Wendell Wood

Wendell Wood Oral History Interview

Interviewer and Date: Stephen R. Mark, Crater Lake National Park Historian, May 5, 1997.

Interview Location: Wendell Wood’s residence near the Klamath Marsh, Oregon.

Transcription: Transcribed by Stephen Mark, May, 1997.

Biographical Summary (from the interview introduction)

Wendell Wood. Frequent visitor since 1978 and representative of local environmental group (Oregon Natural Resources Council). It might appear to some people that Wendell Wood and the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) occupy a peripheral position in regard to the history of Crater Lake National Park. The park, however, does not exist in an environmental or political vacuum. Conservation groups such as ONRC have played an important role in 20th century Oregon history, of which Crater Lake National Park is a part. Wendell Wood is presently the South Central Field Representative for ONRC, a position which the organization created to bring one of the most prominent environmentalists in Oregon to the Klamath Basin.

Materials Associated with this interview on file at the Dick Brown library at Crater Lake National Park’s Steel Visitor Center: taped interview; File contains notes, copies of newspaper articles, and a photo taken at the time of interview. Most of this interview is captured in the following transcription. Some explanatory field notes and materials supplied by Mr. Wood are in the park’s history files.

“Every Line on the Map”: An Interview with Wendell Wood

Conducted and Transcribed
by
Stephen R. Mark

Preface

It might appear to some people that Wendell Wood and the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) occupy a peripheral position in regard to the history of Crater Lake National Park. The park, however, does not exist in an environmental or political vacuum. Conservation groups such as ONRC have played an important role in 20th century Oregon history, of which Crater Lake National Park is a part. Wendell Wood is presently the South Central Field Representative for ONRC, a position which the organization created to bring one of the most prominent environmentalists in Oregon to the Klamath Basin.

This interview took place on May 5 of this year. It served the dual purpose of satisfying a course requirement for History 399, taught by Dr. Todd Carney of Southern Oregon University, and adding to the Crater Lake National Park Oral History Series. Most of this interview is captured in the following transcription. Some explanatory field notes and materials supplied by Mr. Wood are in the park’s history files.

Stephen R. Mark
July 1997

INTRODUCTION

“Every line on the map is Wendell Wood’s reference to the idea that all protected areas are the product of hard fought political struggles. For the most part, the history of conservation in Oregon has reflected national trends, especially where it pertains to the reservation and management of federal lands that cover roughly 52 percent of the state. Most of this acreage is open to commodity use (logging, mining, grazing, agriculture) on a regulated, but supposedly sustainable, basis. This is part of “multiple use management, something which also includes recreation, wildlife, watersheds, and other values. There are places, however, where conflict can arise over what should be the predominate use of an area–particularly when its perceived character could be compromised by commodity production.

Citizen involvement in conservation as an area of public policy has largely centered on where to restrict commodity uses on federal lands. This began as early as 1885 in Oregon, when a Portland resident named William Gladstone Steel initiated a campaign to establish Crater Lake National Park. Congress finally passed legislation designating the park 17 years later, but not before Steel and other conservationists had succeeded in convincing President Grover Cleveland to proclaim the nation’s largest “forest reserve which embraced most of the Cascade Range in 0regon (1). This reserve was vehemently attacked by commodity interests and members of Oregon’s congressional delegation in the mid 1890s because restrictions on settlement, sheep grazing, and lumbering were similar to those in a national park. Steel organized the mountaineering club he founded in 1894, the Mazamas, to defend the reserve and made it the base for lobbying efforts at home and in Washington, D.C. In the end it emerged intact, but not before concessions were made in Congress to allow commodity use of the reserve on a regulated basis. Subsequent proclamations created other reserves around the state and, by 1907, most of what is now national forest land in Oregon had been withdrawn from the public domain (2).

Since 1905 the national forests have been administered by the U.S. Forest Service, a bureau lodged in the Department of Agriculture. Eleven years later Congress created another agency, the National Park Service, and placed it within the Department of the Interior. Both organizations saw recreation as at least part of their mission. Consequently, the Forest Service spent much of the 1920s and 1930s trying to fend off NPS attempts to effect transfer of the most spectacular national forest land and make it part of National Park System units. One Forest Service tactic aimed at avoiding such transfers was initiated in 1929, and took the form of administratively designated “primitive areas which were later called “wilderness” (3).

Primitive areas bore a striking similarity to the national parks and monuments because the Forest Service (at least in theory) banned most commodity uses. One big difference was that the NPS emphasized development of roads and visitor facilities in harmony with the park setting, in contrast to the primitive areas which were to remain roadless and undeveloped. .This “parallel park system was often complemented by adjacent resort facilities located on leased national forest land where roads provided access to a lake or river (4). In this way, the Forest Service could court a wide constituency of recreational users but still make wilderness available to a relatively small number of devotees.

The first test of whether this wilderness “system” could withstand outside threats came in Oregon, in the form of a developer’s proposal to build a tramway on Mount Hood. This scheme, which was hotly debated from 1929 to 1931, was opposed by most of the Mazamas (who represented the only organized citizen voice for conservation in Oregon before World War II) and the Chief of the Forest Service. The Secretary of Agriculture, however, sided with the developer and approved the project (5). Economic conditions brought by the Depression ensured that the tramway died a quiet death, but the episode underlined the fact that the Mazamas and other local groups favoring wilderness during this period had little recourse in overturning administrative decision making other than generating negative publicity (6).

This situation began to change after World War 11, when the formerly custodial management of the national forests had given way to an increased logging of government timber because privately-held supplies had been largely exhausted. By the mid 1950s, an increasingly heated debate arose over the number and size of areas on the national forests which would remain untouched from the cutting (7). The most controversial reduction of a primitive area took place in Oregon, where 53,000 acres of the Three Sisters Primitive Area were reclassified as commercial forest land in 1954 (8). In response, a Eugene-based group called the Friends of the Three Sisters became the first organization in Oregon to form specifically for the purpose of defending wilderness from the agency managing it. They and other conservation groups made the Three Sisters reduction a focal point over the next decade in the drive to secure legislation that would give wilderness areas the same legal basis as Crater Lake, the only national park in Oregon (9).

When passage of the Wilderness Act finally came in 1964, the battles over which roadless areas were to become legally protected wilderness had only begun. Efforts by the Forest Service to inventory and recommend areas in the national forests for wilderness designation were greeted with hostility by conservation groups in Oregon and other states. They accused the agency of being more concerned with timber production than non-commodity uses of roadless areas, and increasingly resorted to litigation and civil disobedience in their attempts to stop incursions on potential wilderness. Formation of the Oregon Wilderness Coalition in 1972 provided a way for local groups to become part of a statewide organization devoted to the issue. Saving large trees (species such as Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and ponderosa pine were termed “old growth and later, “ancient forest) soon became its main focus in the wilderness battle, rather than settling for protection of high peaks and associated subalpine (noncommercial) forests.

