Editorial: The precious gifts beneath Oregon's trees

A Christmas day editorial from the Oregonian celebrating the gifts of 2009.

Sometime today, look outside. There are gifts out there, presents that you, your children and future generations of Oregonians may discover and enjoy over and over again.

Yes, this is a lean Christmas for a lot of Oregonians. Of course, there is no softening the blow of persistent unemployment. But for the state's forests, rivers and fish and wildlife -- and all of the Oregonians who love and treasure them -- this is still a time worth celebrating.

Look outside: There's new wilderness, new hope for the shallow and sick Klamath River and new impetus for an agreement to restore forests and badly needed sawmill jobs in Oregon's rural eastside communities.

The 202,000 acres of new Oregon wilderness signed into law by President Obama in March is a gift that will endure forever in Oregon. The new wilderness -- the first in Oregon in 25 years -- at Mount Hood, the Columbia Gorge, Copper Salmon, Soda Mountain, Spring Basin and the Badlands near Bend will provide lasting protection to some of Oregon's most beautiful and precious places.

The wilderness bill, the culmination of years of work by Oregon's congressional delegation and thousands of other people, will protect 315 square miles of Oregon, 90 miles of wild and scenic rivers, 7 million trees and 240 miles of trails.

Look outside, there's more: Negotiators are closing in on a final agreement that would lead to the breaching of four Klamath River dams, the largest dam removal in the history of the world. Moreover, the deal promises to resolve decades of bitter disputes over the allocation of Klamath Basin water.

All this will still require years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars, but history may show that 2009 was the year that Oregon, California and the federal government took the first big step to restore what was once among the productive salmon rivers on the West Coast, bringing economic hope to coastal fishing communities while simultaneously providing certainty to farmers throughout the Klamath Basin.

This also may go down as the year Oregon managed to break the 20-year deadlock between environmentalists and the timber industry over the management of federal forests. Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden announced that many of the state's leading conservation groups and some of its most prominent timber executives had agreed on legislation to triple logging on the dry public forests of central and eastern Oregon while permanently protecting old-growth trees and streams.

That agreement, if enacted by Congress and signed by the president, could help restore overgrown, fireprone forests and create hundreds of sawmill jobs across much of rural Oregon. Even more important, it could spur negotiations for a similar agreement on westside forests to improve forest health, boost the timber industry and help rural communities.

There are still major unresolved environmental issues in Oregon, including the litigation over the federal recovery effort for salmon in the Columbia Basin. But even with salmon, dam operations have improved, passage is much safer, fish habitat has been improved and the projected returns of chinook next spring are well above average.

Of course, there's much more work to be done on wilderness, the Klamath, logging and Columbia salmon. But after decades of fighting about these issues and making little progress, this was a remarkable year.

Look outside again: The rich biodiversity of Soda Mountain near Ashland, the clear-blue water of the Elk River near Port Orford, the twisted ancient junipers of the Badlands near Bend, all have won permanent protection. There's hope for the Klamath and the tribes and farmers who depend on the river. There's real progress on eastside forests.

On this Christmas Day, these are Oregon's gifts.