The Futility of “Fighting” Wildfire: Elemental—A Film Review

Top Line: “It’s a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.” —Jack Cohen, USDA Forest Service fire scientist

 Figure 1. If you care about forests and/or people, you must see the new documentary Elemental. Source: elementalfilm.org.

 We may generally know these things:

•       Humans and their infrastructure are the cause of the vast majority of wildfire ignitions.

•       Logging forests to reduce wildfire severity doesn’t work.

•       Logging forests to prevent structure fires doesn’t work.

•       Embers—not flame fronts—ignite most houses.

•       With proper vegetation management within 100 feet of a building and attention to making that building fire resistant, said building will not burn.

•       The only way to prevent forest fires is to prevent forests.

•       Old natural forests burn less intensely than young unnatural plantations.

•       Carbon emitted to the atmosphere from burning a forest is a tiny fraction of that emitted by logging a forest.

•       Fires in the backcountry are generally good, while fires in the frontcountry are bad.

•       Fire is either the rebirth or continuation of a forest, while salvage logging is the end of a forest.

•       Taxpayers spend ungodly amounts of money “fighting” fires, doing no good and causing much harm.

•       Doing the same stupid things over and over is stupid.

 Still, most of the public believes a set of myths about wildfires that are contrary to the facts.

Figure 2. Part of the solution to the fire problem: less fire in the wrong places. The unhardened house (with wood siding, open soffits, and vegetation adjacent) on the left will soon ignite, while the hardened house (with nonwood siding, double-pane windows, a vegetation-free buffer, and closed soffits) survived this scientific onslaught by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. It’s just physics. Source: @TripJenningsVideo.

 Comes now a documentary film from Balance Media that seeks to rebalance our narratives about wildfires. The film deconstructs several common myths about wildfires, building fires, forest ecology, forests and carbon, and many more topics. Then Elemental offers actual solutions that would require society in the American West to co-exist with fire rather than continue futilely fighting it.

Elemental’s executive producer, Ralph Bloemers (perhaps best known as a co-founder of Crag Law Center, whose mission is “legal aid for the environment”; now with Green Oregon), told me years ago he was going to make a film about forests and fires. My thoughts turned to several heartfelt but low-production-values environmental documentaries I’d seen in the past. I am pleased to report that Elemental is not in that class. Ralph put together a tremendous team that put together a tremendous film.

Stars of the film include, but are not limited to:

•       Jack Cohen, a Forest Service researcher who long ago determined that the reason buildings burn during wildfires is that they are not built and maintained to be resistant to radiant heat from the flame front and to resist the inevitable embers that fall far away from the burning forest.

•       Beverly Law, an Oregon State University researcher who tracks carbon as it fluxes between atmosphere and biosphere (forest) and counts up the atmospheric carbon consequences of humans logging a forest versus nature burning a forest. (Spoiler: the former dwarfs the latter.)

•       Tim Ingalsbee, wildland firefighter turned astute critic of the fire-industrial complex that drives forest management where the only management is logging.

•       Chris Dunn, an Oregon State University researcher who studies the underlying conditions of fire as it relates to forests and biodiversity.

•       Tania Schoennagel, a University of Colorado researcher who studies the causes and consequences of fires and insects in western forests.

Figure 3. After a natural stand-replacing forest fire, if there is no salvage logging, there is a level of biological diversity comparable in importance to—but different in expression from—that of an old-growth forest. Source: Ralph Bloemers.

Director Trip Jennings says he is “deeply committed to changing the national conversation around wildfire” and believes that “we can have healthy forests and safe communities, and that we can prepare for and adapt to fire.” He’s correct on the latter and will have succeeded on the former if enough people watch Elemental.

If you are a person susceptible to evidence, Elemental will open and change your mind.

How to Enjoy Elemental

Elemental will be at several upcoming film festivals, and showings are scheduled now in Mill City, Salem, Ashland, and Sonoma, and soon to be in Bend, Corvallis, Lincoln City, Eugene, John Day, Baker City, La Grande, Enterprise, and other Oregon locales. Like any good wildfire, showings of Elemental will soon spread to other states in the American West. A streaming deal is in the works to allow people to enjoy the documentary without leaving their fire-hardened abode.

Figure 4. Area burned by the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Several already-in-place fire lines (two paved two-lane roads, Interstate 84 with median strip, two railroad lines, and a damned river) failed to stop embers from the Oregon side from igniting fires miles away on the Washington side (just out of the frame on the left). Source: elementalfilm.com.

Figure 5. Part of the solution to the fire problem: more fire in the right places. Source: elementalfilm.com.

Bottom Line: “What this all means is that we . . . don’t have to control the extreme wildfire in order to keep the house from igniting and burning. And we don’t have to live in a concrete ammo bunker.” —Jack Cohen, USDA Forest Service fire scientist

Oregon’s Glaciers: Going but Not Forgotten

Top Line: Glaciers are history, in Oregon and everywhere.

Figure 1. The late Lathrop Glacier on the north side of Mount Thielsen. Source: W. E. Scott (Wikipedia).