The focus on permanent protection of the remaining old growth forests, along with increasing concern about commodity uses on federal land in general, led OWC to change its name to the Oregon Natural Resources Council in 1982. By this time the organization had two prominent staff members, James Monteith and Andy Kerr, who became known for their uncompromising positions and an often glib style. Passage of two wilderness bills (in 1978 and 1984) represented important milestones for ONRC, but the old growth issue had already intensified to where the organization could not afford to disband or dwell on its accomplishments for long (10). Timber companies and their allies portrayed ONRC as their main nemesis throughout the 1980s, especially after the environmentalists began using litigation as their main weapon against timber sales on federal land (11).

Wendell Wood caught the attention of Monteith and Kerr in 1981, shortly after he moved to Eugene from Myrtle Creek. He quickly became a leading figure in the organization and has held a variety of posts, both as a board and staff member. As a spokesman for ONRC, Wood personifies a form of political activity described by some social scientists as “elite.”

This term, according to Linda Grabner in her book Wilderness as Sacred Space, refers to the methods, style, and organization of conservation groups like ONRC:

“Political elites are highly organized and contain relatively few members …Elites pursue “practical” politics; that is, they seek specific and tangible benefits which are best obtained by persuading governments to act on their behalf. The link between political acts and consequences is direct, with elite actors constantly checking their actions and assumptions to correct errors and achieve greater effectiveness . . .” (12)

Grabner states that effectiveness is dependent upon the organization solving two related problems:

“…to maintain and increase effectiveness in day-to-day practical politics, and to generate and disseminate political symbols effective in mobilizing mass support in times of crisis. Day-to-day political effectiveness depends in part on the elite’s ability to demonstrate to allied and opposing elites that it enjoys mass support. Elites are most successful in mobilizing mass opinion when elite and mass share common images … Elite mobilizations of mass opinion may be both skillfully performed and free from cynical exploitation: the elite perceives its action as a call for help on an issue which affects the vital interests of both the elite and the broad public.” (13)

One of Wendell Wood’s most notable achievements as an elite actor was in being the author of the only book published by ONRC, A Walking Guide to Oregon’s Ancient Forests. It appeared in 1991 and has since gone through several printings. He has also helped to widen the scope of environmentalist activity in Oregon after having moved to Klamath Falls in 1993. This has centered on the threats posed by pesticide use and water diversions to birds using the national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin, especially where lands have been leased to farmers for agriculture (14).

The interview took place at Mr. Wood’s cabin near the Klamath Marsh, a site which is located roughly 10 miles east of Highway 97 (see map in Appendix A) and 30 miles north of Chiloquin, the closest town. A set of questions was sent to him several days in advance. These provided the interview with its general framework (Appendix B), even though they are not exact matches for those questions that appear on the transcript. It took almost four hours to cover the material which follows from the questions, but the difficulties of arranging a second meeting dictated that the interview be conducted in one session.

Notes

1 Gerald W. Williams, “John B. Waldo and William Gladstone Steel: Forest Reserve Advocates for the Cascade Range in Oregon,” pp. 314-332 in Harold K. Steen (ed.) , The Origins of the National Forests (Durham, NC: Forest History Society, 1992).

2 Specifics are in Gerald W. Williams, “The USDA Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest: Major Political and Social Controversies between 1891-1945,” paper at annual meeting of Pacific Northwest Historians Guild, Seattle, March 1985. This can be seen graphically in Alfred Runte, Public Lands, Public Heritage: The National Forest Idea (Niwot, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 19911, pp. 56-57.

3 Craig W. Allin, “Four Theses on the History of Federal Wilderness Management: From Aldo Leopold to the Wilderness Act–And Beyond,” pp. 82-87 in David W. Lime (ed.), Managing America’s Enduring Wilderness Resource (St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) .

4 For examples in southern Oregon see Steve Mark, “Thinking Like a Park,” Wilderness Journal 1: 1 (September 19891, pp. 8-11.

5 Charles F. Wilkinson and H. Michael Anderson, Land and Resource Planning in the National Forests (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1987), pp. 316-317; John D. Scott, We Climb High: A Thumbnail Chronology of the Mazamas, 1894-1964 (Portland: The Mazamas, 1969), pp. 31-37.

6 The Mazamas, however, took the lead in organizing the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs to advance the cause of recreation. It did not become a potent body in the political arena until the much larger Sierra Club joined in the 1940s; Scott, We Climb High, p. 39.

7 Paul W . Hirt, A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War 11 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 19941, pp. 162-165.

8 Dennis M . Roth, The Wilderness Movement and the National Forests (College Station, TX: Intaglio Press, 1988), p. 5 .

9 Wilkinson and Anderson, Land and Resource Planning, pp. 343-344.

10 Gerald W. Williams, “The Creation of Wilderness in the Pacific Northwest: The Controversy Expands,I1 paper presented at the meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Madison, WI, August 1987, pp. 9-14.

11 Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (Boston: Little Brown, 1990), p. 88.

12 Grabner, Wilderness As Sacred Space. Monograph No. 8. (Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 19761, pp. 92-93.

13 lbid., pp. 93-94.

14 Kathie Durbin, “Restoring the Marsh,” Cascadia Times 2 :4 (August 19961, pp. 7-15.

The first set of questions has to do with your life before working with the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

You mean elaborate? I try to describe myself as an expatriated Californian. I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area. Never in the city, but within a stone’s throw. In answering your question concerning the spark which got me interested in nature, I’ve pondered that many time but don’t really have an answer. You know, I taught high school biology from 1976 to 1981. I often looked at students and wondered what makes people what they are and how do you reach them. How do you make a difference? I just don’t know.

No single flash of inspiration, then?

Some people just seem to have an interest. From an early age my parents took my sister and I to the Sierra Nevada in California. We did that pretty regularly as family trips, and then my father and I as fishing trips. No one in my family, however, had my broader interests in nature. That was sort of a gradual exposure and no one single event comes to mind. I made the remark in the preface of the Walking

Guide that in my early teens I realized that there were all these little lakes scattered up in the mountains. Hiking into those was much more exciting than sitting in a boat catching fish down below, even though I caught bigger fish in the boat. Fishing became sort of an excuse to be in the mountains. I can be as excited today about going to see wildflowers along a stream or some big trees as I once was about the prospect of catching my limit of trout.

From seventh grade until almost all the way through high school we lived in Ventura County near Thousand Oaks, California. It isn’t any wilderness but there was a little arroyo where I played as a kid, set traps, and caught crayfish and turtles in the creek and that sort of thing. That was the sort of exposure that led to my later focus, but again, I think of it as a sort of innate interest. My educational experience definitely broadened it. I majored in biology and wildlife management and ended up at Humboldt State University. I’m sure my formal education made me more aware of things and heightened any inclination I had to enjoy the outdoors and nature.

Did you get a lot out of secondary school, in terms of science and nature study?

Not a lot. I remember when I took biology in high school and that I did the same sort of things when I taught biology. I often jokingly say that if the amphibians took over the world, I’d be put on trial for war crimes. I remember dissecting a frog in the tenth grade and going “wow!” Just seeing that little machine with everything working was amazing. Despite all the discussion over whether to use diagrams or pickled frogs that you could use over again, I always used live frogs because I remembered my own experience.

I was somewhat of an odd duck in high school, in the sense that I actually had a trap line. I didn’t know anybody else who had one. People are really surprised when I say now that I had an interest in traps or trapping. When you’re a kid it seems like you have to have some small way of exploiting a part of the environment.

