Page 8C
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, April 8, 2017
The Crater Lake debate
because they can’t fi ght them like
any normal fi re.”
Brown said fi res in wilderness
can absolutely be fought with
any types of trucks, chainsaws
and other means necessary, but
traditionally it’s important to let
some of the natural processes
go a little longer without human
intervention.
Brady said he’s concerned about
fi res in wilderness areas too, and
he’s not talking about the cool
under-burns Native Americans
used.
“These are stand-replacing fi res
that destroy everything. Trees,
brush, red tree voles, spotted owls,
Pacifi c salamanders and many
other species the preservation
groups profess they want to save,”
Brady said.
He said the amount of logging
is never going to go back to the
levels before the 1980s, but he
believes there should be some
logging in the area both for fi re
prevention and county revenue.
By EMILY HOARD
The News-Review
T
he Crater Lake Wilderness
proposal would designate
500,000 acres to be protected
as wilderness.
Umpqua Watersheds of
Roseburg and Oregon Wild of
Portland created the proposal to
increase protections of old-growth
forests and endangered species
habitat in roadless areas around
Crater Lake National Park,
including parts of the Umpqua
National Forest, that would be
blocked from timber harvest,
motorized use and mechanized
transportation.
Tara Brown, Crater Lake
Wilderness coordinator for Oregon
Wild, said as climate change
and human impact lead to the
destruction of forestland, it’s
important to implement wilderness
designation so the park and natural
areas near it will be protected for
future generations.
“The wilderness proposal is
really designed to help some of
the inventory in roadless areas, old
growth forests, wildlife habitat and
a lot of higher elevation forests,
which is really important as climate
change is happening because the
increasing temperature means
that wildlife needs to go to higher
elevations to survive,” Brown said.
But according to Wayne Brady,
who retired from the Forest
Service after more than 35 years
of working in the North Umpqua
District, there are already enough
protections on the land included
in the proposal, and a wilderness
designation would restrict public
recreation and economic growth.
“They would have you believe
that people will fl ock to the
Umpqua Valleys to bask in the
wonders of their wilderness,”
Brady said. “But the reality of
wilderness is much different.”
Most of these roadless areas
with recreational value have been
protected under a 1978 land use
plan and again in a 1990 land and
resource management plan, Brady
said.
“They’re not being impacted by
anything except for recreation use
and fi res, so the rationale for why
suddenly we need to protect them
as wilderness doesn’t make sense
to me,” Brady said.
Public access
The wilderness area would be
open for public access by foot
or on the back of an animal, but
bicycles, snowmobiles, ATVs and
vehicles would not be allowed.
Groups of visitors would need to
be 12 people or less, though there
can be multiple groups at a time,
and no new roads could be built
within the limits.
“Wilderness is really important,
especially around Oregon’s only
national park, because we’re
starting to see such an infl ux in
visitation that when you go to
County government
Alisha Roemeling/The Statesman Journal via AP, File
In this undated fi le photo, Wizard Island is seen in Crater Lake in this scenic view from the lodge area
at Crater Lake National Park.
Crater Lake it’s no longer just you
out there seeing the rim and these
iconic landscapes,” Brown said.
“It’s really important to protect
those places around Crater Lake
so we can still get out into natural
areas without seeing a whole
bunch of people and still be able to
experience nature.”
She added that the
superintendent at Crater Lake
already manages the park
like wilderness and all the
infrastructure would remain in
place so there would not be any
major changes, other than the lack
of trucks, chainsaws or mechanized
transportation.
John Jonesburg, Diamond Lake
Resort marketing director, said
wilderness signifi cantly cuts down
on recreation opportunities besides
hiking, and it’s only a matter of
time before Oregon Wild and
Umpqua Watersheds try to expand
their proposal to include the miles
of snowmobile and ATV trails,
groomed cross country ski paths
and Diamond Lake itself.
“Oregon Wild is trying to make
it sound better by saying they will
allow the existing roads we have
to remain open, but we know from
past experiences that’s only a short
period of time,” Jonesburg said.
“They don’t stop, they just keep
going and going and trying to take
and take. The land they’re trying
to take from us now is land we’ve
been using for years, and it’s not
right.”
He said it would hurt Douglas,
Jackson and Klamath counties that
depend on multiple-use recreation
in the area.
“If you make it a wilderness
area then you’re limiting the
recreationalists that can enjoy the
area. We want it left open to all
recreationalists,” Jonesburg said.
Existing protections
Many of the places included
in the Crater Lake Wilderness
proposal are protected as un-roaded
recreation management areas,
where timber harvest is restricted.
Brown said there are a lot of
loopholes in that level of protection
and there are still ways those areas
can be logged, but wilderness
would add a higher level of
protection so there would be no
logging or mining at all.
Oregon has about half the
amount of wilderness-designated
areas compared to California,
Washington and Idaho, but
Oregon’s forests have a greater
potential for carbon-sequestration,
that Brown believes should be
protected at the highest level.