In 1850, in what is now Glacier National Park in Montana (est. 1910) there were ~150 glaciers. In 2019, there were 25. Scientists project in 2030 there will be zero. Congressional legislation is in order to rename the protected area Glacierless National Park. The same goes for Glacierless Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska, not to mention the 1,220 geographic features in the United States that include “glacier” in their names.

Due to climate change, the American West is dramatically warming. Glaciers are dying and snowpacks are declining as well. Ironically, this rapid melting is artificially keeping stream flows up in basins served by glaciers. When the glaciers no long melt because there is nothing else to melt, stream flows will precipitously decline.

Researching this Public Lands Blog post was akin to mourning the death of loved ones now gone and fearing the death of loved ones now here. Oregon’s glaciers, like the rest of the glaciers in the American West, and indeed the world, are doomed. At current rates of global warming, it is not a matter of whether but rather of when all the glaciers will be gone.

Fair Warning: The Oregon Glaciers Institute

We need more Oregonians like Anders Eskil Carlson. Carlson is a glacier evangelist warning us of what we have lost, are losing, and will lose. He is the president and founder of the Oregon Glaciers Institute (OGI) as well as an accomplished academic with masters and doctorate degrees in glacial geology. He has authored or coauthored (so far) seventy-seven scientific papers and recently formed Carlson Climate Consulting to advise industry (including insurance companies, enterprises based on summer and/or winter recreation, and those concerned with agriculture, fisheries, and forestry) and government on what climate disruption is and what it will do to them.

Carlson founded OGI in 2020 to “document and study the causes of glacier change in Oregon” and “produce projections of each glacier’s future to aid in environmental and economic planning for the citizens of Oregon.” Among other things, OGI is keeping a systematic deathwatch over Oregon’s glaciers.

According to OGI, “Depending on the model used, Western North America could lose 60 to 90% of its glaciers by 2100” (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2. The end of glaciers in western North America: not whether but when. All scientific models project their demise but differ as to the date of extinction. Source: Oregon Glaciers Institute.

Figure 3. Glacier country in the American West. Source: Glaciers of the American West.

Just What Is (or Was) a Glacier?

Rather than attempt to explain the basic physics and hydrology of a glacier, I shamelessly quote verbatim from a very informative page on the Oregon Glaciers Institute website.

A glacier is an ice body that deforms under its own weight. To do this, the ice must be at least 30 m (100 feet) thick so that its weight causes the bottom ice to deform like toothpaste.

A glacier forms when snow lasts through the summer for many summers. Over time, that snow compacts into ice and the ice turns into a glacier once it is over 30 m thick. At that point, the ice then flows downslope to a lower and warmer elevation where it melts.

A glacier is divided into two zones: the accumulation and ablation zones. The accumulation zone is where snow survives through the summer, which will eventually turn into ice and feed the glacier. The accumulation zone is where the glacier gains mass. 

The ablation zone is the region where all prior winter snow is melted and the underlying glacial ice is also melted (and sublimated directly into the atmosphere). If there is a lake in front of the glacier, then it can calve off icebergs as well. The ablation zone is where the glacier loses mass.

The dividing line between the accumulation and ablation zones is called the equilibrium line. The equilibrium line altitude (ELA) roughly corresponds with the summer snow line as well as the elevation where the mean annual temperature is 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

When a glacier gains more mass in its accumulation zone than loses in its ablation zone, its mass balance is positive. After several years of positive mass balance, the glacier will grow and advance downslope, increasing in size and length. If a glacier loses more mass than it accumulates, then it will retreat.

Figure 4. The accumulation and ablation zones on a glacier, separated by the equilibrium line (shown here as a dashed line). Source: Oregon Glaciers Institute.

Table 1 is my grossly simple attempt to explain what distinguishes a glacier from a mere stagnant ice body or snowfield. A glacier is a living body, while a stagnant ice body is but a corpse that will soon be consumed by elements.

The Decline of Glaciers in Oregon

Forty-three Oregon place-names include “glacier.” Most are named glaciers, but “glacier” is included in the name of a lake (in Union County), a pass (Wallowa County), a ditch (Hood River County), two mountains (Baker and Wallowa Counties), a creek (Lane County), and a headwall (Clackamas County).

If we go back 20,000 years to the last serious ice age, in addition to the Cascade Range and the Wallowa Mountains, glaciers also grew in what we now call the Strawberry Mountains, the Blue Mountains, and Steens Mountain in what we now call Oregon. But for about as long as there has been a State of Oregon (since 1859), Oregon glaciers have been in retreat. Many Oregon glaciers are already extinct.

OGI has determined that at the end of the Little Ice Age (~1300 to ~1850), Oregon had fifty-one glaciers. (What helped end the Little Ice Age was a massive increase in fossil fuel consumption, which contributes atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide.) Today, twenty-seven glaciers remain on eleven mountains (actually, it recently went down to ten).

Can you name the Oregon mountains with still extant glaciers? (See Figure 5 for clues.)

