O&C Lands Act, Part 1: Neither 11th Commandment Nor 28th Amendment

This is the first in a series of four Public Lands Blog posts regarding the infamous “O&C” lands, a variant of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management in western Oregon. Part 1 sets the stage with a brief history and description of recent epochal events. Part 2 examines a recent ruling by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Part 3 examines a recent ruling by the US District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Part 4 recommends repeal of the O&C Lands Act of 1937 and transferring administration of all BLM lands in western Oregon to either the Forest Service or the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Top Line: By letting stand two federal appeals court decisions, the US Supreme Court dealt a body blow—fatal, we can hope—to the Clearcut Conspiracy’s fantasy of holtz über alles (“timber above everything else”) on ~2.1 million acres of federal public forestland in western Oregon.

Figure 1. A rather small locomotive of the Oregon and California Railroad. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Ever since I began my public lands conservation career during the Ford administration, a congressional statute enacted in 1937 “relating to the revested Oregon and California Railroad and reconveyed Coos Bay Wagon Road grant lands situated in the State of Oregon” has been the bane of my existence. In the mid-1970s, I discovered that the low-elevation old-growth-forested federal public lands just a few miles from where I grew up—and another 2.1 million acres administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in western Oregon—were not just your run-of-the-mill federal public lands but rather were exalted “O&C” lands.

According to my sources at the time, the O&C lands were the result of an Act of Congress so special that it effectively served as an 11th Commandment and a 26th (now 28th) Amendment. In all matters, the timber supremacy of the Oregon and California Lands Act (OCLA) of 1937 ruled! My sources of this information were the BLM, Big Timber, the western Oregon counties that received three-quarters of the timber revenues from the clear-cutting of old-growth forests (hereafter Addicted Counties), and all of Oregon’s congressional delegation (all collectively hereafter the Clearcut Conspiracy). Notice that I don’t list the judiciary as a source at that time—more on that later.

From 1937 until 1990, the Clearcut Conspiracy was successful with its holtz über alles narrative. Since the 1990s, especially during Democratic administrations, the BLM is no longer part of the conspiracy, but the agency still loves to log mature and old-growth forests and uses the OCLA as both a sword and a shield. Today, most members of the Oregon congressional delegation are not members of the Clearcut Conspiracy. The two unreconstructed holdouts are Representatives Cliff Bentz (R-OR-2nd) and Val Hoyle (D-OR-4th). (As to the latter, see this C-SPAN video [starting at 1:17:50] where Hoyle parrots the Clearcut Conspiracy’s talking points.)

Figure 2. The bane of my existence. Source: United States of America.

A Brief Synopsis of the O&C Lands

In 1866 Congress granted 3.7 million acres of public domain lands in western Oregon to facilitate the construction of a railroad from Portland to the California border. The Oregon and California Railroad line was built south as far as Medford before running out of money, at which point Southern Pacific Railroad took it over and finished the line into California.

Southern Pacific also sold huge blocks of the granted land to timber speculators. This violated the terms of the land grant, which specified the land could be sold only to bona fide settlers in 160-acre parcels for no more than $2.50 per acre. A series of lawsuits ensued, and eventually the Supreme Court directed that the granted lands that had not already been sold by the railroad into private ownership be returned to the government.

In 1916, Congress took back (after paying the Southern Pacific for them) the unsold 2.8 million acres of granted land and placed them under the jurisdiction of the General Land Office of the Department of the Interior. It further required that the General Land Office clear-cut these “Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands” (a.k.a. O&C lands) as rapidly as possible and then sell first the timber and then the logged-off lands at auction.

Mostly the lands just remained in political and policy limbo, and in 1937 Congress enacted the Oregon and California Revested Lands Act (OCLA), a statute to retain in federal ownership the 2.7 million acres of land that were still unsold and manage them for multiple forest products (not just timber). The law also compensated sixteen western Oregon counties that could no longer collect property taxes on these again-federal lands.

The stage was set. Between 1937 and 1989, the Bureau of Land Management, successor to the General Land Office, and the rest of the Clearcut Conspiracy interpreted the 1937 statute as holtz über alles. Vast swaths of generally low-elevation old-growth forest were clear-cut and replaced with monoculture plantations of Douglas-fir.