But to Brady, the un-roaded
recreation management designation
is suffi cient, and increased
restrictions are unnecessary.
Boulder Creek Wilderness, he said,
doesn’t meet the size and solitude
criteria for wilderness, but was
a political maneuver to keep the
Limpy Rock Natural Research
Area from becoming wilderness
instead.
There are already restrictions
on Steamboat Creek Reserve,
as old growth timber stands are
already protected and there isn’t
any logging except for old harvest
units, according to Brady.
“It’s not as if the Umpqua
National Forest is out there
hungrily looking at these areas with
a bulldozer. It’s unreasonable to
have those suspicions,” Brady said.
Parts of the forest that aren’t
designated as un-roaded recreation
management areas, he added, are
generally fi lled with steep, brush-
With no monument, some keen
for Owyhee collaborative plan
By AMANDA PEACHER
Oregon Public Broadcasting
PORTLAND — Last year,
conservationists made a big
push to convince President
Obama to create a national
monument in a vast area in
southeast Oregon known as
the Owyhee.
It’s a vast, rugged sage-
brush steppe landscape with
red rock canyons and unusual
geology. But the proposal
faced fi erce resistance from
ranchers and other locals in
Malheur County. At the end of
his term, the Owyhee was left
off of Obama’s list of new and
expanded monuments.
But the specter of a
monument designation may
trigger groups on opposite
sides to get together and start
a collaborative plan for the
Owyhee. Tim Davis, with the
grassroots conservation group
called Friends of the Owyhee,
said he believes it’s possible
to work with groups that
opposed the monument.
“If it was a collaborative
effort I think they’d be would
be willing to sit down at the
table and work it out,” he
said. “There are areas that
both sides can agree on for
protection. Jordan Craters, for
example. It’s a big lava fi eld.
Why not start there?”
This wouldn’t be the
fi rst time that a potential
presidential designation has
spurred monument opponents
to come to the table. On the
Idaho side of the Owyhee,
the possibility of a national
monument
designation
by President Bill Clinton
kick-started a decades-long
collaborative process between
conservationists,
off-road
vehicle groups, ranchers and
the government. The effort led
to new wilderness and wild
and scenic river designations
in 2009.
A similar process led to the
Steens Mountain Cooperative
Management and Protection
Area in southeast Oregon in
2000.
And more recently, the
possibility of an Obama desig-
nation in Central Idaho led to
the hastening of a Republi-
can-championed wilderness
area for the Boulder White
Clouds mountains.
But there’s no exact
formula for getting diverse
groups together in the wake of
such proposals.
“Each place is unique,”
said Brent Fenty, executive
director of the Oregon
Natural Desert Association.
ONDA has been talking about
wilderness designations for
the Owyhee for more than
a decade, and Fenty said his
group plans to hold town hall
meetings across the state to
further the conversation.
“That’s what we’re focused
on — continuing that dialogue
to ensure that the people who
know and love this place have
their voices heard,” Fenty
said.
Although
there’s
no
offi cial collaborative process
in the works yet, groups that
opposed the monument have
hinted that they’d be willing
to have such conversations.
“We’re still kind of in
awe that we made it past the
national monument designa-
tion,” said Malheur County
rancher Elias Eiguren, a
spokesman for the Owyhee
Basin Stewardship Coalition.
But with the threat of a monu-
ment behind them, he and
other ranchers have been busy
with calving season.
“Spring work is hitting
us in the face,” Eiguren said.
“We’re trying to just hold
together at this point and
really decide where we need
to go from here.”
Eiguren said he’s yet to
see a federal designation
that improved a landscape.
He’d like to focus on what
he sees as the biggest threats
to the Owyhee: invasive
weeds and major wildfi res.
But he wouldn’t necessarily
try to block a wilderness
designation, depending on
the circumstances. He said
that any collaborative process
would need to start with assur-
ances from environmental
groups that litigation is off the
table.
“I don’t know that a
wilderness
designation
wouldn’t necessarily change
what is out there already so I
wouldn’t necessarily under-
stand the purpose of that,” he
said. “But if somebody had to
have that, there’s always that
possibility.”
covered ground without maintained
trails.
“This isn’t like the Eagle Cap
Wilderness, or the Frank Church
River of no Return Wilderness,
those are different type of size and
experience there than these areas
they’re talking about designating as
wilderness,” Brady said. “They’re
just general forests, which is
enjoyable but there’s no reason
why we can’t go enjoy it right
now.”
Fires
Active management and fi re
prevention is restricted within
wilderness. Proponents said less
human interaction and more natural
interaction leaves the land as
pristine and natural as possible.
“Historically there always
were a lot of little fi res that would
naturally occur in natural areas,
and that actually helped activate
the soils, bring in new trees and
new fauna and fl ora, so those
small fi res were important to the
ecology of the forest,” Brown
said. “Unfortunately, some of our
previous forest practices did a lot
of fi re suppression, so those natural
small fi res weren’t happening.”