Figure 5. Mountains in Oregon that still have glaciers. Source: Oregon Glaciers Institute.

In 1993, I spent six weeks hiking the Oregon section of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail and took note of many glaciers along the way. One was Lathrop Glacier (Figure 1) on the north side of Mount Thielsen. It was small even then, consisting of two bodies of ice at 8,500 feet elevation that were “discovered” in 1966 as the then southernmost glacier in Oregon.

I was vaguely aware that glaciers were generally in decline, but I didn’t know why. I did know that Lathrop Glacier was a small glacier. Thanks to OGI, I now know that Lathrop still had crevasses in 2013, which are indicative of glaciers, but as of 2020 Lathrop Glacier was no more.

In the late 1890s, Sholes Glacier on Mount McLoughlin held the title of Oregon’s southernmost glacier. With the demise of Lathrop Glacier on Mount Thielsen, the southernmost glacier in Oregon is now Crook Glacier on the south side of Broken Top, 66 miles north of Mount Thielsen. Alas, as OGI notes:

Crook Glacier is a very small glacier on the south side of Broken Top. It resides in a very deep cirque and receives large amounts of accumulation from avalanches. It is this shaded setting with additional avalanched snow that allows the glacier to persist as the southernmost glacier in Oregon. That said, it lacked an accumulation zone in 2021. If such phenomena persist into the future, then Crook Glacier will thin and stagnate.

It likely won’t be long before the southernmost glacier in Oregon is on the north side of Mount Hood (Figure 6).

Another Hydrological Havoc

Coincidental with the loss of glaciers is another hydrological havoc: the loss of beavers. Beavers used to inhabit almost every water body in North America, but between trapping and watershed destruction by activities such urbanization, agriculture, logging and grazing, the great riparian sponge offered by streams and lakes has been greatly diminished.

Anders Carlson writes:

Nowadays, with low snowfall winters and summer heatwaves, the snowpack either begins the summer already depleted, rapidly vanishes during the summer, or both, as was the case in the summer of 2021. Glaciers therefore play an outsized role in keeping streams flowing that would otherwise run dry. And those streams that had only snowfields in their catchment? They cease to flow.

The return of beavers at scale to watersheds can somewhat mitigate the loss of stream flow from the loss of glaciers and snowpacks (see the Public Lands Blog posts “Leave It to Beavers: Good for the Climate, Ecosystems, Watersheds, Ratepayers, and Taxpayers (Part 1)” and “Leave It to Beavers: Good for the Climate, Ecosystems, Watersheds, Ratepayers, and Taxpayers (Part 2)”).

Giving Glaciers a Chance

Only if we rapidly decarbonize our economy—in most particular, by first ending fossil fuel leasing and production on federal public lands (see the Public Lands Blog post “Keep It in the Ground”)—do any glaciers have a chance. We also need to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A great start would be to allow mature and old-growth forests and trees to grow even older and store even more carbon (see the Public Lands Blog posts “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 1: A Great Opportunity” and “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 2: Seize the Day!).

OGI should annually publish a list of current formally and informally named glaciers with a projected date of glacial death (conversion to a stagnant ice body on its way to a no-ice body), not unlike the Doomsday Clock published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Knowing the projected extinction date of Oregon glaciers can help society adapt to their loss.

One must never forget to never forget. I recommend you make a donation to OGI (I am). Besides money, OGI is interested in receiving photographs of Oregon glaciers pre-2010 to aid in documenting glacier loss. If you have any, please send them along.

For More Information

• Carlson, Anders E. 2021. “What Is a Glacier?” Mazama Bulletin 103:6.

• Glaciers of the American West (website) and Glaciers of Oregon (web page)

• O’Connor, Jim E. 2013. “Our Vanishing Glaciers: One Hundred Years of Glacier Retreat in Three Sisters Area, Oregon Cascade Range.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 114:4.

• Oregon Glaciers Institute (website)

Figure 6. Mirror Lake and Mount Hood. In a few decades Mount Hood will no longer be snow-capped in summer. Source: Wikipedia.

Bottom Line: Glacial extinction can be somewhat mitigated by addressing global warming, and the loss of stream flow from the loss of glaciers can be somewhat mitigated by introducing beavers at scale.

Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 2: Seize the Day!

 This is the second of two Public Lands Blog posts on the president’s executive order (EO) on forests, which, among other things, unambiguously directs the federal forest agencies to conserve the remaining mature and old-growth forests. Part 1 dissected the order. Part 2 places it in the current political context and makes recommendations to various key interests on how best to ensure that the potential of the EO is fulfilled.

Figure 1. Old-growth Douglas-fir and young-growth human. Source: Gary Braasch. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

The Political Context for the Executive Order

Biden’s forest EO must be read and understood in the context of a few major political considerations. Following are some observations on this context.