When I was in high school we had a cliff behind my house. Right below it was a little creek which ran seasonally with the winter storms in a sort of oak woodland. I could hike for miles along that stream and that provided access to the outdoors. In my teens I worked one summer in the Sierra at a breakfast place and then went fishing every day. At that time I often hitchhiked to my fishing spots. I would

mention to other fishermen that I had a good spot and got a ride back that way (laughs) .

Did you have a mountaineering phase?

Not really, ever. I overstate it to say that I’m afraid of heights compared to most people that hike. I’ve started up Mount Thielson and never really got close to that last part at the top. There’s even a place coming down Mount Scott that makes me a little queasy. I’ve enjoyed hiking on trails but never really wanted to rock climb. The alpine plants and animals are great, but when you start climbing the rocks it becomes more of a recreational thing rather than a natural history or nature experience. I’ve climbed a good part of South Sister and thought that rather than going to the very top, I really wanted to see what flowers were blooming in the lower meadows. You could say that my hiking has been more associated with nature than a pure mountaineering interest. I’ve never climbed with ropes, nor do I really want to.

Have you associated with many people with a mountaineering focus in conservation groups?

Not really. I met a few people through ONRC who had that interest. More recently I’ve become acquainted with some of

the Mazamas in Portland who have been interested in some of the Klamath Basin issues. I sort of humorously said “Have fun, don’t even think of inviting mew (laughs). I’d rather hike around the creeks and wet edges of the forest than to go up to the top of the highest peak. I have climbed most of [Mount] Bailey, up to where you have to scramble to the top. I like to see the juniper on Hager Mountain, near Silver Lake, but that’s not mountaineering since there is an easy trail to the top.

What was your familiarity with Oregon and Washington before being hired at Myrtle Creek?

Not a lot. I think my exposure was when I went to school for four years in Arcata and explored that area extensively. My parents were raised in Washington State. I remember being in the Sierra and my parents saying “Gosh, Wendell would really enjoy the Northwest.” And I thought, “Why don’t you take me there, then?” I remember being in the Northwest couple of times when I was really young to visit cousins around Puget Sound, but can’t say that was much exposure. It came when I transferred from Cal Poly Pomona to Humboldt State. I don’t think I had been in the redwoods before, other than the Muir Woods north of San Francisco.

Did you transfer to Humboldt after only a year at Pomona?

I had gone to Cal Poly Pomona when I graduated from high school and I actually began as a business major. I think that was because my father was in business and I felt it was good background. It wasn’t long before I started taking livestock-related classes, and I took a lot of classes in biology and natural history. I had gone to Pomona for a year when I was with some cousins around Donner Lake at the state park there. The person giving the campfire program made the comment that he had majored in wildlife management at Humboldt State, so that next year I got a catalog. I saw that it had more of the courses that I was interested in, so after I’d been in college two years I transferred up there.

Was paying in-state tuition a factor in your decision?

At the time I was going to school, college was not that expensive. Tuition was not a big issue and I was not looking at the prestige of a particular school. UC Berkeley and UC Davis, for example, have wildlife management classes but I never wanted to live in Davis or Berkeley.

The setting was a factor?

I think I was intrigued that the school had a variety of courses with an outdoor orientation and its environment has both forest and coast.

Did you touch base with the foresters at Humboldt?

I remember when I was involved with early day formation of the North coast Environmental Center. There was the School of Natural Resources at Humboldt which has degrees in soil science, hydrology, and wildlife management. Then you had the School of Forestry which had its own building. I really didn’t think about it a lot at the time, but I remember doing a presentation for the North coast Environmental Center, just trying to let people know what we were doing. We got a polite, but cool reception from the forestry school. They had a mission to manage the forest and didn’t really rub shoulders with the rest of the natural resource folks who were all excited about Aldo Leopold. That wasn’t their orientation. They were still out to tame the land.

What years were these?

This was 1969 to 1973. I remember being told by professors who were otherwise sympathetic to the natural environment that old growth forests were pretty places but otherwise biological deserts. That was the philosophy at the time. I think Jerry Franklin’s work that was published in the early 1980s was one of the first things that came out which said that old growth forests were really an ecosystem. They started showing after the early successional stages that

these forests had biological diversity. Our argument was, of course, that we have plenty of the young managed stuff and there is no shortage of early successional forest.

What role did you play in the Redwood [National] Park issue?

I was there between the two expansions of the park. While logging of redwoods was an issue that the Northcoast Environmental Center was concerned about, I was not actually at Humboldt when that was in the fever pitch phase of the legislation. There was legislation that had come just before and just after my time there. I remember the dedication of the park, just after Nixon had been elected. The motorcade was coming through the little town of Orick, but I was looking for worms under a bridge and didn’t see it.

So you didn’t go to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove for the dedication?

No, but I remember being struck by the amount of time and work that people like Dave Vandermark and Lucille Vinyard, who were Sierra Club members, put into that. Lucille Vinyard’s husband, William Vinyard, was one of my professors. He taught about aquatic plants and I was acquainted with him, but not that socially. Their house was a beautiful place overlooking the ocean at Trinidad. I remember walking in to see Lucille about something and she had books and papers just scattered all over. Every chair had an EIS and other documents. I thought how would anyone get into this? I later realized while I was doing it that you never read these things for their own sake. That’s why I could never have gotten into law school. It was more like you are trying to save this little piece of land, so you had to look in this book to find that fact and so forth. People seemed struck by me in the same way. They asked, “How do you get into this technical literature? It is the driest stuff in the world.” Again, you’re motivated by what you are trying to accomplish.

Was reviewing documents an aspect of setting up the NEC?

I was publicity chairman, so I was doing press releases. I did not spark, by any means, the formation of the Northcoast Environmental Center but I was one of the people who made it work. When they opened the office, there had to be somebody there.

Did you touch base with John Hart when he wrote Hiking the Bigfoot Country?

I did not.

Were you aware of the Siskiyous at that time?

As part of the RARE I process, as well as the proposals to build the Gasquet-Orleans Road across the Siskiyous. I had explored that area a little bit, especially some of the serpentine areas around Gasquet and the Darlingtonia bogs. For about six months after college I worked at a nursery near Smith River and got a little more acquainted with some of the areas north and east of the redwood belt.

Did your external interests delay graduation?

I’m sure they did! I have two bachelor degrees and spent about eight years in college. I spent the first two years doing business, science, and of courses at Pomona. Then I did four years at Humboldt to get the two bachelor degrees, and then spent two years in southern California for a teaching credential. You really spend about a year just student teaching in the California system. I’m sure that I could have taken heavier course loads, though I probably averaged 15 or 16 units a quarter.

Was a masters degree ever in the cards?