Map 1. O&C lands administered by the BLM (dark orange), mostly in a checkerboard pattern with private timberland (white), some in a checkerboard pattern with BLM public domain land (yellow); “controverted” O&C lands administered by the US Forest Service (dark green), mostly in a checkerboard pattern with regular USFS lands (light green); Coos Bay Wagon Road (CBWR) lands administered by the BLM (burgundy). Source: Congressional Research Service.

In the early 1990s, multiple lawsuits to protect the northern spotted owl and other species resulted in dramatic drop-offs in O&C logging levels and payments to counties.

In 1995, President Clinton issued the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), which kept logging levels relatively low.

In 2016, the BLM abandoned the NWFP and continued with a management regime that resulted in the loss of mature and old-growth forests and trees but also kept logging levels relatively low compared to historical levels. The Clearcut Conspiracy (which the BLM and much of the Oregon congressional delegation were no longer a part of) sued.

In 2000, President Clinton proclaimed, pursuant to the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which included some infamous O&C lands. The Clearcut Conspiracy did not challenge the proclamation. In 2017, President Obama expanded the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument to include more O&C lands. This time, the Clearcut Conspiracy did sue.

In 2024, the US Supreme Court let stand two 2023 decisions from two federal courts of appeal that found the Clearcut Conspiracy’s lawsuits to reimpose holtz über alles were without merit because that interpretation of the OCLA was wrong all along.

For more details on the history of the infamous O&C lands, see my Public Lands Blog post “Another Northwest Forest War in the Offing? Part 1: A Sordid Tale of Environmental Destruction, Greed, and Political Malfeasance.”

Figure 3. Old-growth logs are still coming off BLM holdings in western Oregon. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

The Lands at Issue

There are three variants of the “O&C” lands (Map 1):

1. O&C lands administered by the BLM, mostly in a checkerboard pattern with private timberland, some in a checkerboard pattern with BLM public domain land.

2. “Controverted” O&C lands administered by the US Forest Service (USFS), mostly in a checkerboard pattern with regular USFS lands.

3. Coos Bay Wagon Road (CBWR) lands administered by the BLM.

Under contention in the Clearcut Conspiracy suits were 2,084,884 acres of BLM O&C lands, lands revested from the land-grant-violating railroad. Also contested were the 74,547 acres of CBWR lands (Map 2), similarly reconveyed to the federal government for similar reasons at a similar time and administered the same as the O&C lands.

Map 2. The Coos Bay Wagon Road Lands, an even more obscure variant of federal public lands administered by the BLM.Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Somewhat in the mix, as they are intermixed with BLM O&C lands, were 394,578 acres of BLM generally forested public domain lands in western Oregon, lands that have never left the federal estate. For a long while, the BLM treated these western Oregon public domain lands the same as it treated its O&C lands.

Not under legal contention were the 492,000 acres of Forest Service O&C land shown in Map 1, which are national forest lands in every way except that counties benefit from these lands according to the O&C revenue-sharing formula rather than the regular national forest revenue-sharing formula.

Timber Above All Else?

It has long been the contention of the Clearcut Conspiracy that the OCLA outranks any other congressional statute, enacted prior or subsequent to 1937. Let’s drill down on that contention and see how the judiciary has responded. A basic rule of judicial interpretation of statutory construction is that if Congress intended a new statute to negate an existing statute, it would either repeal the older statute or explicitly say that it didn’t apply where the new statute applied. In a series of court cases from 1990 through the present, the judiciary has found that the OCLA doesn’t outrank other laws—especially, but not exclusively, those congressional statutes enacted after 1937.

Take, for example, these statutes subsequent to the OCLA of 1937: the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA), the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA), the Clean Water Act of 1970 (CWA), and the Endangered Species Act of 1972 (ESA) (all as amended). If Congress had meant to exempt the O&C lands from those later statutes, it would have said so when it enacted those statutes. Congress did not. Yet it took a series of court cases, starting in 1989, to conclude that APA, NEPA, CWA, and ESA all apply to O&C lands.