The international context. Because the nations of the world didn’t make enough commitments to keep global warming to below 1.5°C during 26th Conference of the Parties in Glasgow last November, they will meet again in Cairo this November. The Biden administration needs and wants to go into COP27 with additional commitments. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it all the more difficult for the United States to pledge to dial back its fossil fuel emissions. However, the administration can easily pledge to protect our remaining mature and old-growth forests and trees, thereby significantly reducing the nation’s atmospheric carbon emissions due to logging. It is not only politically popular at home but also places the US in a better political position to pressure other nations (including, but not limited to, Brazil) to end deforestation and protect their forests.

Figure 2. A mature, going-on-old-growth forest on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Source: Kurt Jensen. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

Keep it in the forest. While campaigning, candidate Biden pledged to “keep it in the ground,” shorthand for ending the sale of fossil fuels from federal public lands. Between Ukraine, high (but not actually as high as they’ve ever been) gasoline prices, a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana blocking an administrative ban on new leasing, and the absolute spinelessness of staff, President Biden has—at least for now—effectively reneged on his “end new fossil fuel leasing” pledge. However, he can keep ecosystem-based carbon on federal public lands where it is now—safely locked up in vegetation. It is vital to keep more carbon out of the atmosphere by keeping it in the biosphere and lithosphere.

Mature and old-growth forest. Wisely, the president’s EO calls for the conservation of not only old-growth forest but also mature forest stands. We’re short on old growth now, and the quickest way to get more is to let the mature forest grow into old growth. As a forest reestablishes after a stand-replacing event, when the canopy closes it is a “young” forest. When the forest has reached its peak of annual growth of biomass, carbon, or wood, the forest begins its mature phase. Self-limbing due to canopy closure, individual tree deaths, and other factors cause the stand to mature. Eventually, a mature forest stand becomes an old-growth forest stand.

Pyrophobia. Lordy, are most Americans absolutely irrational about forest fires. Elected officials are more often reflectors than leaders, and this EO reflects Americans’ irrationality about fire. Fortunately, old-growth trees are the most resistant to fire.

Figure 3. Old-growth Douglas-fir in the North Fork Smith River watershed (Umpqua Basin), Oregon. Source: David Stone, Wildland Photography. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

Existential threat to Big Timber: only in my dreams. If all federal logging on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands were to come to an end, it wouldn’t significantly affect the nation’s wood consumption. The current total wood production from federal public lands is 646 million cubic feet, or just 4.4 percent of total US consumption. In 2017, 672 million cubic feet of unprocessed wood (logs and chips) was exported from the United States. Each year, 1,152 million cubic feet of wood from urban forests is now landfilled and not made into useful wood products. A regulation protecting mature and old-growth forests will still leave plenty of federal trees available for logging.

Figure 4. This Douglas-fir is perhaps a thousand years old. The only way to know for sure is to cut it down and count the rings. Counts on nearby stumps showed more than six hundred rings on trees that were 3 feet in diameter at their base. If the human is ~5.5 feet high, then the tree is ~11 feet in diameter. In the name of forest “health,” the Forest Service is contemplating cutting down this tree to make more room for a younger (but still rather old for a) ponderosa pine nearby. Source: Umpqua Watersheds. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

Existential threat to the Forest Service and the BLM—as they have defined themselves. Ending the logging of mature and old-growth forests and trees would force the federal forest agencies to reinvent themselves and become relevant to the twenty-first century. (They seem stuck at the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth.)

Figure 5. Old-growth Douglas-fir and other species sequester (remove from the air) and store vast amounts of carbon. Source: Gary Braasch. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

Figure 6. A mature, not old-growth (trees not as large, bark not as furrowed) stand of Douglas-fir in southwest Oregon. Source: Ken Crocker. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

My Recommendations

Here are my major recommendations to the various players (including you) in this opportunity to conserve and restore mature and old-growth forest and trees.

Figure 7. An old-growth ponderosa pine in a stand of ponderosa pine that the BLM won’t likely consider a stand that the Biden executive order directs it to protect. The big yellowbelly is within a few feet of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in Jackson County, Oregon, but national trail status is conferred only on the trail, not any of the trail’s habitat. Source: Elizabeth Feryl, Environmental Images. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

To the Federal Forest Agencies

1. Admit you are the problem. You also need to admit that the single greatest threat to mature and old-growth forests is the duo of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. For more than a century (and almost as long for the BLM), the Forest Service has offered up logging as the way to execute a federal forest policy, including addressing forest crises caused by earlier logging by the agency.

2. The only adequate course of protection is a permanent administrative rule codified in the Code of Federal Regulations.Merely revising land and/or resource management plans will not do. Issuing a slick PR document saying that the agencies are now protecting mature and old-growth forests while not changing any existing behaviors will not do. Renaming timber sales to pose as mature- and old-growth-forest restoration projects will not do.

Figure 8. Old-growth ponderosa pine in the Metolius watershed, Oregon. Source: Elizabeth Feryl, Environmental Images. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

3. While an inventory of mature and old-growth forests and trees is a good idea that is long overdue, you need not wait until you’ve done your inventory to start the protection effort. The final administrative rule must be in place before the 2024 election. The agencies don’t know exactly where the older forests and trees are. (Reports an article in the New York Times on January 9, 2001: “The exact extent of old-growth timber has never been mapped, despite directives to do so under the last Forest Service policy statement, issued in 1989.”) But they don’t need to know to do a rule. We already know what needs to be protected and how much mature and old-growth forest is left.