No, not really. I worked after college in a nursery business because I wanted to be in a rural community. My

wife was interested in getting her masters in nursing, so we moved to southern California. I got a teaching credential and she got a masters in nursing. Then in 1976, I applied for a teaching position at South Umpqua High School in Myrtle Creek. I taught there from 1976 to 1981. In 1981 I began volunteering with the Oregon Wilderness Coalition, which later became the Oregon Natural Resources Council. I never really intended that to be a career. At that point my wife started pre-med classes, with the intention of going to medical school but decided changed her mind after a year. Since we were in Eugene, I wanted to catch up on some environmental projects which I had started. I was the conservation chair for the Umpqua Valley Audubon in Roseburg when we lived in Myrtle Creek and I continued that work when we first moved to Eugene. At one point I forgot, after a couple of years, that my teaching credential had expired. That was sort of a career choice, since I decided not to try and renew it. Renewing the credential meant taking a bunch more courses. I didn’t start out to become a “professional” conservationist, it sort of evolved that way. At one point in the early or middle ’80s, I sort of realized that this was what I would probably be doing for the rest of my life.

What were your first impressions of Myrtle Creek and Douglas County?

After being in southern California for a couple of years, we made a trip across the continental United States. Places like Nebraska seemed really dry (laughs), so I remember coming to Myrtle Creek. I said, “Wow, I’m going to live here!” My impression was not of the more conservative politics, but simply the natural environment. I might be one of the few people on my staff now at ONRC who would even consider living in Klamath Falls. My basic feeling is that wherever you live you won’t have 2,000 friends; well, maybe some people do, but you always find some little core group of folks that you’re philosophically in tune with. In that context I’ve been more interested in finding some place where natural areas are close without some big freeway commute first.

I was thinking that you might be put off by “Overstory Zero” in reference to Douglas County at that time. (WW laughs).

I was definitely struck by the clear cutting, but I had seen that before near Redwood National Park, so I knew about the logging and was motivated to contribute to the effort to rein it in.

Were you identified with environmental groups early on, or did that take a while?

I distinguished myself as a teacher because I became the proponent for a research natural area that was finally designated. It was just to the east of Myrtle Creek. I took students out there and actually got the school board to pass a resolution saying they would use the area for outdoor education if BLM chose to protect it. In other words, they didn’t want to be an advocate for it. But it was a case where there was a new superintendent who wasn’t really savvy to all of the political controversy over logging, so he went along with the proposal. I think the local paper misreported the school board’s decision, which was a passive position to go along with what BLM wanted. The paper made it sound like the board opposed it. When they finally came out and printed the letter that I kept pounding on the superintendent to write, I remember my principal told me that one of the mill owners stormed in and said “We want that teacher fired!I1 (laughs) Some of the other teachers jokingly called it “Wendell’s Woods.”

I remember in one of the faculty meetings that the principal said, “Well, gosh, you’re interested in forestry things. There are some places out there that you could get kids interested in planting trees.” I remember saying at that meeting, “Thank you very much, we’re trying to save the trees, not cut them down so that we can plant little tiny ones. Sorry you missed the point, but that’s not what this

is about.” The Umpqua National Forest Plan was being developed when I was teaching and there were 19 roadless areas. The local conservation group, at that time called the Umpqua Wilderness Defenders, wanted to save 3 of the 19. That was a pretty modest proposal, I thought. Part of my biology curriculum involved a plan for the Umpqua National Forest, which involved even the kids from logging families. I rode the line in terms of my teaching with those folks. But they still said, “1 think we should save Boulder Creek.” Even those kids saw that maybe one roadless area out of 19 wasn’t so bad. I didn’t feel that they had to say that just to get a grade because these kids were very verbal in their general opposition to wilderness protection.

Was wilderness that hot an issue?

It was a very hot issue and I worked with the other social studies teachers to invite Roy Keene, who was a very controversial spokesman. He came and spoke to my classes. To sort of balance it, we invited the Douglas Timber Operators to speak and they pissed off the kids. They [the Douglas Timber Operators] saw that the teachers were not responsive to their message, so they wrote a letter to the principal trying to blast us by saying the kids were not respectful, that they were wearing hats and holding hands (laughs). We read this letter to the kids, which really

pissed them off at the timber guys. You can kind of read your audience, whether you’re teaching school or not. When I talked about forest issues or whatever, and saw the kids squirming, I’d say, “You know, you can’t eat a pileated woodpecker.” One day a kid raised his hand and announced that herd shot and ate a pileated woodpecker. After that, I thought, well, maybe you can.

“Natural Timber Country was the title of a film that some of the mills showed to their employees. I remember my principal hated to have kids wear hats in the classroom but he was pretty open to what I wanted to teach. I was showing this film one day and the vice principal came up to me afterwards because there was one part in this thing where one of the loggers would grease the skids for the mules to pull the logs across. There was a quote where one of the loggers who greased the skid behind the mules said you had to be careful or the mules would kick the shit out of you. The vice principal heard this and he wasn’t upset, but it was the first time I ever thought that someone would be standing outside of my door and listening to what I was saying. This was because he came up to me and asked “What are these films you’re showing? One talked about kicking the shit out of a person.I1 And so one day I was getting into my environmental thing with one of my classes. I remember sitting in the faculty room right after the last

period and the principal walked in and said, “WENDELL WOOD, I walked by your class today,I1 and I thought, “Oh my God, what did I say?” He said, “There was a kid with a hat on.” I was so relieved, realizing it was just the hat.

I decided when I was teaching high school, that I could teach evolution or wilderness appreciation, but I couldn’t do both. So I taught evolution, but I never called it that (laughs). It definitely provided some lively debates and discussions. It’s the goal of education … trying to get them [the students] to think rather than just memorizing stuff .

There’s so much more information now about the ecological value of forests. The research first started coming out in the late ’70s and early ’80s about the function of snags in the forest and cavity nesters. I was hungry to find information, because when I was in school old growth forests were thought of as biological deserts. When I began working with ONRC later on with this kind of information, I remember thinking, “Gosh, I wish I had this when I was teaching high school.

There now seems to be an acceptance of old growth’s biological value and an acknowledgment of its importance as sacred groves. Was there confusion at that time about why environmentalists wanted to save these forests?

We made a big issue of wilderness being a way to protect ancient forests and that not enough old growth was being protected as wilderness. Mark Hatfield and others were much more interested in rock and ice, as we termed it, than what would otherwise be commercial forest land. The [timber] industry incorrectly tried to maintain that once the wilderness bill had passed [in 19841, then we turned to old growth. In fact, we had talked about old growth and salmon in a lot of our early information as major wilderness values. The science on salmon, which indicated they were in trouble, has really been very recent. In other words, we didn’t really have the science and I think a lot of the fish biologists that have just now come forward had these concerns when the [Northern spotted] owl was the issue. People have said to us, “Why didn’t you use the salmon instead of the owl if you were going to pick a surrogate, so to speak?” In that context, the real answer is that the science wasn’t there for the salmon. We were concerned that streams were being logged and silted over, but most of the information at the time was logging increases the amount of water in the stream, so logging is good for the fish. This type of information was what they were pumping out of OSU and those kind of places in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Was the lack of science one of the reasons why the Endangered American Wilderness Act [of 19781 was so limited in reference to Oregon, with only three areas designated?

