Wyden’s Unilateral Public Lands Livestock Grazing Giveaway

Top Line: Senator Wyden is cosponsoring legislation that would give blank checks and get-out-of-jail-free cards to all BLM grazing permittees and lessees.

Figure 1. A bovine on public lands crapping in the same stream from which it drinks. In the absence of domestic livestock, this stream would be colder and deeper, well shaded by willows if not also cottonwoods, and likely full of trout. Source: George Wuerthner.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is the sole cosponsor of a bill by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) that would give Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing permittees and lessees even more free rein than they have now to (ab)use the public lands. The Barrasso-Wyden bill, the Operational Flexibility Grazing Management Program Act (S.4454, 118th Congress), would effectively remove any administrative control the BLM has over the grazing of livestock on 155 million acres of federal public lands.

As a senator from Wyoming, Barrasso has long carried any and all water requested of him by public lands grazing permittees and lessees. The Barrasso-Wyden bill is the latest in a long line.

Wyden’s Proposed Owyhee Canyonlands Bill: Quid Pro Quo

This is not Wyden’s first legislative attempt on behalf of grazing “flexibility.”

For the past several years, Senator Wyden and his staff have labored long and hard to bring forth legislation to address public land management issues in Malheur County, Oregon. The latest incarnation of his Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act, would primarily do two things on BLM holdings in Malheur County:

• Establish ~1.1 million acres of new wilderness areas.

• Authorize “flexible” livestock grazing on BLM lands in Malheur County.

The bill would do other things, but most of the verbiage pertains to wilderness and livestock grazing.

Wyden’s bill proposing a wilderness–livestock grazing grand bargain in the Owyhee Canyonlands (S.1890; 118th Congress), was introduced in the Senate in June 2023, reported out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in December 2023. A vote of the full Senate has not been scheduled. Most, but not all, of the conservation community supports S.1890 and they feel it is—despite a grazing “flexibility” provision—a significant net gain for public lands conservation.

Figure 2. Land near Kemmerer, Wyoming. On one side of the fence, the land is ungrazed. Guess which side. Source: George Wuerthner.

Here are two political givens:

• Conservationists love wilderness and hate livestock grazing.

• Public lands ranchers love livestock grazing and hate wilderness.

However, there is a place where these two sets overlap (picture a Venn diagram), and Wyden has found it in his Owyhee bill. Public lands ranchers really want “flexibility” language and are willing to give 1.1 million acres of wilderness to get it. Conservationists really want 1.1 million acres of wilderness and are willing to give a carefully worded and constrained version of grazing “flexibility.”

In the crafting and politics of legislation, such is known as a quid pro quo. One faction gets something they want more by accepting something they want less. Happens all the time. 

The proposed wilderness boundaries and grazing language were long debated and fought over, but Wyden’s latest bill seems to thread a political needle.

In cosponsoring S.4454, Wyden has tossed aside the delicate compromise offered in his Owyhee legislation and embraced a unilateral and far more damaging giveaway to the public lands livestock industry.

Figure 3. Livestock in the Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona. Source: George Wuerthner.

The Entrails of the Barrasso-Wyden Bill: Quid Pro Nihilo

“Flexible” grazing is not bovines practicing their yoga cow pose.

It would be bad enough if Wyden had taken his Owyhee “flexibility” language national and offered it without any corresponding conservation (a.k.a. “wilderness”) offset. However, the Barrasso-Wyden (national) “flexibility” language is arguably ten times worse in effect than the Wyden (Owyhee) “flexibility” language.

The Wyden (Owyhee) version of “flexible” grazing contains sideboards and leaves public lands managers with their ability to manage grazing on public lands. The Barrasso-Wyden (national) version of “flexible” grazing means that public lands ranchers get to do even more of what they want on public lands, with the public lands managers no longer having a say, with no analysis and stewardship requirements.