4. The rule should protect all mature and old-growth trees, be they living or dead, standing or fallen. There is more life in a dead tree than a live one. When a tree dies, whether by fire or wind or insect or volcano, most of the tree’s carbon remains on site and out of the atmosphere. When a tree is logged and sent to the mill, most of the carbon soon ends up in the atmosphere.

Figure 9. Whitebark pine on the Fremont National Forest, Oregon. The Biden executive order calls for the protection of all mature and old-growth stands. Will the Forest Service classify this congregation of whitebarks as a stand? Source: George Wuerthner. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

5. The rule should also protect relic mature and old-growth trees that are not within mature and old-growth stands. Leave no old tree behind.

6. The rule should result in there being much more mature and old-growth forest in the future than there is now. A large component of the excessive carbon in the atmosphere now is due to previous logging and forest conversion. The absolute best and cheapest carbon-capture-and-storage technology ever invented is a forest allowed to continue or allowed to be old.

7. The rule should respect the ticking clock. Joe Biden’s first, if not only, term ends at high noon on Monday, January 20, 2025. So as not to be vulnerable to a simple (pronounced “simplistic”) potential congressional override, this protective final rule must be published in the Code of Federal Regulations by no later than the end of March 2024.

Figure 10. Those old-growth ponderosas on the Fremont National Forest may not be protected under the Biden executive order, because they are not in a “stand” of trees. Source: Sandy Lonsdale. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

To the White House

1. You will have to force the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to do what is best for the climate, for nature, and for President Biden’s legacy. The agencies really don’t want to protect mature and old-growth forests. It goes against the very nature of bureaucrats, who loathe to have their discretion limited. The agencies will continue to lie, spin, and prevaricate in hopes that your administration will fail to conserve and restore America’s mature and old-growth forests for the benefit of this and future generations.

2. 30x30. Only if the final protections are strong and enduring enough—and the protected forestlands are also withdrawn from the application of the mining laws—will the new protections qualify as conserving 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030.

Figure 11. Old-growth incense cedar on the Umpqua National Forest, Oregon. Source: Sandy Lonsdale. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

To the Conservation Community

1. Recognize that amidst a huge amount of hedging, pandering, misdirecting, and/or ass covering in the executive order lies an opportunity to fundamentally change the course of federal forest management in the United States by permanently conserving the last of the nation’s mature and old-growth forests and trees, and to restore much that has been lost. Don’t be paralyzed by what in your mind is a less-than-perfect executive order. Don’t fall for the misdirection.

Figure 12. Young Sitka spruce growing out of a very old and long-dead Sitka spruce on the Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon. Source: Elizabeth Feryl, Environmental Images. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

2. Get involved by signing up for updates from the Climate Forests Campaign. At nearly a hundred organizations and growing, the campaign has most major national conservation organizations (aside from The Wilderness Society) on board, as well as an increasing number of regional and local organizations (which deserve your financial support—earmarked for mature and old-growth forest conservation).

Figure 13. Bald eagles enjoying a stand of mature lodgepole pine on the Deschutes National Forest, Oregon. Source: Sandy Lonsdale. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

Seize the Day!

We are about to embark on a great crusade, one we have striven toward for lo these many years. The eyes of the nation—nay the world—are upon us. The hopes and dreams of forest-loving people everywhere march with us. In company with our brave allies and siblings-in-arms on other political fronts, we will save the last of the nation’s mature and old-growth forests—and restore what has been lost. 

Our task will not be an easy one. The timber industry, along with the rest of the fire-industrial complex, is well trained, well equipped, and battle hardened. But so are we.

Figure 14. Western larch on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. As a deciduous conifer, the larch has a contrary nature. Each autumn, the needles fall off. Source: Sandy Lonsdale. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

This is the year 2022! Much has happened since Big Timber’s triumphs in the 1980s. We have inflicted great defeats on Big Timber. Federal logging levels are down from obscene historic highs but have been creeping up. We have overwhelming superiority in public support and scientific justification. It’s time to end the chronic continued logging of mature and old-growth forests. The tide has turned, not only in metropolitan areas but also in micropolitan and even rural areas.

Figure 15. Old-growth ponderosa pine forest in the Lookout Mountain area on the Ochoco National Forest. The long-dead and downed ponderosa pine tree still holds the vast majority of the carbon it stored while standing and alive. Source: Larry N. Olson. First appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness (Timber Press, 2004).

I have full confidence in the ability of the public land conservation and climate protection communities to convince the Biden administration. We need not accept less than full victory!

This is a great and noble undertaking.

Bottom Line: For President Biden to permanently conserve the nation’s remaining mature and old-growth forests, everyone who cares has to show up and not only pull their own weight but also do some heavy lifting.