I don’t really know the answer to that. I didn’t get involved with the broader statewide politics with ONRC until the early 1980s. The politics defined the areas such as French Pete, or maybe the vision wasn’t big enough. It was still an issue of how do you get it around Mark Hatfield and what will he accept. Like I was saying, the Umpqua Wilderness Defenders decided that they would push for 3 of the 19 roadless areas as wilderness on the Umpqua National Forest–Mount Thielson, Rogue-Umpqua Divide, and Boulder Creek. I remember working with a woman from the Oregon Wilderness Coalition who came down when I was pushing for that research natural area near Myrtle Creek. Her comment to me was “You know, you might just as well go for five million acres as five acres because they’ll vilify you just the same.” Whoever the voice is that challenges the dominant paradigm is going to be criticized and attacked because you’re trying to save five acres and what if this catches on? If it’s five acres, then it’s another five acres. I think people end up advocating for smaller areas because they support the places they know. They don’t have the time or the resources to take a comprehensive view.

Do some people go through a transition to get a comprehensive view?

I think it is really up to the organization to provide that broader view. A lot of the success of the ’84 wilderness bill and other conservation efforts has been where you have the broader statewide constituency and then you have very defined local groups which know their particular area. You need to have all those individuals who know these different places. That’s part of the equation. Just having the broader statewide organization without the local interests makes it a lot harder.

Why do you think ONRC seems to have had so much success in bringing that together?

I don’t know how many groups have tried to be statewide in their orientation. To some extent ONRC has been an anomaly. We felt that it would have been easier to do what we were doing in Washington State than in Oregon because you have the big Seattle/Tacoma population base. I think that Andy Kerr, James Monteith, myself, [and] Tim Lillebo were these committed crazy people who were pushing this and because Oregon was the belly of the beast.

[interrupted by telephone call]

You were asking how I would characterize ONRC in developing as a statewide organization. I think we were confronted with a situation in viewing Senator Hatfield as being responsible for more environmental destruction in this state than any other single individual in the history of the Northwest (laughs). Indeed, Senator Hatfield has this benevolent father outlook; “1 will destroy wilderness and we will have these little shining examples of why I am really a wonderful person.” But Hatfield helped us in saying there is going to be wilderness. Nevermind that for every tree he saved, that he wiped out ten others with the other hand. No organization can sustain itself without funding, but we did [without] it for as long as we could. Certain people were in the right place at the right time and were willing to make that kind of sacrifice. They had that kind of dedication to the issue and had an opportunity to elevate it.

Congressman Jim Weaver, as contrary a guy as he was, happily pushed Mark Hatfield even though he was not as much of an advocate as we’d hoped he would be. He was viewed by the public and our opponents as just being our guy. I think the Oregon wilderness bill [of 19841 was just a combination of events. From the national standpoint, Congress required that the Forest Service evaluate its roadless areas. They could have just stopped at that, but Hatfield said there’s going to be wilderness somewhere. Like I said, Weaver pushed and, given the times, was looked at as being pro wilderness. That political atmosphere provided the opportunity for an organization to run with the wilderness issue. I would say also that the willingness of Andy Kerr and James Monteith to work for little or no compensation over months and years was what enabled it to happen.

ONRC seems to have been pretty successful at avoiding political partisanship. Was that a conscious decision?

When you look at the environmental movement there has been a lot of discussion about this. A lot of good environmental things happened under Richard Nixon. Andy Kerr’s analysis has been, and I’m not sure if I agree with this totally, is that Ronald Reagan polarized the movement in the sense that the Democrats became the environmental party and the Republicans were the anti-environmental forces. I know that James Monteith, for example, when he was director [of ONRC] always registered as a Republican. He talked about Teddy Roosevelt being a Republican and made the effort to make things bipartisan. We didn’t want to get into the position of saying that unless you’re a registered Democrat, you couldn’t be for the environment. I don’t know if we were really successful at that.

I remember us making a swipe at the Reagan Administration in one of our membership brochures and one of our board members pointed out that we may have alienated a person who might have otherwise supported us. It still comes down to looking at who is voting which way, but there was a point in time when even Mark Hatfield could say, in all honesty, that he supported the Endangered Species Act. But Hatfield and other Republicans will say that they never expected it to be applied as it has been. I think what really happened was that Hatfield and other Republicans were arrogant enough to believe their own propaganda too much. They never thought, in so developing the earth, species would become threatened or endangered. They really did think that logging made it [the land] better and there would be more species. Earlier on they might have gone along with protection of the environment, but now they’re having second thoughts. But I also think that it became obvious in the 104th Congress that the environment still pulls well with the public, that you don’t run for reelection in most of the country by being anti-environment. Overall, I think that has served as our greatest strength.

I think it has been a slow progression over the past two decades where the Democratic Party has been associated with more pro-environmental legislation. The way I cynically look at it is that with the Democrats you have a chance to present your case–I’m broad brushing this because there are notable exceptions in both parties. With the Republicans you’re basically shut out. But I don’t, by any means, feel when the Democrats are in control of Congress that our gravy train has come home, or that we have it all our way. It’s just that we have a chance to make our case. They still want to know where the votes are if they do what we want them to do. I don’t know where Andy [Kerr] read this, but somebody talked to FDR once about whatever the issue was and he replied, “You’ve convinced me, now make me do it.” Which was to say, provide now the political reason [for me] to do it, that I’m not comfortable yet. Our greatest strength is that the populous as a whole believes that the environment should be protected. Our greatest weakness is that the populous doesn’t get into the detail of what is happening, so a lot of abuse can occur before an awareness happens.

ONRC seems to have been pretty successful at avoiding political partisanship. Was that a conscious decision?

present your case–I’m broad brushing this because there are notable exceptions in both parties. With the Republicans you’re basically shut out. But I don’t, by any means, feel when the Democrats are in control of Congress that our gravy train has come home, or that we have it all our way. It’s just that we have a chance to make our case. They still want to know where the votes are if they do what we want them to do. I don’t know where Andy [Kerr] read this, but somebody talked to FDR once about whatever the issue was and he replied, “You’ve convinced me, now make me do it.” Which was to say, provide now the political reason [for me] to do it, that I’m not comfortable yet. Our greatest strength is that the populous as a whole believes that the environment should be protected. Our greatest weakness is that the populous doesn’t get into the detail of what is happening, so a lot of abuse can occur before an awareness happens.

Are there many politicians or their staff members who have been all that conversant with the environment? Do any of them have a professional background, or is it a continual process of education?

I think it’s the latter. I can’t think of too many examples where they had a professional background. If they did, it’s like they were foresters.

Do they come with a law background or business experience?

Well, again, I think it’s really mixed. In general, the political leaders whose aides we’ve worked with have been generally sympathetic whatever their background. There’s never any mistaking the fact that their main concern is reelection for their boss. It’s not show me how you’re going to protect the environment, it’s show me what’s in it for me. Generally, with members of Congress who are viewed as being sympathetic to the environment, it’s more of a case where they are not hostile toward it. When the Clinton Administration was elected, a sort of euphoria set in with the national conservation groups. Somehow everything was going to be wonderful. I remember saying to Brock Evans, and he agreed with me, that they’ve loosened my straps on the torture rack that I was fastened to–but nobody is stimulating the erotic parts of my brain (laughs). All they’ve done is leave me lying here with the straps loosened … I think the public perception was that everything was going to change after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, but it didn’t really change that much.