As for laws enacted prior to 1937, let’s consider the Antiquities Act of 1906, in which Congress granted power to the president to proclaim national monuments on federal lands. The Clearcut Conspiracy claimed that the OCLA precluded the proclamation of national monuments on any O&C lands that had any timber on them. Most recently, the courts found that the Antiquities Act does indeed apply to O&C lands. (See my previous Public Lands Blog post, “Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument: Safe from Big Timber, Threatened by the BLM.)

In only one statute, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) (as amended), did Congress address how that statute and the OCLA were to be reconciled. Section 701(b) of FLPMA says that the OCLA prevails over FLPMA “in the event of conflict with or inconsistency between this act and [the OCLA] . . . insofar as they relate to management of timber resources.” Then senior Oregon US senator Mark O. Hatfield (see my Public Lands Blog post “Mark Odom Hatfield, Part 1: Oregon Forest Destroyer”) made sure that this clause was included in FLPMA. Hatfield won and old forests lost.

Figure 4. The northern spotted owl, which requires old-growth forests for its survival. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

What Does the OCLA Actually Require?

What does the OCLA require of the BLM insofar as the 1937 statute relates to the “management of timber” on O&C lands? Remarkably, the courts had never clearly ruled on whether the OCLA itself contains an holtz über alles mandate. Between the BLM’s revising of western Oregon resource management plans in 2016 and President Obama’s expanding the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2017, the Clearcut Conspiracy went all in on a judicial strategy to, once and for all, determine that (1) the OCLA is exalted above all other statutes, and (2) the OCLA is understood as stipulating that logging should reign supreme over all other uses.

Over the many decades since 1937, the BLM’s own lawyers (“solicitors”) have opined to varying degrees at various times that the OLCA is a “dominant use” statute where logging is superior to other uses, rather than a multiple use statute where timber supply is one use equal to the other named uses of protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, contributing to local economic stability, and recreation. In its 2016 plan revisions, the BLM essentially still interpreted the OCLA as timber first—but tempered by all those other congressional statutes, in particular ESA and CWA (but not FLPMA).

The Clearcut Conspiracy’s legal blitzkrieg consisted of a total of six lawsuits, five of which were filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. As the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit explains:

The appeals arise from three sets of cases filed by an association of fifteen Oregon counties and various trade associations and timber companies. Two of the cases challenge Proclamation 9564, through which the President expanded the boundaries of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Two others challenge resource management plans that the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a bureau within the United States Department of the Interior (Interior), developed to govern the use of the forest land. The final case seeks an order compelling the Interior Secretary to offer a certain amount of the forest’s timber for sale each year.

The Clearcut Conspiracy won all five cases filed in the District of Columbia at the district court level, where the conspiracy had successfully shopped for a favorable judge, but then lost all on appeal to the appeals court.

As for the sixth lawsuit, the Murphy Company and Murphy Timber Investments, LLC, filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Oregon contesting the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Murphy lost at the district court level and also in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Clearcut Conspiracy was left with just one more option: a hail-Mary pass to the nine members of the US Supreme Court seeking review of the six cases it lost. The Supremes declined. As I speculated previously, perhaps the destructive majority on the court felt that this O&C matter was small beer compared to all the other potential damage they want to do.

In the next two Public Lands Blog posts, I examine in detail the rulings of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Part 2 of this series) and the US District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (Part 3 of this series). I go so deep on these rulings because they make clear that the Clearcut Conspiracy’s fantasy that the OCLA of 1937 is a combo 11th Commandment and 28th Amendment is and always has been just that—a fantasy.

Figure 5. An adult coho salmon scaling Lake Creek Falls to return to its place of birth to spawn. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Take a Bow

Special thanks are due to Kristen Boyles of Earthjustice and Susan Jane Brown, then mostly of the Western Environmental Law Center and now of Silvix Resources. These extraordinary lawyers represented “the wilds,” a.k.a. Oregon Wild, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, and Cascadia Wildlands. The several cases in two judicial circuits were as long and arduous as the stakes were high. The most able counsel of these two lawyers helped ensure that the courts eventually got it right.