These suppressed fi res led to
the large, threatening fi res seen
today, Brown said, so wilderness
would work on getting the natural
processes back in sync.
Jonesburg said this lack of
fi re suppression could lead to
devastating results for Diamond
Lake Resort.
“Fires are not fought in
wilderness areas the same as they
are on regular Forest Service land,”
Jonesburg said. “They tend to let
them burn, and we don’t think
we would survive a major fi re in
that wilderness area if it happened
“Locking more of the Umpqua
National Forest in wilderness will
never save the Douglas County
government budget,” Brady said.
“It will just close the forest to most
of the people of Douglas County
and damage the Umpqua National
Forest budget even more.”
Property taxes in Douglas
County provide only a minimal
amount of the county’s budget,
paying for less than half the
sheriff’s budget, and timber
receipts, which make up virtually
all the county’s general fund
dollars, have dramatically
decreased over time. Wilderness,
according to Brady, will weaken
that amount even more, will cut the
Umpqua National Forest staff and
will bring less tourism to the area.
Though Brown recognized
that logging is an integral part of
Oregon that will never go away,
she said society is moving away
from that type of labor due to
changing logging practices and an
increase in outdoor recreation.
“This proposal would increase
wilderness in Oregon, but it
wouldn’t increase it to such an
extent that it would affect logging
practices,” Brown said. “I think
unfortunately the logging industry
is struggling with or without these
environmental protections, and it’s
important as we move forward we
take care of local communities, but
we also take care of some of the
reasons we live in this area, which
is to get out in nature and enjoy
clean air, clean water and wildlife.”
The proposal has yet to be
introduced in Congress as Oregon
Wild and Umpqua Watersheds
reach out to stakeholders and
Oregon senators. Brady said
he encourages those who want
to continue using the Umpqua
National Forest to contact their
congressmen and ask that the
proposal be squashed.
BRIEFLY
Groups warn
of lawsuit
over logging
Oregon forests
PORTLAND (AP) —
Fishing and conservation
groups are threatening
to sue the Oregon
Department of Forestry,
alleging it has failed to
reform logging practices in
the Tillamook and Clatsop
state forests that harm coho
salmon.
One of the groups fi ling
the intent to sue Thursday
is the Center for Biological
Diversity. It fi led a similar
notice three years ago, but
held off on the lawsuit.
Its endangered species
director, Noah Greenwald,
says the group was assured
by the Forestry Department
in 2014 that it would work
with conservationists and
the timber industry on a
new management plan that
would potentially protect
salmon and streams.
He says that has not
materialized.
A Forestry Department
spokeswoman did not
immediately return a
message seeking comment.
Woman who
helped launch
outdoor retailer
REI dies at 107
SEATTLE (AP)
— Mary Anderson, a
climbing enthusiast who
helped start the outdoor
retailer REI that has
become the nation’s largest
SKI REPORT
Spout Springs
Tollgate, Ore.
CLOSED FOR SEASON
Anthony Lakes
North Powder, Ore.
CLOSED FOR SEASON
Ski Fergi
Joseph, Ore.
CLOSED FOR SEASON
Mt. Hood Meadows
Government Camp, Ore.
New snow: None
consumer-owned retail
cooperative, has died at
107.
REI said she died
March 27, the Seattle
Times reported Tuesday .
Anderson and her
husband, Lloyd, along with
21 other mountaineering
friends, started the
consumer cooperative in
1938 out of a desire to fi nd
high-quality, affordable
climbing gear in the United
States. By forming a co-op,
they were able to buy
outdoor gear in bulk from
Europe and other places.
REI, headquartered
south of Seattle, has grown
to about 6.3 million active
members, more than 140
retail stores and about
12,000 employees.
Anderson’s “legacy is
deeply engrained in REI
and her contributions to the
outdoor community extend
far beyond the co-op,”
the company said in a
statement.
“REI and our
Base depth: 119”
Conditions: Groom is
wet pack and granular
snow. Off piste is wet
snow.
Ski Bluewood
Dayton, Wash.
New snow: None
Base depth: 54”
Conditions: Machine
groomed, spring condi-
tions. Open weekends
only.
employees are grateful to
the Andersons for their
dedication to REI and the
incredible foundation they
established.”
In search of high-
quality outdoor gear and
relying on Anderson’s
German skills to translate
gear catalogs, the couple
discovered they could
order ice axes from Austria
and have them delivered
to Seattle at better prices,
according to an REI
blog post. Friends heard
what they were up to and
wanted to get involved.
The couple and 21
other outdoor enthusiasts
offi cially formed
Recreational Equipment
in 1938. Each paid for a
$1 lifetime membership
fee. Mary Anderson
held membership card
No. 2, according to the
Mountaineers, the Seattle-
based nonprofi t outdoor
organization in which the
Andersons were heavily
involved.