Are there formal or informal relationships with the national groups on the part of ONRC?

Oh, it’s both. I think that one of ONRC1s greatest strengths is that while we’ve been painted by our opponents as a radical group, we’ve probably been able to work with all the groups better than any other organization. That isn’t to say that everybody likes us, and I think we’ve had communications with the forest activist grass roots groups who have felt we’ve gotten away from them when we tried to cut a deal with the Clinton Administration. We have worked with the national groups on one hand, who I believe do a lot of good and pull things together, but just the nature of large organizations which become more bureaucratic in their own way, versus the other end of the spectrum–the lean, mean activist types who aren’t chasing foundation grants and feel that everybody is somehow bought off or there’s some conspiracy to soften the movement.

ONRC began by trying to elevate the ancient forest issue, but ran into a lot of resistance from the national groups who said that what you’re proposing to do is impossible; that you’re underestimating the tremendous power of the timber industry. I think the nationals were just being pragmatic, though ONRC was critical of them. I remember James Monteith saying that these people were vote counters, not vote changers. If you walked into their offices and asked about getting this bill passed, they’d say “Look at the makeup of this committee–look at the people who are on it. You’re outvoted two to one, so don’t ask for something you can’t achieve.” And yet there are places in wilderness today, the Waldo area for example, were Doug Scott of the Sierra Club told James Monteith “Forget it, you’ll never save that, there’s too many trees.”

Was that an impetus for ONRC to approach Congress more directly than they had previously?

In general, I think a lot of grassroots movements begin when whoever was supposedly covering an issue isn’t covering it. In other words, we viewed the national conservation groups as being too willing to make deals to save the rock and ice at the expense of the lower elevation forests. Certainly the litigation surrounding the spotted owl issue led to strong criticism of what we were doing, but it also provided the information to the public about what was happening to these forests. I think one of the main problems of any public interest organization is that they don’t have the money to tell their story. In our case, the interest that Congress had in wilderness during the 1970s and early 1980s was continued because of the availability of scientific information about logging’s impact on a lot of old growth related species. What a lot of people don’t remember about the spotted owl was that it wasn’t an Endangered Species Act issue. It became listed as a threatened species .much later;

it really centered on violations of the National Environmental Policy Act which required the agencies to disclose what the impact of logging was on the species. In the case of the Forest Service, the National Forest Management Act said that they had to have viable populations of vertebrate species. Those [pieces of legislation] were the basis for [our court] challenge. I think this has been blurred in the public’s mind to being an issue related to the Endangered Species Act. When Bob Packwood was rattling his saber and saying how he was going to change the Endangered Species Act, I remember telling the media that it would be a terrible thing if that happened but there would still be timber sales that were halted because of noncompliance with NEPA and NFMA.

A very big part of our success in raising the issue were the attorneys who were available through the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and what is now called the Western Environmental Law Center. Anything that gets public attention helps us. The things related to resource management which are, in our opinion, wrong go on because of the lack of public awareness. In other words, newspapers don’t want to write a story about what your concerns are unless you do something. Whether you’re pursuing an administrative appeal, or filing a lawsuit where you enjoin some government activity, that calls more attention to your issue.

You go beyond just being interested citizens?

Right. I can call up the press as Chicken Little and say “The sky is falling.” And they’d say “So, what are you doing about it?” (laughs)

To back up a little bit, what were the circumstances behind the name change from the Oregon Wilderness Coalition to ONRC?

It was because we did recognize that we were dealing with issues other than wilderness. Different staff people at the Wilderness Society have told me at various times that “This [issue] doesn’t have to do with wilderness.I1 We definitely organized around protecting roadless areas as wilderness by being the Oregon Wilderness Coalition, but we acknowledged that our concern was broader than that. There was quite a discussion about what to change the name to … Oregon Natural Resources Council–because it said Oregon and natural resources.

Was there any one person who had that inspiration?

I think James Monteith felt it was important to change the name. I remember a board meeting where it was discussed. He may have thrown out the words “natural resources and someone else put “Oregon” and “Council” on the ends. I remember him saying “Yeah, that works.I1 It [the need for a name change] had been discussed several months prior to that. I don’t remember what the other suggestions were, but there was some concern that the [name] change was still too big of a mouthful. I would guess that more people would respond to “ONRC than what it actually stands for. I think Randall O’Toole once responded with “So, what’s that going to be–on rock?” but that never caught on.

It seems to be an acronym that is the name.

Right … we will say, “the Oregon Natural Resources Council but we never say “the ONRC in our own dialogue. Some people put it, “The ONRC said today …” We say “ONRC said today …” but that’s neither here nor there.

Did the board feel that the wilderness focus was running out of gas?

No, I don’t think so. I think there was an acknowledgment that after the wilderness bill passed [in 19841 there was a perception that it would be years before additional

legislation would come. I remember Dennis Heyward, who was with one of the timber associations, making a comment publicly that environmentalists were never satisfied–that once we got the wilderness passed, then we changed our name to ONRC and went after the old growth. James Monteith went up to Dennis after we’d made this comment and said “Hey, Dennis, we changed our name two years ago.” He [Heyward] just waved his hand and said “it’s just business.” He acknowledged that he was grandstanding for his employer.

I don’t really remember any discussion concerning “what happens when the wilderness bill passes.” At the time we were supporting everybody’s proposal for roadless areas. The rough inventory [in Oregon] was about four million acres and total for every group who had drawn a line around something came to roughly 3.4 million acres. But a million acres was a kind of magic number that Congress wasn’t going to go past. Indeed, Mark Hatfield saw to it that they didn’t. So there was never really an acknowledgment in, say 1982, that the thing might pass and then what were we going to do … I’m sure that the public did not perceive the ancient forest aspect of wilderness as the main issue. There was really no media or public education that could be financed to get that message out. The ancient forest issue wasn’t acknowledged in the public’s mind until some of the litigation began. We described areas around the time of the

wilderness bill in terms of scenic features and recreational values, but the emphasis in our minds was the ecological aspects rather than recreation. Recreation has pretty much been secondary with ONRC, though we do know that it captures people’s interest. The ecological aspect of whether there was a salmon run or big trees was a big part of our interest in a particular roadless area. We were concerned, knowing there was this artificial million acre cap on the wilderness bill, that lakes not be included to use up those acres. For example, we have wilderness around Waldo Lake, but the lake itself was not [designated] wilderness. We could have done that, but we would have lost those acres in forest. We had pushed for years to protect the Oregon Dunes from off-road vehicles, [but] we didn’t want to draw lines around sand dunes because we weren’t going to trade trees for sand dunes. Our premier areas were the ones that had big trees. The debate, as Congress defined it, over roadless areas simply didn’t allow for the option of protecting areas as non-wilderness. Congress was looking at a wilderness bill, so the issue became “Well, there’s a clear-cut in there, or a road you’d have to cherry stem out.” There were debates at the time, particularly with the Sierra Club in Oregon, over areas that weren’t their idea of what wilderness should be. The Old Cascades, as it was called, the area north and south of the South Santiam River, wasn’t considered to be classic wilderness according to what Congress designated in 1964.

It had rolling hills with big trees, but no snow capped peak. We tried to emphasize that type of biodiversity in the wilderness debate.