Figure 16. I have no faith that Forest Service chief Randy Moore will do the right thing and actually conserve the remaining mature and old-growth forests in the National Forest System. His underwear has been Forest Service green for forty-four years and counting. He epitomizes all that is wrong conservationwise with the Forest Service. Source: USDA Forest Service.

Figure 17. I have some faith that Bureau of Land Management director Tracy Stone Manning will do the right thing and actually conserve the remaining mature and old-growth forests on public lands administered by the BLM. She is not a career BLMer, comes from a history of conservation activism, and has served in various conservation and environmental protection policy roles in state and federal government. She is astute enough to realize that this could be her great legacy. Source: USDI Bureau of Land Management.

My Vote in the 2022 Oregon Democratic Gubernatorial Primary

Sorry, but for those of you jonesing for Part 2 of my post on Mark Hatfield (and I’ve heard from quite a few of you who are), you’ll just have to wait until next week as ballots are in the mail this week for the Oregon primary election. (Return ballots must be postmarked by election day, May 17, or received by 8 p.m. that day at an official drop site or elections office.) I just could not resist giving Oregon Democrats the benefit of my counsel when they are deciding on who to vote for in the Democratic primary for governor.

In addition, at the very end I also make an endorsement in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s new 6th congressional district seat.

Top Line: Primaries matter. I hope you are registered.

Figure 1. My second all-time favorite Oregon governor, number 14, Oswald West (1911–1915). Source: Wikipedia.

I’m a reluctant Democrat, and Oregon has a closed primary. None of the nineteen Republican candidates would gain my vote. (See the article in the Oregon Capital Chronicle entitled “Republicans vow to restore timber industry, protect ag if they win Oregon governor’s race.”

Fifteen people are seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022. I discounted thirteen as nonviable candidates (not enough name recognition, campaign funds, and/or substance) upon whom I would not want to waste my vote. That leaves two:

• former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek

• Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read

While I am comfortable with either winning the Democratic nomination for the November 2022 general election, for the reasons stated in this post, I would be far more comfortable with one versus the other.

Both Candidates: Highly Qualified and Reliably Green

Both Read and Kotek are highly qualified to serve as governor.

Both are seasoned politicians, which is often a necessary—but not sufficient—requisite for the job. Both are generally progressives (Read somewhat to the right of Kotek).

While only Read has won office statewide (not to be discounted), Kotek has repeatedly won a very tough special election—that of maintaining the confidence of one’s fellow Democratic House members who have repeatedly chosen her as their speaker. Kotek can herd cats. Both Kotek and Read were elected to several terms in the Oregon House of Representatives and had terms that overlapped in service.

Both are generally reliable green votes on conservation issues, with identical Oregon League of Conservation Voterslifetime ratings of 87 percent.

When I first lobbied the Oregon legislature in the late 1970s, the majority of Democrats generally voted green, although the leadership always took steps to protect “downstate” (outside of greater Portland) Democrats on the Oregon Coast or elsewhere from having to take hard votes on conservation and environmental issues. Back in the day, we could also rely on several Republican votes, which is not generally the case today. Today, as back then, if push comes to shove between the environment and labor or justice or education or whatever, the environment will lose in the Democratic caucus.

As both Read and Kotek have comparable conservation voting records, I looked to other factors to break the tie. Two public lands conservation matters very close to my heart—the Elliott State Forest and the drawing of Oregon’s congressional districts—helped me choose which candidate to endorse. I’ve chosen these issues out of the many public lands conservation and environmental issues I care about not just because they are important, but also because the leadership shown by one candidate on one issue is in stark contrast to the “leadership” exhibited by the other candidate on the other issue.

Beyond public lands conservation matters and leadership, I considered matters of electability in a complicated three-way race in the general election.

Tobias Read and the Elliott State Forest

In 2017, the State Land Board was gearing up to sell more than 82,000 acres of the Elliott State Forest to a private timber syndicate because this land held in trust for the benefit of Oregon’s schoolchildren was no longer producing much timber due to multiple endangered species issues. Big Timber was chilling the champagne before the land board reversed course. Earlier this year, the Oregon Legislative Assembly established an Elliott State Research Forest, a generally excellent outcome. See my Public Lands Blog posts “The Elliott State Forest Will Not Be Privatized—But Will It Be Saved?” (2017) and “An Elliott State Research Forest” (2021).

While serving in the Oregon House of Representatives, Representative Tobias Read introduced a bill that would provide for a mechanism to convert state trust lands into state public lands. The problem—highlighted by the Elliott State Forest crisis—is that lands in the Common School Fund are to be managed for the benefit of Oregon schoolchildren (a responsibility commonly perceived at the time as entailing clear-cutting the forest and selling the logs to fund schools), not for the benefit of all Oregonians. While trust lands have public values and public access, they are not public lands.

