Oregon needs wilderness

Bill would protect more than 200,000 acres in state.

If Congress returns, as expected, to Washington, D.C., after the Nov. 4 election to work on a new economic stimulus bill, Oregon's delegation must find a way to secure passage of this state's first major wilderness expansion in nearly a quarter century.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has helped pave the way by agreeing to consider a public lands bill that could add nearly 2 million acres in eight states to the nation's 107 million-acre inventory of lands protected under the federal Wilderness Act.

Roughly 10 percent of the proposed new wilderness is located in Oregon. By far the biggest piece is a 125,000-acre expansion of existing wilderness around Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge.

After years of negotiations and intense scrutiny, the Mount Hood expansion was on a fast track for passage earlier this year. It received overwhelming bipartisan support on the Senate Committee for Energy and Natural resources and even won the support of a Bush administration that has been generally hostile to wilderness expansion. But the bill ended up being blocked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who put a hold on it and dozens of other Senate bills that called for new spending without offsetting cuts.

The proposed public lands bill includes several pieces of the "Oregon Treasures" bill sponsored in the House by Oregon Democrats Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer. They include the 13,700 Copper Salmon Wilderness at the headwaters of the Elk River in southwestern Oregon; the 23,000-acre Soda Mountain Wilderness, which lies within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument east of Ashland; the 30,000 Badlands Wilderness 15 miles east of Bend and the 8,600-acre Spring Basin Wilderness in the John Day River Drainage.

There are several important wilderness proposals missing from this bill, most notably one that would protect over 140 miles of Rogue River tributaries under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Its absence is attributable to Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith's dismaying failure to back this worthwhile bill, presumably because the expanded Rogue protections would curtail the Bureau of Land Management's plans to log hundreds of acres along key tributaries in the Zane Grey Roadless Area.

Hopefully, the next Congress will be even more wilderness friendly than the current version, and there's good reason to hope the next White House occupant will be similarly inclined. If the political planets end up so aligned, the Rogue, along with expanded protection for the Oregon Caves National Monument, should be near the top the list of Oregon proposals that receive congressional approval next year.

For now, Congress should approve the public lands bill that would grant permanent protection to wild lands in Oregon and seven other states. It encompasses 15 wilderness measures, including 517,000 acres in Idaho's Canyonlands and 470,000 acres in California's San Gabriel and Eastern Sierra Mountains. The bill also directs the Bureau of Land Management to restore and protect for future generations more than 26 million acres of public lands and 850 sites of significant natural, archeological and cultural value.

Oregon's delegation has a compelling argument to make for expanded wilderness protection. A mere 3.7 percent of the state is currently protected as wilderness, compared with 14.4 percent for California, 10.1 percent for Washington and 7.6 percent for Idaho.

Those numbers make it clear that Oregon needs — and deserves — a major infusion of wilderness.