For More Information

Blumm, Michael, and Tim Wigington. 2013. “The Oregon & California Railroad Grant Lands’ Sordid Past, Contentious Present, and Uncertain Future: A Century of Conflict.” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review.

Kerr, Andy. 2020. “Another Northwest Forest War in the Offing? Part 1: A Sordid Tale of Environmental Destruction, Greed, and Political Malfeasance.” Public Lands Blog.

———. 2020. “Another Northwest Forest War in the Offing? Part 2: Current Threats and Perhaps an Epic Opportunity.” Public Lands Blog.

Riddle, Anne A. 2023. “The Oregon and California Railroad Lands (O&C Lands): In Brief.” Congressional Research Service R42951.

Robbins, William G. “Oregon and California Lands Act.” Oregon Encyclopedia. 

Scott, Deborah, and Susan Jane Brown. 2006. “The Oregon and California Lands Act: Revisiting the Concept of ‘Dominant Use’.” Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation.

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. July 18, 2023. American Forest Resource Council v. United States of America.

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. April 24, 2023. Murphy Co. v. Biden.

Mark Odom Hatfield, Part 1: Oregon Forest Destroyer

This is the first of two Public Lands Blog posts on the most consequential Oregonian yet to serve in the United States Senate. In Part 1, we look at his role in enabling the destruction of Oregon forests. In Part 2, we will examine his complicated legacy.

 Top Line: While Oregon’s Mark Hatfield was a great US senator, it was not because of his record on the conservation of nature.

Figure 1. Senator Mark Odom Hatfield (R-OR) in 1981. Source: US Senate.

Recently, the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) had one of their launch parties in Pendleton for a new traveling exhibit: “The Call of Public Service: The Life and Legacy of Mark O. Hatfield.” On the wall, in big 3D letters, was a list of things OHS says Hatfield most cared about:

1. Wilderness Protection

2. World Peace

3. Infrastructure

4. Health Care

5. Equal Rights

6. Education

Figure 2. One of several kiosks in the Oregon Historical Society’s traveling exhibit on Senator Mark O. Hatfield. Source: Oregon Historical Society.

When I read this, I was stunned. More than once I had characterized Mark Hatfield as a pacifist timber beast when explaining his ability to survive and prosper politically in Oregon. (Although a Republican, he was downright liberal on issues such as world peace, health care, equal rights, and education, which resulted in a lot of Democrats repeatedly voting for him.)

Peace, Yes. Wilderness Protection, Not So Much.

Looking at that list on the wall told me that a historian, perhaps more than one, believes that the thing Mark Hatfield cared most about was wilderness protection. Or perhaps it’s merely a listing of six causes, with no ranking of importance—but if that were the case, alphabetical order would be the usual way to signal such, or even random ordering. However, this list would be in reverse alphabetical order if wilderness protection and world peace were reversed. No, wilderness protection was clearly meant to be first and most important.

I’m pretty sure Hatfield cared more about world peace than wilderness protection. He talked about and did more about peace. He deeply opposed the Vietnam War at a time when most Oregonians supported it. He proposed a cabinet-level Department of Peace to offset the Department of Defense (which combined the Department of War and the Department of the Navy). For the relative and absolute dearth of presence of the military-industrial complex in Oregon today, we can thank Hatfield. I recall getting a mass mailing from Hatfield way before Gulf War I where he warned of “our sons fighting and dying in the sands of Arabia” for oil.

The OHS exhibit features Hatfield’s efforts to establish wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. It’s true that for most of the area protected today in Oregon as wilderness, Hatfield was instrumental. For most of the streams protected today in Oregon as wild and scenic rivers, Hatfield was instrumental. The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area would not be, if not for Hatfield.

What OHS says is true—as far as it goes.

However, millions of acres of Oregon’s wild forests could have been protected as wilderness but were not, thanks to Hatfield. (You can read my very opinionated but nonetheless factual history of Oregon’s wilderness wars, in which Hatfield played an outsized role for so long, in a chapter of my book Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness.)

