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Welcome to the Oregon Wild Blog
During my first month working for Oregon Wild, a couple of staff members stayed late one Wednesday afternoon to clean out the attic. Thirty years of history boxed and stacked along the walls threatened to topple over and block our efforts to open up space to play ping-pong (an important conservation mission).
It was behind the ping-pong table that I found the real treasure trove of Oregon Wild/ONRC/Oregon Wilderness Coalition history--the newsletter archive.
A filing cabinet held one of every published issue of "Wild Oregon" dating back to the early 1980s. We all took some time to glance through them, pointing out the bad haircuts and worse clear-cuts.
We've come a long way since the days of typewritten facsimiles. Today, new technology allows us to spread information more quickly and broadly. However, the goal of the new blog will be the same as the old newsletters: inform and inspire.
A neat part of the Wild Oregons of the early 80s was the letters feature, titled "Your 20 cents worth," where readers wrote in to comment on the articles. Back in those days, we'd publish letters from foresters, sister groups and even notes from government officials turning down invitation requests (apparently, James Watt didn't want to discuss Wilderness with us). One of the most exciting aspects of the blog will be carrying this interactivity into the 21st century.
We hope the Oregon Wild Blog can serve as a space where interested folks can debate the conservation issues of the day. The staff at Oregon Wild will all post occasionally to kick start discussion by introducing timely and interesting topics. We also plan on asking you to submit questions that our expert staff can answer. Need to know the genus of the mushroom you found on your hike? Wendell Wood probably knows. Wondering how NFMA impacts NEPA if you are in the framework of the NWFP? Doug Heiken can untangle that alphabet soup.
The goal of our new blog is to engage more people in the effort to protect Oregon's special places. We hope you'll come be part of the discussion.
OWC, ONRC, OW...
Some of the things I have seen in the old newsletters have made me realize how much hard work and TIME it takes to protect these places. We were publishing ancient forest campaign articles all through the 1980s and we are still talking about it. In one issue, there is a chart outlining six (!) different forest protection bills that were introduced in Congress (Jim Jontz's bill being one of them, but none of them carrying the signature of an Oregon elected official). At least today we have two Oregon congressmen talking about introducing old growth legislation.
Sitting on my desk right now is an issue of "Wild Oregon" on Conservation and the Courts from 1988. Apparently, our efforts to make the federal government enforce their own environmental laws caused quite a stir. These are things we are still talking about today.
Anyways, thanks for your comment. I look forward to reading more. And I plan on harking back to old issues of "Wild Oregon" often in this blog.
Thanks
Sean
wilderness warriors
"And say my glory was I had such friends."-W.B. Yeats.
Oregon Wilderness Coalition
Jim was working on his old Datsun pickup to try to make a meeting in Joseph Oregon. His long blonde pony tail hung into the engine as he tried to duct tape and farmer wire the carburator back to life.
I met Jim to ask him some questions about Geothermal energy and to better understand the impacts of this new alternative energy source on the land. I knew nothing about wilderness and had never heard of the term roadless area. I was a sophmore geology student trying to write a portion of Oregon's new Alternative Energy
study that was commissioned by Gov Tom McCall.
The conversation that ensued lured me into the wilderness movement and I met magical people unselfishly doing things for future generations that forever changed my perspective on this world. I met people like; Joe Walicki and Holly Jones and Jon Kemp and Kurt Kutay. I had my naive ass saved in Bend by Andy Kerr. Tim Lillebo showed me a quiet way to understand wilderness with coffee rings on old topo maps. Stosh Thompson came to my rescue many times and Loren Hughes was a force of nature that made you feel the wind coming off the Eagle Caps. Marcy Willow typed
the first real pages of your history. James Merzenich could outhike a mountain goat and save Catherine Creek at the same time. Mary Jane Newton and Brian Boe helped to make Newberry Crater a National Monument instead of a geothermal energy plant. ALice Elshoff still works at saving the high desert. Marilyn Cripe helped protect many of Oregon's wilderness areas. Scotta Collister wrote beautifully in support of wilderness. Marty and Katherine Morrow testified at many congressional field hearings and Deborah Ritchie and Tom Larson and Joyce Thompson and Joan Miles and Pete Geiser and Maureen Sweeney and so many others who worked tirelessly and without any or very little pay so that we can enjoy a little bit of oregon that is part of all of us.
Thank you for keep on keeping on- Problembear