Didn’t the 1978 [Endangered American Wilderness] Act sort of set that precedent, that areas didn’t have to be glaciated?

Right. Certainly the French Pete was probably the first big piece of older forest that was [consciously] added to the wilderness system. It became part of the Three Sisters Wilderness, which was initially designated in 1964. Even French Pete, when compared to the areas in the Santiam drainage, didn’t have as much biodiversity. Jerry Franklin once said that we saved the wrong area. French Pete has a lot of very big trees, but most of them are at the bottom of canyons. When you go up on the forest edges, there’s still mature forest but it’s not mega old growth that you have at the bottom of the creeks. The Santiam had big trees everywhere you went. What made French Pete work was that it was in proximity to Eugene. It was a place where you could take people from Eugene and so it became an issue. In Oregon’s history it was one of the first areas that people organized around, especially where big trees were to be saved for their own sake.

What explains the Wild Rogue and Kalmiopsis?

I’m not sure, but there were additions to the Kalmiopsis in the 1984 wilderness bill. We wanted to broaden the protection of the Kalmiopsis and didn’t want pieces of it that were serpentine and Jeffrey pine at the expense of the bigger trees. I remember Greg Skillman, Weaver’s aide, had some little place in the Kalmiopsis that he liked and put that piece in and we said, “No, Greg, no.” That is the kind of thing that makes it so difficult with coalitions. You build a coalition around saving wilderness areas, but when the deal gets cut everyone whose area is in is really happy and they want that bill no matter what. Everybody whose area is not included sees the bill as selling them out. Later the story got circulated, as much as we cared deeply about the Kalmiopsis, that we didn’t do anything to save it. Again, I would say that the reality was that we were trying to get the biggest trees we could, but were going to have to take a number of scenic mountain areas. The Sky Lakes, for example, was recommended by the Forest Service as wilderness years before and became part of the 1984 bill. For the most part, we saw the big trees as being the most threatened.

I don’t know of a big proponent for the Wild Rogue Wilderness [in 19781. It could have been that politicians wanted to capitalize on name familiarity. I remember Andy Kerr joking about how many times we’ve saved the Rogue River (laughs). Not to imply that it was ever disingenuous, but the fact that it had national name recognition helped carry the [I978] bill.

Since some of that wilderness is BLM land, I wonder if that presented any problems?

BLM has always been very difficult. We’ve looked upon BLM as being the anonymous agency which liked it that way. They didn’t want to have public recognition that you were on BLM lands. It has only been fairly recently that they have even made recreation maps for their lands or had entrance signing. That is unlike the Forest Service, which promotes that sort of recognition. BLM looked at the 0 & C Act as giving them license to be a timber management outfit and you weren’t supposed to mess with their lands for any kind of protective status. The problem we have with national conservation groups is the fact that most BLM land is not forested. There are about two million acres of [BLM land in] Oregon that are. Another problem is that you have to be an expert on that two million acres–which is a lot when you’re sitting in Oregon, but it’s a small part of the entire public lands when you’re in Washington, DC. From the national perspective you want to base your lobbying efforts where you get the greatest bang for the buck, and specializing in BLM was harder. What helped us with BLM was the interest that Mike Axline, who was first with the U of 0

Law Clinic, had in BLM. To this day the Western Environmental Law Clinic–which had to change its name and move off campus in response to pressure on the university by the timber industry–has taken cases for us involving BLM, while other attorneys doing environmental litigation did not. I really give them a lot of credit for having championed BLM [cases] .

They weren’t sexy enough?

For the most part, BLM has the lands that nobody wanted. In the case of the forested lands, the railroad didn’t keep their part of the bargain in building the Oregon and California Railroad so Congress took those lands back. They had to create an agency to manage those lands. There are many areas that are certainly scenic and deserve a protective status, but the emphasis and concern we’ve had on BLM lands shows a broader interest in terms of protecting biodiversity and ecosystems. You often have disjunct pieces that aren’t next to some scenic peak with some exceptions. The Table Rock Wilderness near Salem is BLM and got put in the 1984 wilderness bill. It wasn’t really old growth, but here was this little island of mature forest.

I am thinking about how ONRC represents continuity in the transition from wilderness to ancient forest as the key

environmental issue in Oregon. Did the [timber] industry have a group who served as the flagship for them?

One of the things we noticed early on, while the industry had various associations of varying sizes and different interests between large and small companies, was that wilderness was a unifying issue for them. Whatever their interests were, they all hated wilderness. They all saw it as a threat … what if it caught on in the public’s imagination? That became a sort of unifying rallying cry. From the information that they put out to the press, I don’t remember being able to distinguish that some [companies] were reasonable and others weren’t. I think Andy Kerr spent more time than I did in trying to understand the industry and putting them into categories. The media really didn’t make a distinction and I don’t think the public made a distinction, so I never spent a lot of time worrying about who the individuals and companies were. That’s not to say that Andy didn’t … he had a broader grasp because he’d been raised in Oregon and knew who those companies were.

Were there efforts made to divide and conquer as a way to hurt the other camp?

I can’t say there was ever a particular strategy, though we wouldn’t be averse to doing so. Anyone who was industry

oriented or a tree farmer who endorsed wilderness helped us. I remember James Monteith making the comment that “The irony of our culture is that the further away you were perceived to be from having a reason to protect the environment, the more credibility you had.” If some guy who was laying low as a mill owner, and suddenly got religion and said we should save the land, that person had more credibility than somebody who has been eating peas and carrots all their life and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

So it’s more beneficial to have Paul going to Damascus, as opposed to the true believer?

James could carry an analogy too far, but we said that if Jesus Christ made one tiny mistake, he’d get crucified. The media always loves it when an environmentalist clear cuts part of their land. Nevermind that they cut maybe 40 acres and that a CEO is responsible for laying low millions of acres. If you find somebody in the industry who is perceived to hold the contrary position, and if they say that this area is too special to log, that holds more weight than someone who has always believed that wilderness is valuable and been true and pure, if you will (laughs).

I certainly think James Monteith brought a lot of vision to the effort, but a lot of it was just responding to the

immediate situations and opportunities that availed themselves. That isn’t to say there wasn’t any bigger, overall vision. When people ask “Why did you pick the spotted owl?”–I don’t recall anybody sitting down and saying “Okay, here’s the strategy, we’re going to pick the spotted owl and make it the issue.” It was more like, I1Oh, this species is in trouble?” and “Oh, that would be a violation of law.” Of course we were going to defend it [the owl]. It is interesting that the salmon has the potential to affect far more acres than the spotted owl ever did. The salmon is lower down the evolutionary scale than the owl or a mammal, but the [human] lifestyle associated with it is on our side for once.

You can do something like go fishing?

Exactly. It would have been total disingenuous for us to go to the loggers and say “Just go along with this and we’ll let you cut some old growth.” We couldn’t say that. But we can say to the fisherman “Go along with listing the coho salmon and we’ll get ’em back some day and you can catch them.” So what’s the difference? The difference is animal populations can be sustained in the shorter rotation [period]. In other words, if you cut down an eight foot diameter tree and grew it back in five years, you’d probably say “okay.” But it takes 500 years (laughs), so it’s how

long are you willing to wait for the resource to be renewed after it’s been exploited. Nobody really articulates it that way, but that’s what it is about. You can view salmon a lot more easily as a renewable resource than you can ancient forest.