However, several dammed streams in Oregon—the Upper Rogue, dammed by Lost Creek Dam; the Applegate River, dammed by the Applegate Dam; the Elk Creek tributary to the Upper Rogue, dammed at one time by the Elk Creek Dam; the Willow Creek tributary to the Columbia River; and more—were damned by Hatfield. (The Elk Creek Dam no longer damns Elk Creek, which is now a component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.)

Figure 3. The first kayaker to pass through the breached Elk Creek Dam in 2009. Hatfield used raw political power to force the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam that even the agency didn’t want to build. Source: WaterWatch (Bill Cross).

However, there is no Cascade Volcanic National Park in the Oregon Cascades, because of Mark Hatfield.

However, no single person did more to enable the liquidation of most of Oregon’s old-growth forests than Senator Mark O. Hatfield. At the logging’s peak, more than three square miles of old-growth forest on Oregon federal public lands were being clear-cut each week. From his perch on, and often as chair of, the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Hatfield made sure the money was there for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to lay out the clear-cuts and build the roads in old-growth forests. Multiple times, including during his last years in office, Hatfield attached riders (a rider is a provision of law attached to must-pass legislation that would not receive a majority vote on its own) that barred the courthouse door to citizens seeking to enforce federal laws to protect ancient forests.

The Definitive Book on Hatfield (So Far)

Figure 4. The definitive book on Hatfield by Richard W. Etulain, a noted western historian who is a self-admitted Hatfield fanboy. Source: University of Oklahoma Press.

As a matter of professional interest (know one’s opponent), I have read all the books written by Hatfield, and when Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman by noted western author Richard W. Etulain came out last year I was interested to read one about Hatfield. I found it very informative. The meat of Etulain’s book ends in 1967 as Hatfield moves from the job of governor of Oregon to that of US senator from Oregon, as its coverage of Hatfield’s Senate career is superficial. As the author has noted, the Hatfield papers at Willamette University are sealed until July 2022 (Hatfield’s one hundredth birthday), so Etulain concentrated on the gubernatorial years, where the record is more complete. Etulain has said that writing about Hatfield’s Senate years would take at least five years of research and writing, something he says, at eighty-three, he cannot commit to.

Hatfield is the first governor I can remember. When my interactions with the man started in 1979 as I was advocating for wilderness, he had been a senator for more than a decade. As I read the book, I kept feeling that when writing about issues facing Hatfield as governor (1959 to 1967), Etulain was taking digs at the likes of me for existing at all during Hatfield as senator (1967 to 1997). Tellingly, when writing about Hatfield’s gubernatorial years, Etulain keeps referring to “environmentalists,” a term that didn’t come into general use until around the first Earth Day in 1970. Here are a few excerpts that indicate the author’s disdain for anything close to an “environmentalist.”

[Hatfield] viewed Dallas as a wholesome and holistic community, its life orchestrated primarily by the timber industry with tight links to lumbering and the daily routines of the saw mill. . . . This optimistic view of the timber industry and lumbering generally casts light on Hatfield’s later political support for the industry, which his environmentally motivated critics thought far too strong . . .

Logging and lumbering firms wanted to cut more trees to capitalize on Oregon’s timber riches. Hatfield began to work on that production-conservation issue as a middle-of-the-roader, a position that upset born-again environmentalists, especially Democratic environmentalists, in Hatfield’s later senator years . . . 

President Theodore Roosevelt, thoroughly influenced by his forester friend Gifford Pinchot, stood for “wise use” of natural resources. Assertive conservationist John Muir spoke passionately for “wilderness” advocates: the setting aside of forests, lands, deserts, and natural wonders as wilderness areas to be appreciated but not “used.” Hatfield was drawn to the wise-use philosophy, a position later enthusiastic environmentalists greatly disliked. [emphasis added]

Etulain has said that he found Hatfield to be “the ideal politician,” and he couldn’t find any major faults with the senator. I look forward to a more encompassing and less hagiographic biography that also covers the man’s time in the Senate.

The US Postal Service has a policy: no stamps honoring a person until they have been dead at least a quarter century. Hatfield has another fourteen years to go. Let historians take the time to fully examine his life.

