Congress
Oregon conservationists need to let the Oregon congressional delegation know that while we very much want them to make their positive mark on Oregon’s public lands, it must not come at the expense of other public lands.
Read MoreIf the soundtrack of Schoolhouse Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes Law” is an earworm in your head, it’s time to exorcise the demon. It no longer works that way.
Read MoreFigure 1. One of four Army Corps of Engineers salmon killers on the lower Snake River. Source: Save Our Wild Salmon.
A political opportunity may now be arising for a grand bargain that restores the salmon runs and at the same time makes existing economic interests whole or better and helps out federal taxpayers and regional electric ratepayers.
Read MoreCompared to its political equal Washington, arch-liberal California, arch-conservative Idaho, and politically purple Nevada, Oregon has the least designated wilderness acreage and the smallest percentage of the state’s lands protected as wilderness.
Read MoreThe conservation community must now also contend with an emerging existential threat to the nation’s public lands posed by fringe groups of left-wing crazies who seek to tribalize public lands.
Read MoreFig. 1. Crabtree Lake in Crabtree Valley, which contains some of the oldest trees in Oregon, is in the proposed Douglas Fir National Monument, located in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Source: David Stone, Wildlands Photography. Previously appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004), by the author.
Less than a week after President Trump signed the Oregon Wildlands Act into law (as one of many bills in the John D. Dingell, Jr., Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act), Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-3rd-OR) convened an Oregon Public Lands Forum on Monday, March 18, 2019.
Read MoreWhile the how, when, where, and why of mining on federal public lands is important (see Part 1), at least as important is where notto mine on federal public lands. These include places where the public’s interest in the conservation of natural, historical, and cultural values outweighs the value of any minerals that might be had, places that have been reserved for the benefit of this and future generations rather than for the benefit of today’s corporation.
Read MoreToday anybody, including foreign companies (as long as they own a domestic corporate shell), can enter most federal public lands and stake a claim, which the government treats as a right to mine. The government cannot say no to such hardrock mining, no matter how inappropriate.
Read MoreDebunking Creation Myths About America’s Public Lands. 2018. John D. Leshy. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. $7.95 (Amazon $7.15).
America’s public lands are often in need of a good lawyer, and they have one in John Leshy. He has served America’s public lands (and its owners) as an academic, author, and advocate. In his long career, he’s published legal textbooks, written briefs, argued cases, and taught law students, and he was the top lawyer in the U.S. Department of the Interior for almost as long as Bruce Babbitt was secretary of the interior.
Read MoreIn play right now in Congress are two bills that would elevate the conservation status of 442,620 acres of public land in Oregon.
Read MoreWhen Representative Greg Walden (R-2nd-OR) hears “the Rogue,” he happily dreams of the roar of chainsaws. But now Walden is down and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-4th-OR) is up, and the stars have aligned to save the Wild Rogue. You can help.
Read MoreA bill that gives away 32,261 acres of federal public land in Oregon has been signed into law by President Donald Trump. The new owners are expected to intensively log and road their new holdings.
Read MoreElections matter, and the 2018 midterm election mattered a lot.
Read MoreOnly the half of NEPA that is procedural is enforceable in court against federal agencies that violate it. And now that half is under attack from the president and from Congress.
Read MoreIf the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposes to pave over the Earth, NEPA, in and of itself, will not stop them. All the Army has to do is prepare an environmental impact statement that considers a reasonable range of alternatives, proposes reasonable and prudent mitigation measures and fully discloses to the public the impact.
Read MoreIn 1965, in a message to Congress, President Lyndon Johnson said, “We can and should have an abundance of trails for walking, cycling, and horseback riding, in and close to our cities. In the backcountry we need to copy the great Appalachian Trail in all parts of America.”
Read MoreRather than limiting ourselves to the micro and at the margin, the public lands conservation community must go for the macro and at the core.
Read MoreWhat is necessary is nothing less than a near-total reinvention of the environmental movement—not in what we stand for but in how we work.
Read MoreThe courts, they are a-changin’. The public lands conservation community should not expect judicial victories in the future comparable to those of times past.
Read MoreSeveral mostly good public lands conservation bills have been introduced in the 115th Congress (2017–18) but languish in committee, unable to get a vote on the floor of the House or the Senate.
Read More
