Joseph Canyon, Wapiti, Hardesty Mountain, Deadhorse Rims, Wassen Creek. These are just some of the many places which Oregon wilderness advocates identified as possessing wilderness characteristics more than a decade ago. But unlike the 900,000 acres of forest wildlands set aside as wilderness in 1984, these places were left wide open to the commodity-development whims of the irresponsible U.S. Forest Service. A decade and a half later, their fate remains unsealed. In all, about two and a half million acres of public forests, many of which are ancient forests that constitute drinking water sources and salmon habitat were overlooked, but not forgotten.

ONRC is launching our Oregon Wild Campaign. Our goal is to protect as wilderness all of the remaining public forest land (managed by the U.S. Forest Service statewide, and BLM on the Westside) that has not already been chewed up and spit out by the timber industry. Our near-term efforts will focus on inventory. When last the roadless forest lands were inventoried in the early 1980s, there remained about 3.5 million acres which were not subsequently set aside as wilderness. Almost two decades and probably tens or hundreds of thousands of log trucks later, this acreage has probably shrunk to somewhere between 2 and 3 million acres.

Aldo Leopold once said, "the first rule in intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." Few will doubt that humanity will always tinker; it is ONRC's role to save all the pieces, at least of the forest wildlands in Oregon. The first step in "saving all the pieces" is to identify where the pieces are. During the next several months, ONRC's number one organizational priority will be to coordinate an inventory of the remaining roadless forest lands for the purpose of creating a citizens' wilderness proposal.

Why wilderness? Perhaps Thoreau said it best-- "in wildness is the preservation of the world." If wildness is the recipe, wilderness is the main ingredient. In 1964, Congress bestowed upon America a policy of enduring wilderness as a means to pass along a legacy of unsullied lands for all generations to learn from, dream of, and visit. Biologists extol big wilderness as a foundation for ensuring ecological sustainability. The reasons are many and irrefutable.

Forest wilderness in Oregon has come to us in bits and pieces. About 627,000 acres were set aside with the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Four year later, an additional 100,000 acres were set aside in the Mt. Jefferson area. The 1970s brought protection to about 275,000 acres in the Eagle Cap and Hells Canyon areas. The enactment of the Endangered American Wilderness Act brought protection to more than 285,000 acres in various Westside forests. The 1984 Oregon Wilderness Act designated 23 areas totaling about 850,000 acres, followed most recently by the protection of about 30,000 acres at Opal Creek. Just 2.1 million acres of the 16 million acres of federal forests have been accorded wilderness protection. We've done reasonably well at protecting more ecologically-barren rocks and ice-- now its time to protect the richer forested flanks. We have unfinished business to attend to, and not a moment too soon.

Less than five percent of the ancient forests remain, but for the timber industry and politicians whose coffers they fill, that's still too much. In 1990, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that about 2.1 million acres of unprotected forest wilderness remained in Oregon. The agency projected a 35% erosion of this unprotected wilderness by 2010; an extrapolation of these figures reveals a complete elimination of our unprotected wilderness within fifty years, unless we embark on a proactive campaign to protect what remains. With so much already taken from us, wilderness provides us an opportunity to do damage control by drawing inviolate lines around the places we care about most.

Few coordinated efforts to permanently protect sensitive areas have been mounted successfully during the last decade and a half. Instead, much of the debate has been subsumed by administrative process and fighting the onslaught of legislative attacks. The Clinton Forest Plan has been hailed by some as the definitive solution to Westside forest management. Replete with its FEMAT, ACS, AMAs, LSOGs, and LSRs, the Plan brought an end to the 1980s-initiated logjam of litigation over the declining ecological health of Westside forests. However, the Plan allows for timber harvesting in both late-successional old growth reserves and riparian reserves, and provided no defense against the savage Salvage Rider. In fact, only congressionally-designated wilderness was protected when the Salvage Rider struck its fury in our Northwest forests.

Administratively-created reserves are not an adequate means to accord much-needed protection to whatever remaining wild areas there are in our public forests. The net effect of the Clinton Forest Plan was to delude the public into believing the "problem has been solved" and to enmesh the debate in an unending array of incomprehensible bureaucratese. Reducing our ancient forests to a complex series of acronyms was a brilliant ploy by the Clinton Administration and timber industry to deflate the public's emotional energy which has proven over-and-over again to be the foundation upon which wild places have been successfully protected in the past. The acronym-ization has successfully driven a wedge in between people and place-- it is a wedge we must remove.

Conservationists understand and will fight to defend wilderness because they understand it as an effective means of preserving clean drinking water and ancient forest habitat which nurtures our salmon and other forest-dependent species. Conservation biologists tell us that wilderness provides intact core areas which are the basis for long-term sustainability of ecosystem function. Wilderness is the best means to insulate our common heritage from the corporate-sponsored politicians who value the forest for only what can be cut from it and hauled out on a truck .

While wilderness may not be a panacea for all ecosystem-related ailments in our forests, it is certainly the most effective proven tool in our workshop. Other simple designations can go a long way to help round out the protection provided by a core wilderness proposal. For example, there are many places where ancient forest remains, but because of roads or other impacts, the area does not meet the definition of Wilderness under the 1964 Act. A series of Wildland Areas consisting of parcels 1,000 acres to 5,000 acres in size should be set aside with wilderness-type protection. Additionally, Watershed Recovery Areas can be established for the purpose of allowing previously impacted areas in biological core areas or along corridors to recover.

During the next year, ONRC will be facilitating an inventory of all federal forest lands in Oregon. The inventory will be based on information provided by grassroots activists volunteering in ONRC's Adopt-a-Wilderness program, computerized mapping, and maps of unprotected wilderness maintained by regional environmental organizations around the state.

Wilderness. It is the tool which gave rise to public lands advocacy in Oregon. It is the issue around which the Oregon public lands advocacy network has most effectively organized. And it is the time-proven tool which accords us one more opportunity to save place, where place can still be saved.

Ken Rait, Conservation Director, Oregon Natural Resources Council. To participate in ONRC's Adopt-a-Wilderness program, e-mail us at adopt@onrc.org or call us at 503-283-6343, Ext. 679

Copyright (c) 1997-98 OLIFE -- Oregonians for Labor Intensive Forest Economics. All rights reserved.