The First Time I Met Hatfield

In 1979, James Monteith (then executive director of the Oregon Wilderness Coalition or OWC, later the Oregon Natural Resources Council and now Oregon Wild) and I got a meeting with Hatfield in Washington, DC. At the time I was OWC’s western field representative, and my trip to DC was the first time I had been east of the Mississippi River. A Hatfield aide took us from his office in one of the Senate office buildings to the Capitol. We were ushered into Hatfield’s hideaway in the Capitol building, a small and very ornately decorated private den with only a room number on the door. It was meant to impress, and it did. 

Hatfield was very charismatic and immediately put us at ease. He was so charismatic that after that first meeting, I liked him even when I knew he was screwing me (actually nature). He was extremely smart and listened when we talked. Actually, he was reading Monteith and me like we were books.

We first chatted about politics, and he said he wanted to get a wilderness bill done before the 1980 election. Ronald Reagan hadn’t yet obtained the Republican nomination and was still a long shot. Hatfield said, “Can you imagine if Reagan becomes president?” and every one of the four of us in the room laughed and rolled our eyes. Less than two years later on January 20, Hatfield was in a morning coat welcoming Reagan to the Capitol building in his role as chair of the congressional inaugural committee.

Of course, we got to talking about wilderness, of which Hatfield was not a great fan. Only two years earlier, Hatfield had very reluctantly changed his position to favor returning the French Pete Valley to the Three Sisters Wilderness. French Pete was the first wilderness battle in Oregon that involved significant amounts of virgin older forest.

Monteith was a wildlife biologist at heart and brought up how many medium and large mammals—especially predators—need wilderness to prosper, if not just exist. Hatfield wasn’t buying it. “When I was growing up in Dallas,” Hatfield said, “we had lots of cougars, but we didn’t have any wilderness.” Dallas is a small community in the mid-Willamette Valley that abuts the Oregon Coast Range. In the 1930s, the Oregon Coast Range still had very large amounts of roadless virgin older forest. By 1979, it did not.

Monteith and I realized that to Hatfield, “wilderness” was merely a land designation in law, while we both felt that “wilderness” was also a character of land in fact. All that those Coast Range cougars knew was that their home was wild.

I was mortified when Monteith tried to make our point by noting that “only God and Congress can make Wilderness.” (I capitalize the W here because James always insisted on it when referring to that designation.) Hatfield was quite the intense Christian, while Monteith and I were quite the contrary. However, I was relieved when Hatfield immediately retorted, “And we don’t let Him in on it until we are damn well ready.” The tiny office filled with laughter all around.

Speaking of mammalian predators, Monteith soon brought up a rare forest-dwelling member of the weasel family, the fisher (Pekania pennanti). To our surprise, Hatfield asked his aide, who had been sitting quietly, if she knew what a fisher was. She said no, so Hatfield proceeded to hold forth on the wilderness-loving species. “Did you know that fishers can kill a porcupine without getting quilled?” he asked the young (enough to be his daughter) aide. She did not. “I’ll show you,” said Hatfield. “Get down on the floor on your hands and knees.” While wide-eyed in shock (as were Monteith and I), she complied even though wearing a dress and some very unsensible shoes. Next, Hatfield got on his hands and knees and mimicked (at a relatively respectful distance, I feel bound to note) how a fisher attacks a porcupine in its quill-free face, flips it on its back, and goes for the kill at its quill-free neck. For a moment, I thought Hatfield was going to insist the nubile aide roll over on her back, but Hatfield returned to his chair and continued talking, and soon so did the aide to her chair.

Hatfield had made clear to us that he was well informed and also very powerful. The meeting ended cordially. (Later, that very aide served in high administrative positions that required Senate confirmation.)

Another Fateful Encounter with Hatfield

One sunrise in June 1984, I ran into Hatfield in the United terminal at Chicago O’Hare. We’d both taken the red-eye from PDX on our way to DCA. Hatfield came up to me and said, “Andy, what brings you to DC?” (Of course, I was secretly thrilled that the senator remembered me and called me by my first name.) The (still-to-this-day) record-sized Oregon Wilderness Act had just become law, and I was feeling quite good about that. (Hatfield was not.)

