Upper
Applegate drainages. This proposed
timber sale is an example of BLM’s
mixed messages to our community.
The Nedsbar timber sale EA presently
shows an existing Designated Wilderness
Study Area (WSA) that contains slightly
more than the required 5,000 acres
to be considered for a possible future
wilderness area. Although this WSA
has the approval of the BLM under the
management guidelines of the NFP and
its present RMP, it is invalidating that
contract with our community.
The BLM is now claiming that
its newly proposed (2016) management
direction won’t allow it to consider
multiple uses like Wilderness Study Areas
because it has to cut timber in those
areas. It is planning to nullify the
present designations many community
members have worked so hard to secure
over the past decades. The BLM’s
departure from its present direction on
this and other multiple-use issues is a
mockery of our community. It is also a
deliberate act of misleading the public
into believing that the BLM does not
have the flexibility to truly collaborate
with us on significant actions and
projects. The truth is, however, that both
the NFP and BLM’s own RMP allow
for the kind of adaptability that for the
past 20 years has enabled the BLM to do
things like test new forest management
approaches and designate wilderness
study areas.
At this point, if the local BLM
(Medford District) had any gumption, it
would adopt our Community Alternative
in its entirety for the Nedsbar Timber Sale.
This excellent Community Alternative
Fenced in
there is a quiet, but healthy competition
among the vineyard owners to have their
vines pruned, tied, and tucked. Though
alcohol is a far more dangerous and
deadly substance than marijuana, the
public may view the cultivation of wine
grapes, but not cannabis.
The regulation that requires a
barrier to “shield” the plant, or perhaps
the public, appears to be some sort
of hangover from the prohibition of
marijuana. Being fenced in causes
significant impact, not only on the
landscape, but also on the psyche,
which experiences this disruption to the
organic flow of the landscape of meadows
and farmland like a modern monolith
to southern Oregon’s real cash crop.
Additionally, these fences interrupt the
natural migration patterns of wildlife.
More often than not, by the end of the
growing season the tops of the cannabis
plants are peeking above these fences
while the odor of the plant permeates
about a square acre. So what or who is
being protected by these fences?
Certainly any agricultural project
in southern Oregon must consider
protection against deer and other
foraging animals, but, unless the farmer
is growing cannabis, the fence does not
have to be opaque. Our sprawling rural
vistas are etched with fencing for animals
and farmland. But most wire fencing,
which allows a visual vista and animal
migration to remain little changed, does
not create the same sense of being fenced
in. Certainly fencing is expensive, but the
kind of fence a cannabis grower chooses
to build could be seen as a measure of
respect for his or her neighbors.
Fencing in Oregon is not a new
topic—the existing laws about fencing
for ranches and livestock amount to
a 21-page document. Yet there is no
mention of obscuring from public
view the happenings of a cattle ranch
or other livestock operation. It is hard
not to evoke a sense of shame in these
requirements to shield the cultivation of
cannabis from the public. Yet cannabis is
the one plant that will allow humans to
create a protein for food consumption,
BY TRESSI ALBEE
According to the Oregon state
regulations surrounding the cultivation
of cannabis, the growing of medical and
recreational marijuana must be obscured
from public view. Infraction results in
a minor fine, as for a traffic violation.
When questioned, neither legislators
nor employees of the Oregon Medical
Marijuana Program (OMMP) knew
the reasoning behind this law. For those
of us living in Josephine and Jackson
counties, the impact of this regulation is
significant. Fences, or what may pass for
a visual barrier, range from the well-built,
usually wooden, and eight-foot-high
ones, like something you would find in
middle-class suburbia, to those made of
all manner of tarps, plastic, or even, like
one I saw, bent-up corrugated metal.
In rural Josephine and Jackson
counties, we are in no way uncertain about
what is growing behind these fences. The
odor that starts in August and lingers into
November is the tell-all. Notably, there
are no such regulations surrounding the
cultivation of wine grapes. Imagine the
uproar if all vineyards were required
to obscure the wine grape cultivation
from public view. Quite the opposite,
(which received
high praise
Chris Bratt
from the BLM),
if adopted, would insure that real
collaboration had taken place in one
of the most biologically diverse areas in
the United States. Let the BLM show
that it is accessible and responsive to
all its partners by applying ecological
principles and creating a climate of trust
and cooperation.
My message to the BLM is
not a mixed one. If the BLM expects
to continue the positive interactions
and goodwill that our community can
deliver, it must continue to support the
shared set of goals already developed
collaboratively in the Applegate Adaptive
Management Area.
What’s your message to the BLM?
Let it know.
Chris Bratt • 541-846-6988
More mixed messages from BLM
As the Applegater goes to press, the BLM has signed
Records of Decision to implement its new management
plans for western Oregon forests (including those in the
Applegate). Sadly, its new plan is discarding our unique
public land allocation called the Applegate Adaptive
Management Area (AMA). This specially designated
model of collaboration between citizens, scientists,
and managers was “established to allow innovative
and creative resource management approaches.” All
participants “were expected to act in ways that further the
technical and social objectives” mutually decided upon
by the partners. Success was dependent “on the cooperation of all participants,
federal and private.” Trust was a requirement.
Now the BLM has given a curt dismissal to over 20 years of mutual
cooperation and building trust. The long-term vision and goals outlined in the
Applegate AMA Guide will likely be dropped with BLM out of the picture.
BLM’s disappointing action is not a good omen, nor is it a way to build trust
with our community. —Chris Bratt
make fiber for fabric, replace the wood
industry (thereby protecting our forests)
with hemp paper products as well as
hemp building materials, operate a
motor with hemp oil, create medicine
for those with pain and anxiety, and
support treatment for cancer and many
other serious ailments, while being grown
sustainably nearly all over the world.
Though Oregon has lifted the
prohibition on cannabis, it appears that
the collective psyche remains entangled
in the hiding and obscuring associated
with the prohibition era of cannabis.
It appears to be time to fine-tune the
nuances of the liberation of cannabis by
freeing her from her fenced-in status in
the new post-prohibition era.
Tressi Albee
tressialbee@gmail.com
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