News
The Oregonian
Editorial
September 30, 2007
Congressmen gone wild: Oregon's delegation unites
Uncle Sam owns lots of land. On much of it, he grows trees. Some he leases to people looking to mine ore or graze cattle. Zillions of acres are open to citizens armed with everything from snowmobiles and mountain bikes to rubber rafts and deer rifles.
Then there are those few spots where Uncle Sam permits none of this sort of thing to happen. These are called wilderness.
Unlike, say, a national park, which can be used for everything from feeding the bears to buying curly fries at the concession stand, wilderness is used for only three things.
Looking.
Listening.
Leaving alone.
Our country currently celebrates 107 million acres of wilderness. We may be about to get a few million more.
Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith may not be heading off on a camping trip together
-- Oregon's senators leave that sort of thing to their House colleagues, Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Greg Walden -- but they are sharing a tent to shepherd through Congress two wilderness expansions.
One would add almost 125,000 acres of wilderness on Mount Hood. A second would create the 13,700-acre Copper Salmon Wilderness at the headwaters of the Elk River near Port Orford.
Oregon is not alone in this hurry to husband. Major wilderness bills, embracing more than 3 million acres, are pending everywhere from Mount Baker near Seattle to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. All this is happening now because thousands of citizens have fought for this legislation for years. And because one man no longer stands in the way.
Rep. Richard Pombo, a California rancher, spent the past four years on Capitol Hill as Republican chairman of the Resources Committee, delighting in putting every wilderness bill that came his way under House arrest. He was defeated in his bid for re-election last year, the Republicans lost their majority and the race was on.
When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, the United States became the world's first nation to legally protect areas "untrammeled by man." It's nice to think we might still lead the world in protecting this planet's most pristine places.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., hopes to combine the Copper Salmon bill with the Mount Hood legislation to create a single wilderness windfall for our state.
That would be one more example of what can happen when the state's Democrats and Republicans -- and its senators and representatives -- gather around the same campfire.
That's assuming, of course, that everyone involved continues to play nice.
With congressmen and activists involved -- and a U.S. Senate election looming just over the next ridge -- defeat may yet be snatched from the jaws of victory and both projects sent back out to wander in the wilderness.