Groups Ask to Ramp Up Protections for Crater Lake Area

Over 500,000 acres in the southern Cascades are worthy of the highest level of federal protection.

Saving Crater Lake National Park - and about a half-million visitors a year - from the whir of helicopter rotors and the growl of chainsaws is one goal of a new environmental campaign. A coalition of conservation groups is asking Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden to introduce legislation to protect the park's backcountry acreage and surrounding terrain outside the park as federal wilderness.

Sean Stevens, communications director for Oregon Wild, says among their concerns are three timber-harvest proposals in the mountains near the park.

"They're all in various stages of planning, and still include logging right up to the border of the park. If you look at aerial photographs, you already see that outside the park in many areas, there already is quite a bit of impact from past logging. And it really doesn't need any more of that."

For the past few years, another controversy has been whether to allow helicopter tours over Crater Lake – a trade-off between the amazing views from above, and the noise for people and wildlife below. According to Stevens, that issue has not yet been resolved.

"Senator Wyden and Senator Merkley had a solution that was at least going to put the authority to decide whether or not those tours were appropriate with the Park Service, as opposed to the FAA. But that didn't pass, so the helicopter tour threat is still very much out there."

Stevens says the National Park Service has been recommending for 30 years that the land within the park get the additional protection of wilderness designation. The coalition says, in combination with the surrounding wildlands, 500,000 acres could be protected. The groups suggesting the plan include Oregon Wild, Environment Oregon, Umpqua Watersheds and the Crater Lake Institute.