In 2016, Read was elected Oregon state treasurer, one of three members of the State Land Board (SLB), which oversees the Common School Fund (and therefore the trust lands within it). The other two SLB members are the governor and the secretary of state. While enviros strongly backed Read for the statewide post, no sooner did he take office in 2017 than he voted to sell off the Elliott State Forest—about half of which is still virgin older forest—to a timber syndicate.

The environmental community went nuts on Read. The Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV) mounted an all-out effort to help Treasurer Read see the error of his ways. (There is no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons OLCV endorses Read’s opponent is the absolutely god-awful wrong vote land board member Read took.)

Not that there is any defense for that vote, but in Read’s defense, the previous SLB of three Democrats (Governor John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown, and State Treasurer Ted Wheeler) had voted to sell three “test” parcels of the Elliott as a prelude to selling off the entire state forest to that private timber syndicate. Because of the believed limitations of the trust responsibility, these Democrats protested they had no choice but to sell the land to the highest bidder and invest the proceeds in more lucrative assets in the Common School Fund. A later Oregon Supreme Court ruling found that the SLB could take a much more expansive view of what their trust obligation actually entails. (See my Public Lands Blog post “An Elliott State ‘Research’ Forest?” (2020).

It also could have been the case that there was something in the water supply of the capitol building to explain the mass madness of modern Oregon Democrats favoring the selling off and clear-cutting of older virgin forests. Thinking that Oregonians today would tolerate the privatizing of the Elliott can perhaps only be explained by the diagnosis of temporary insanity.

Read did see his error and then undertook a course that resulted in the decoupling of the Elliott State Forest from the Common School Fund in a way that converted the trust lands to public lands and imposed a very significant state mandate that elevated the conservation status of the imperiled forestlands. It was not easy—the course was not always clear and never straight—but Read conceived of making it the state research forest that it has come to be. Read and his staff never wavered as they navigated some very challenging political shoals.

(To be fair, Governor Brown is also a hero of the Elliott, and Senate Majority Leader Peter Courtney and House Speaker Kotek were also very helpful. But Read led on the issue.)

Tina Kotek and the Drawing of Oregon’s Congressional Districts

Every decade, after the federal census, the Oregon legislature has to redraw legislative districts, not only for the Oregon House of Representatives (always sixty seats) and the Oregon Senate (always thirty seats), but also for the seats assigned to Oregon in the US House of Representatives. This time the matter was extra complicated because Oregon gained another seat, for a new total of six. The support or opposition of the member of Congress in whose district public lands reside can make the difference as to whether those public lands are elevated in conservation status.

This time around, the Republicans in the Oregon House were seriously in the minority and felt that the only way they could exercise any influence was to threaten to leave the building so as to deny the Democrats the quorum necessary to allow them to vote to pass their legislative agenda. The Rs had walked before, and House Speaker Tina Kotek made a deal with House Minority Leader Christine Drazan that in exchange for the Republicans not walking out that session, they would have equal representation on the special redistricting committee charged with redrawing the Oregon House, Oregon Senate, and US House seats for Oregon.

Later, Kotek reneged on the deal, and the redistricting committee—stacked with Democrats—drew the new lines. Kotek was roundly criticized not only by Republicans but also by some (but not enough) Democrats for breaking the deal—but not for making the deal in the first place. The deal appealed to House Republicans because they figured they might fare better at protecting their own districts (dismissing the thought of getting more) than the alternative. The deal appealed to House Democrats because they figured they could pass more of their legislative agenda.

In regard to the Oregon House and Senate districts, Kotek had backup in the form of Democratic secretary of state Shemia Fagan, who, by law, would have redrawn the lines if the legislature had not. However, that wouldn’t have been the case had the legislature failed to redistrict Oregon’s congressional districts. If the legislature had failed to act, Oregon’s congressional seats would likely have been drawn by a federal judge, and likely less favorable to Democrats. (By the way, I actually believe in having elective districts drawn by an independent nonpartisan commission. However, I don’t believe in unilateral disarmament. All the states must do it at the same time.)

The fate of the House of Representatives (if not also the Republic) in the 2022 election gets down to which party does better in the redistricting efforts in the various states. Kotek made a tactical decision to pass some bills that was a strategic blunder in terms of the Democrats having a chance to win a majority of the seats in Congress in the coming decade. By making the political deal in the first place and then reneging on it in the second place, Kotek showed stunning lack of judgment. If she had been playing chess, which has unbreakable rules, Kotek would have lost the match by failing to think more than a few moves in advance.

How to Choose for the Upcoming Three-Way Gubernatorial Race?

Both Read and Kotek are very qualified to serve as the governor of Oregon. If Tobias fails to win the primary, of course I’ll be voting for Tina. Here are the political factors I considered that lead me to vote for Tobias in the primary.

Who Has Momentum?

Both have momentum. A recent poll, albeit released by the Read campaign, showed Kotek leading at 25 percent, with Read at 20 percent. With a polling margin of error of 3.8 percent, it’s what the media loves to call a statistical dead heat. Most significant is that 56 percent of voters polled were undecided. (The respondents were not given the option to state a preference for any of the other thirteen Democratic hopefuls.) That’s a huge number of undecideds.

