EDITORIAL: Climbing Devil’s Staircase

Oregon’s delegation reintroduces its wilderness bills

With federal lawmakers locked in a fierce debate over spending and deficit reduction, it’s hard to imagine a more daunting political climate for wilderness legislation.

Yet Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, introduced legislation Friday that would designate the 30,000-acre Devil’s Staircase area in the Coast Range as wilderness and expand the Oregon Scenic Caves National Monument by 4,000 acres. The Oregon Democrats also introduced a bill that would increase protections for the Chetco River in Southwest Oregon.

Both the Devil’s Staircase and Oregon Caves bills were introduced in the last session and failed to win approval. So why bother re-introducing the Oregon wilderness proposals and adding the Chetco legislation in a session in which lawmakers are unable to agree on funding the most basic governmental operations?

The answer is that there remains a possibility — admittedly not a strong one — that Congress will churn out an omnibus public lands bill in the current session. Lawmakers have resorted to the omnibus strategy in recent years to counter the predictable opposition of Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who objects that wilderness bills provide no new funding to pay for federal protection. Coburn’s obstructionist tactics mean at least 60 votes are needed to overcome his hold, and the best hope of securing those votes is by combining public lands bills from many states in a single omnibus measure.

Wilderness advocates should take heart that the 1984 Oregon Wilderness Act, which protected 800,000 acres of Oregon’s backcountry, was approved during a withering recession and at a time when Republicans controlled the Senate and Ronald Reagan was president.

There is broad support in Oregon for protection of the Devil’s Staircase, the remote Wassen Creek roadless area located in the central Coast Range between the Smith and Umpqua rivers. Accessible to only determined hikers, the area has escaped logging for much of the past century and has some of the last remaining old-growth stands in the coastal mountains. There is similar support for the proposal to increase the size of the Oregon Caves National Monument — currently the smallest unit in the National Park Service system.

The Chetco bill would expand existing wild and scenic protections and intensify federal review of mining claims. While the Chetco is one of Oregon’s most pristine rivers, it has been increasingly targeted by gold miners who use suction dredges to remove gold from the stream bottom, disrupting habitat critical to the survival of spawning salmon.

Wilderness protection is always a tough sell in Congress, and it promises to be even tougher this session. Wyden, Merkley and DeFazio have taken the first step on what looks like a long and difficult journey.