The Barrasso-Wyden (national) “flexibility” language is a total giveaway of blank checks and get-out-of-jail-free cards to grazing permittees and lessees on public lands administered by the BLM.

Figure 4. Livestock near the Paria River in the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in Utah. I honestly don’t know what they are eating. Source: George Wuerthner.

The public policy director for the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), Josh Osher (my go-to guy for all matters of public lands grazing policy), submitted testimony (on behalf also of Kettle Range Conservation, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and Wilderness Watch) in opposition to the Barrasso-Wyden bill (WWP et al.). The bottom line:

S. 4454 is an attempted end around to virtually eliminate NEPA requirements and public involvement in grazing management on public lands. This bill puts all of the power in the permittee’s hands and removes nearly all discretion from the Secretary to manage grazed lands for multiple use. Passage of S. 4454 would lead to continued failure of BLM managed lands to meet even the most basic standards for land health and eliminate the few remaining tools at the BLM’s discretion to address problematic livestock grazing. [emphasis added]

How does the Barrasso-Wyden (national) “flexibility” language compare to the Wyden (Owyhee) “flexibility” language? The WWP letter notes:

Furthermore, this legislation is a significant departure from the current pilot program initiated by the BLM and the operational flexibility language in S. 1890, the Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act. S. 4454 dramatically expands the purposes for modifying the terms and conditions of grazing permit from responses to environmental factors and ecological conditions to now include producer preferences and responsiveness to market conditions. [emphasis added]

The Barrasso-Wyden “flexibility” language would make a complete sham of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by requiring the BLM to always choose the “flexible” grazing alternative. The WWP letter notes:

The bill language states that the “Secretary shall develop and authorize at least 1 alternative” for operational flexibility. It is unclear if “authorize” means that alternative must be chosen or simply analyzed with the discretion remaining with the Secretary to determine which alternative to implement. If the former, this a complete usurpation of the Secretary’s authority to manage public lands according to multiple use principles. [emphasis in original]

The WWP letter further notes:

The final section that prohibits termination of a grazing permit due to the use of operational flexibility functions to fully insulate the permittee from any consequences of bad management choices for which the Secretary had no discretion to modify or deny. [emphasis added]

In reading legislation, I always try to follow two principles:

• Read the language as if you are paranoid. Read the language in a way that the forces of darkness could/would interpret it if they were in charge. Just because one is paranoid, it doesn’t mean that one is not being followed.

• Clearly discern what is being done for you and what is being done to you in the legislative language. The Barrasso-Wyden bill is all the latter and none of the former.

Rather than an acceptable quid pro quo, the Barrasso-Wyden “flexibility” language is a quid pro nihilo (something for nothing). Something for public lands ranchers, nothing for conservationists.

Figure 5. Livestock in the Eagletail Mountains in Arizona. Source: George Wuerthner.

A Benign Bovine: No Such Animal

Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves why livestock production—especially on public lands—is problematic.

Domestic livestock have done, and are doing, more damage to Earth than the chainsaw and bulldozer combined.

Livestock production—primarily cows—accounts for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (a few sources say less, most sources say more), most in the form of methane emitted by belching bovines. A molecule of methane has a global warming potential at least 28 times greater than that of a molecule of carbon dioxide. Animal agriculture also produces 65 percent of the world’s emissions of nitrous oxide (yes, laughing gas, but no laughing matter here), which has a global warming potential 296 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. In addition, 70 percent of the world’s agricultural lands are dedicated to livestock—lands that were formerly forests, grasslands, and/or wetlands.

Locally—and most especially on public lands—livestock cause chronic and grievous environmental harm. Most streams flowing through public lands have been cow-bombed to such an extent that water quality is horrendous and water quantity is diminished.

Figure 6. Fresh cow shit on rocks in a stream on public lands. If it were deposited on land, many would call it a cow pie. I do not. Unlike pie, cow shit is neither sweet nor savory. Source: George Wuerthner.