Who Has Money?

In their primary, both Read and Kotek have significant funding. I’m worried about independent candidate for governor and former Democratic state senator Betsy Johnson, who is receiving shitloads of money from deep pockets that used to make futile contributions to Republicans. Nike founder Phil Knight has already given $1 million to the Johnson campaign. He might well give more. In 2018, Knight gave $2.5 million to the Republican candidate for governor. In 2010, he gave $0.4 million to the Republican candidate. Perhaps tired of backing losing Republicans, Knight is backing Johnson, who was—until renouncing her party to run for governor—the most unDemocratic of Democrats in the Oregon Senate.

Worrying About Betsy Johnson

If Mark Hatfield was the pacifist timber beast (he was) to appeal to crossover voters, Betsy Johnson is the pro-choice timber beast to appeal to moderate unaffiliated voters. Today, while there are more Democrats registered in Oregon than Republicans, the plurality registration is unaffiliated.

In a two-way race, most of the voters unaffiliated with a party—despite their protestations of independence—reliably vote for the same major party each time. In a three-way race that includes an erstwhile Democrat—albeit one who voted far too often with the Republicans—things are different. I worry that Betsy Johnson will draw votes from Democrats (formally registered as such or not) who are more blue-collar than latte-sipping, and from Republicans (formally registered as such or not) who are not anywhere near as bat-shit crazy as the multitude of candidates in the Republican primary.

In a winner-take-all election with three or more candidates, one can become governor without getting a majority—but merely a plurality—of the vote. My all-time favorite governor, Barbara Roberts (number 34, who, by the way, has endorsed Tobias Read), won only a plurality of the vote.

There are generally two kinds of elections: base elections, where the winner is determined by which side gets more of their side to actually vote, and swing elections, where the winner is determined by who got the most votes from the middle. Generally two kinds of elections because generally there are only two major candidates in the general election. When there is a third major candidate in the mix, all bets are off and the election is generally a base-swing (or swing-base) hybrid. Minor candidates can “spoil” the election of a major candidate by drawing off votes, but Johnson is no minor candidate. This is a race with three major candidates.

I am not compelled by the argument that nominating Tina will bring out the Democratic base. Historically, the Democratic base turnout in midterm elections such as this one is pathetic and this is going to be a swing election in November.

Thinking Ahead to the General Election

One’s ideal choice in a party primary election is not necessarily the best choice for the party candidate to win the general election. While my politics are a bit closer to Kotek’s, I think Read is more electable in the general election. The late-great Molly Ivins counseled to vote one’s heart in the primary election and one’s head in the general election. Generally a fine suggestion, but what if the general election is a three-way race, as is the case this year in Oregon?

There are three theories on the impact of Johnson in the race:

• She will draw votes from both parties and nonaffiliated who see themselves as moderates.

• As a recovering Democrat, she will draw votes from moderate Democrats uncomfortable with the Ds’ swing to the left.

• As someone very aligned with what the Republican Party used to stand for, she will draw votes from Republicans uncomfortable with the Rs’ swing to the right.

The theories are not mutually exclusive and could coalesce in a hybrid or all-of-the-above result. To the degree that moderate Ds feel that their party is swinging too far left, the nomination of Kotek will exacerbate that. Kotek is very progressive—in general a good thing if you are running in the Greater Portland area but not necessarily statewide. Not all of Oregon is Portland.

If only Democrats could choose their nominee after knowing who the Republican nominee is. But since that’s not possible, Democrats must choose the candidate they believe can best win in the three-way general election. Given the likelihood of a particular kind of Republican nominee and the certainty of Johnson in the race, in my view, under any theory of winning, Democrats would be better positioned to win the general election for the governorship with Tobias Read as their nominee.

In this three-way race, I’m voting my head in the primary.

Bottom Line: If you are a registered Oregon Democrat, I urge you to join me in voting for Tobias Read.

Figure 2. State Treasurer Tobias Read. Source: Oregon State Treasury official photo.

P.S. Oregon 6th Congressional District Democratic Primary Endorsement

Figure 3. The new Oregon 6th Congressional District. From the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway on the north to the City of Jefferson on the south. It includes all of the counties of Polk and Yamhill and portions of Marion, Clackamas, and Washington. Source: State of Oregon.

There are nine candidates for the Democratic nomination for Oregon’s new congressional district (Figure 3). I highly recommend Andrea Salinas (Figure 4). Andrea has been endorsed by the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV), which says:

From when she served as an OLCV board member to her current work as an environmental and climate champion in the Oregon House, Andrea Salinas is always driven by her values, her work ethic, and her foundational belief that change is possible if we work for it. Her strong values paired with her experience fighting for everyday people, our communities, and our climate, make her exactly who we need representing all of us in Congress.

Hey, I also served as an OLCV board member! Of course, it was so many decades ago that no one at OLCV today has any knowledge of it. I’m going to give Andrea some money.

Figure 4. Best candidate in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s new 6th Congressional District. Source: andreasalinasfororegon.com.

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.