“Well, Senator, I’m going back to lobby for your timber bailout bill,” I said. Northwest Big Timber had way overbid on many old-growth timber sales and needed congressional relief to avoid massive contract defaults. Enviros favored the legislation because it would cancel many damaging sales and we would have another chance to thwart them as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management tried to resell them.

“You mean my Federal Timber Purchaser Contract Payment Modification Act?” said Hatfield, rather icily I thought.

“Sure. A lot of those sales are old growth and in roadless areas, so we’d like another shot at saving them in the next wilderness bill,” says I.

After less than the customary few milliseconds of pause, Hatfield, with chilling deliberateness, says, “Andy. I will never ever do another wilderness bill.”

The conversation ended not because the plane was boarding but because there was nothing else to say.

As I pondered the exchange at 33,000 feet over Ohio, I realized that the godfather of Oregon politics had destroyed our hope of ever saving any more wilderness as Wilderness. Hatfield had enacted wilderness bills into law in 1968, 1972, 1978, and 1984. The first of them had carved the Mount Jefferson Wilderness out of a Forest Service Primitive Area pursuant to the Wilderness Act of 1964. The matter had been thrust upon Hatfield early in his first term. The latter three had been passed during—not uncoincidentally—years in which Hatfield stood for re-election. All are wilderness areas today, but it was enough for the senator to declare “never again.”

·      His 1972 legislation added the lower Minam River Canyon to the Eagle Cap Wilderness (~72,000 acres).

·      The 1978 Endangered American Wilderness Act designated or expanded four Oregon wilderness areas (~275,000 acres). All somewhat had timber as an issue, but especially returning French Pete to the Three Sisters Wilderness. Finally, Hatfield had come around. (It was, after all, an election year.)

·      The 1984 Oregon Wilderness Act (~851,000 acres) was primarily about saving as wilderness roadless areas that included large amounts of virgin older forest: Boulder Creek, Cummins Creek, Rock Creek, Drift Creek, Middle Santiam, North Fork John Day, Eagle Cap Additions, Bull-of-the-Woods, Salmon-Huckleberry, Badger Creek, Grassy Knob, Rogue-Umpqua Divide, Table Rock, Mill Creek, North Fork Umatilla, Monument Rock, Strawberry Mountain Additions.

It was logical that we could expect another wilderness bill in 1990. Plotting the acreage of those previously every-six-years Oregon wilderness bills suggested an exponential curve on which we could expect the next wilderness bill to protect ~2 million acres. But alas, there was no Oregon wilderness bill in 1990, as the year before the northern spotted owl had hit the fan.

I consulted with fellow wilderness warrior James Monteith, and we decided to pivot from occasionally saving old growth via wilderness designations brokered at the state delegation level to saving all old growth any which way we could. We would go around Oregon’s political godfather. We had no other choice. The Pacific Northwest forest wars ensued.

(continued next week)

30x30, Part 3: Forty-Four Tasty Conservation Recipes One Can Make at Home—If One Lives in the White House

This is the third of three Public Lands Blog posts on 30x30, President Biden’s commitment to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. In Part 1, we examined the pace and scale necessary to attain 30x30. In Part 2, we considered what constitutes protected areas actually being “conserved.” In this Part 3, we offer up specific conservation recommendations that, if implemented, will result in the United States achieving 30 percent by 2030.

Top Line: Enough conservation recipes are offered here to achieve 50x50 (the ultimate necessity) if all are executed, which is what the science says is necessary to conserve our natural security—a vital part of our national security.

Figure 1. The Coglan Buttes lie west of Lake Abert in Lake County, Oregon. According to the Bureau of Land Management, it “is a dream area for lovers of the remote outdoors, offering over 60,000 acres of isolation,” and the land is “easy to access but difficult to traverse.” The agency has acknowledged that the area is special in that it is a “land with wilderness characteristics” (LWCs), but affords the area no special protection. Congress could designate the area as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System (Recipe #24), or the Biden administration could classify it as a wilderness study area and also withdraw it from the threat of mining (Recipe #1). Source: Lisa McNee, Bureau of Land Management (Flickr).