The public land forage now consumed by one cow and one calf could be allocated instead to sustain either one bison, seven to eight deer, more than two elk, nearly eleven pronghorn, nearly seven bighorn sheep, or more than one moose—not to mention that it could serve as hiding cover for sage-grouse and a buffet for butterflies and other pollinators.

Fewer domestic livestock on public lands would mean fewer wolves killed to protect livestock.

As a fraction of the nation’s beef supply, the contribution of public lands is very minor, and the market wouldn’t miss anything if livestock grazing ended on public lands.

Figure 7. Livestock near Beatty Butte in Oregon. The average full-grown cow (left) weighs ~1,400 pounds. On BLM land, the calves dine for free. Source: George Wuerthner.

A Fair Quid for the Quo

In Wyden’s Owyhee bill, the price local public lands ranchers would to pay for their “flexible” grazing language is 1.1 million acres of wilderness. In the Barrasso-Wyden flexible grazing bill, the price public lands ranchers have to pay is nada, zero, zip, zilch.

Were the Wyden site-specific (Owyhee) quid pro quo expanded nationally in the same proportion, public lands ranchers would have to accept 34,937,664 acres (but who’s counting?) of new wilderness areas. However, the Barrasso-Wyden (national) “flexibility” language is at least ten times worse than the Wyden (Owyhee) “flexibility” language, so make that 349,376,649 acres of new congressional conservation designations.

Alternatively, the quid for the quo (or the quo for the quid, depending upon your point of view) could be a new title for S.4454 that provides for a nationwide voluntary grazing permit relinquishment program. (See my three Public Lands Blog posts on the subject under “For More Information” below.) There is such legislation pending in the House of Representatives, the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act (H.R.6314, 118th Congress). Wyden has successfully legislated voluntary grazing permit retirement language in legislation establishing the Soda Mountain Wilderness and expanding the Oregon Caves National Monument.

If I were one of those twenty-two elite federal grazing permittees in Malheur County, I’d be urging my buds to walk away from Wyden’s wilderness–flexible grazing bill and run toward his national flexible grazing bill. Why pay when one doesn’t have to? Especially since it would be ten times better at zero cost.

The Wyden (Owyhee) “flexible” grazing language is acceptable to much of the conservation community in the context of a quid pro quo for wilderness designation. The Barrasso-Wyden “flexible” grazing language is not accompanied by even 1 acre of congressional conservation designations such as wilderness, national monuments, national parks, national wildlife refuges, or national conservation areas. Wyden should walk away from this quid pro nihilo.

Figure 8. Livestock in the Agua Fria (“Cold Water”) National Monument in Arizona. To an untrained eye, the foreground might look “natural.” Actually, it is quite cow-bombed. Source: George Wuerthner.

For More Information

Kerr, Andy. December 2, 2016. A Federal Public Lands Grazing “Right”: No Such Animal. Public Lands Blog.

———. May 26, 2017. The High Cost of Cheap Grazing. Public Lands Blog.

———. August 13, 2021. Where’s the Beef? Public Lands Blog.

———. October 3, 2022. Senator Wyden’s Owyhee Wilderness, and More, Legislation. Public Lands Blog.

———. September 4, 2023. Retiring Grazing Permits, Part 1: Context and Case for the Voluntary Retirement Option. Public Lands Blog.

———. September 12, 2023. Retiring Grazing Permits, Part 2: History of the Voluntary Retirement Option. Public Lands Blog.

———. September 12, 2023. Retiring Grazing Permits, Part 3: Future of the Voluntary Retirement Option. Public Lands Blog.

Western Watersheds Project et al. June 26, 2024. Letter to Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining in re S.3322 and S.4454 (118th Congress).

Bottom Line: Senator Wyden should remove his name as a cosponsor of S.4454.

Figure 9. Dead livestock in the Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona. Source: George Wuerthner.

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 Soda Mountain Wilderness Council and other intervenors. 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.