Ecological realities are immutable. While political realities are mutable, the latter don’t change on their own. Fortunately, there are two major paths to change the conservation status of federal public lands: through administrative action and through congressional action. 

Ideally, Congress will enact enough legislation during the remainder of the decade to attain 30x30. An Act of Congress that protects federal public land is as permanent as conservation of land in the United States can get. If properly drafted, an Act of Congress can provide federal land management agencies with a mandate for strong and enduring preservation of biological diversity.

If Congress does not choose to act in this manner, the administration can protect federal public land everywhere but in Alaska. Fortunately, Congress has delegated many powers over the nation’s public lands to either the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture (for the National Forest System), and—in the sole case of proclaiming national monuments—the President.

Potential Administrative Action

Twenty-two recipes are offered in Table 1 for administrative action by the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, or the President. The recipes are not mutually exclusive, especially within an administering agency, but can be overlapping or alternative conservation actions on the same lands. While overlapping conservation designations can be desirable, no double counting should be allowed in determining 30x30. A common ingredient in all is that such areas must be administratively withdrawn from all forms of mineral exploitation for the maximum twenty years allowed by law.

Mining on Federal Public Lands

An important distinction between federal public lands with GAP 1 or GAP 2 status and those with lesser GAP status is based on whether mining is allowed. Federal law on mineral exploitation or protection from mining on federal public lands dates back to the latter part of the nineteenth century with the enactment of the general mining law. Today, the exploitation of federal minerals is either by location, leasing, or sale. The administering agency has the ability to say no to leasing and sale, but not to filing of mining claims by anyone in all locations open to such claiming.

When establishing a conservation area on federal lands, Congress routinely withdraws the lands from location, leasing, or sale. Unfortunately, when administrative action elevates the conservation status of federal public lands (such as Forest Service inventoried roadless areas or IRAs, Bureau of Land Management areas of critical environmental concern or ACECs, and Fish and Wildlife Service national wildlife refuges carved out of other federal land), it doesn’t automatically protect the special area from mining.

Congress has provided that the only way an area can be withdrawn from the application of the federal mining laws is for the Secretary of the Interior (or subcabinet officials also confirmed by Congress for their posts) to withdraw the lands from mining—and then only for a maximum of twenty years (though the withdrawal can be renewed). A major reason that particular USFS IRAs and BLM ACECs do not qualify for GAP 1 or GAP 2 status is that they are open to mining.

More Conservation in Alaska by Administrative Action: Fuggedaboutit!

The Alaska National Interest Lands Act of 1980 contains a provision prohibiting any “future executive branch action” withdrawing more than 5,000 acres “in the aggregate” unless Congress passes a “joint resolution of approval within one year” (16 USC 3213). Note that 5,000 acres is 0.0012 percent of the total area of Alaska. Congress should repeal this prohibition of new national monuments, new national wildlife refuges, or other effective administrative conservation in the nation’s largest state. Until Congress so acts, no administrative action in Alaska can make any material contribution to 30x30.

Potential Congressional Action

Twenty-two recipes are offered in Table 2 for congressional action. The recipes are not mutually exclusive, especially within an administering agency, but can be overlapping or alternative conservation actions on the same lands. However, they should not be double-counted for the purpose of attaining 30x30. A commonality among these congressional actions is that each explicitly or implicitly calls for the preservation of biological diversity and also promulgates a comprehensive mineral withdrawal.

Bottom Line: To increase the pace to achieve the goal, the federal government must add at least three zeros to the size of traditional conservation actions. Rather than individual new wilderness bills averaging 100,000 acres, new wilderness bills should sum hundreds of millions of acres—and promptly be enacted into law. Rather than a relatively few new national monuments mostly proclaimed in election years, many new national monuments must be proclaimed every year. 

For More Information

Kerr, Andy. 2022. Forty-Four Conservation Recipes for 30x30: A Cookbook of 22 Administrative and 22 Legislative Opportunities for Government Action to Protect 30 Percent of US Lands by 2030. The Larch Company, Ashland, OR, and Washington, DC.