Isn’t there sort of a generational problem, like once the ancient forest is gone it takes so long for it to come back that the memory of the big trees standing is erased?

Exactly. That’s my general point. It’s so easy for the Forest Service to tell members of Congress how easily that the forest can be regenerated. You have to see the forest that they regenerate to recognize that it’s not the same thing. They’ll say we’re growing these trees at so many feet a year and in the congressman’s mind the Forest Service is doing what they said they would do. [With that sort of logic] it’s easy to mislead the public with “Oregon will never grow out of trees.” Well, we’ll always have plantations, but the plantations do not a forest make.

How did you get to D.C.? I know ONRC is always strapped for cash.

In the early days it was any way we could. I went back with James [Monteith] for the first time in 1982 and I remember

him having to beg, borrow or steal money any way he could. He told me that he went to his parents, and his father told him “no.” His father had paid for a bunch of his trips back, but this time he had to get somebody else to pay. We wound up staying with a friend of a friend. James and I slept in the same bed together (both laugh) in this little apartment in Washington, DC. It was funny at the time because his wife called one night. James was down making his list, like he did every night, of which roadless areas and how many acres to focus on the next day–this was based on what the aides had said that day so he could put more [acres] in [the next day]. Anyway, his wife called and I reminded her that I had slept longer with her husband than she had (laughs) . He had just gotten married and then jumped on a plane to DC. Needless to say, that marriage [eventually] ended (laughs). She wasn’t offended by my comments, but I was so struck with the irony I just had to say it (laughs) .

Have marital problems been a factor in the length of tenure that staff have had with ONRC?

The way people have survived was often because a spouse was able to meet the very basic necessities. I would say having children has made it impossible for many people. We have a staff member who has children. Ken Rait, who came just on

as our conservation director, has a 13 month old daughter. But for the most part, it has been really hard for people with kids to make it–both in terms of economic needs and time. No one is really expected to work 12, 14, 16 hours a day but I really feel where we’ve had the most success is where you put in that kind of time. There’s always more to do. Marc Prevost, who was a field rep for ONRC, had a foster kid as well as his own family. Terri, his wife, said “1 can live without him or I can live without the money, but I can’t live without both.” I don’t think our work has disrupted marital relationships–James is just who he is. The various spouses involved have known that the people they were married to had this passion. It wasn’t like a big change or something.

You’ve worn both hats in being on the board and staff of ONRC at various times. Is ONRC unusual in the sense that the board and staff work closely together?

I don’t know. When small organizations first form, it’s get by anyway you can. I’ve heard of nonprofit groups being board-driven or staff-driven. I think ONRC evolved as being staff-driven. It worked in the early part [of my time with ONRC] for me to be on the board. This was because I could better survive without financial compensation initially. Some of the staff, James Monteith and Andy Kerr, really

drove the organization. In smaller organizations you’re looking for board members who are dedicated to the issue. [It is important] that you’re not putting somebody on the board who has some feelings which are totally counter to that of the organization. There has to be a commonality of purpose to what you’re doing. As ONRC has grown and matured, the board has increasingly taken on more of its own identity–as it should. Philosophically, I would acknowledge that the board should run the organization and the staff works for the board. But when organizations are started, the founder is essentially the staff. The board members are there because of their respect for the staff person. In this case it was James Monteith, though he wasn’t the first director.

Did Holly Jones have much influence, or was that before your time?

Did you know him?

I’ve only heard of him through Ron Eber in Salem.

Holly was very much dedicated to protecting Oregon’s wilderness. He did not like the adversarial nature of the work. The way the Oregon Wilderness Coalition was created stemmed from the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society needing an ad hoc group in Oregon. This was before I was intimately involved with the organization, but James and Andy were working for a board dominated by people whose first allegiance was Co the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club. They sort of created a Frankenstein monster they couldn’t control and the staff, Andy and James, started arguing for positions that were stronger than what the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society were advocating.

That seemed to reach almost antipathy by the mid ’80s.

Well …yes. There were some conflicts because the major national conservation groups which had been organized around wilderness didn’t feel they could save forests in western Oregon and Washington. Not because they didn’t want to, and I don’t want to say they wrote it off. It wasn’t that cold and uncaring, but we were pushing for something that they decided wasn’t pragmatic. I always say there’s a fine line between vision and fantasy (both laugh). There’s a lot of visions which have come true, but there probably more that are in the realm of just dreams.

What happened in the Oregon Wilderness Coalition’s early history was that Andy and James ran up expenses totaling $5000 that they weren’t authorized to and the board dissolved the organization. I believe Holly was on that board. I don’t blame him for that, I think he was just caught up in “My God, this is fiscal irresponsibility.” The way the organization was structured, we had member groups which each had a governing council member who elected the board. All these different organizations were trying to protect their particular roadless areas. When the board fired the staff and dissolved the organization, the governing council simply appointed a new board and kept on going.

I didn’t know Holly real well. He was a librarian at the University of Oregon and strongly believed in wilderness protection. I just think some of the hardball politics didn’t suit his personality. David Simons, who is another fellow I never got to meet, had a vision that James described as the “Shining Cascades National Park.” This guy died of spinal meningitis. Holly had a whole bunch of David Simons’ black and white photos of the Three Sisters Wilderness. He came into our office [one day] and gave us those pictures. I sort of latched on to them because [I thought] nobody would appreciate their importance. Holly later died [in 19861 of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and at that point was barely able to speak. He was very much aware [then] that he would not be living much longer. I certainly respect him and don’t want to sound otherwise, but Holly was not a strong leader.

The Sierra Club was an interesting phenomenon in this whole thing. The Sierra Club in Oregon was not a strong organization. We ended up attracting the stronger advocates and that sort of left the Sierra Club with less stronger advocates. The problem that the Oregon Wilderness Coalition had in our early days [was] we’d be pushing for some roadless area out in eastern Oregon and the people who lived on the west side [of the Cascades] had never been there. So they did not endorse those areas. I remember going into the congressional offices and talking to the aides who would say “The Sierra Club doesn’t support this.” It wasn’t like they were against a proposal, they didn’t support it. In terms of DC language, as I caution our own staff, that’s taken [to mean] you’re against it. The Sierra Club in Oregon has been very strong on defense, but not so strong on offense.

Did this change when Liz Frenkel became more prominent?

Liz Frenkel would probably epitomize the person who was very strong on defense but always had a reason why it couldn’t be done on offense. She’s very respected by the club because of her years of dedication. The work she did on defense was very important and there would be more scars on the land if she hadn’t done what she did. We had a lot of problems with the Sierra Club in the ’80s’ but as we became more established this wasn’t really an issue. People didn’t turn to the club first anymore for their opinion, [making us] feel like we were undercut. The Sierra Club was not as keen for the litigation to save the spotted owl, they just didn’t want to get into a fray that would get hot and heavy.

Is that a reflection of the earlier separation between the legal defense fund and the Sierra Club proper?

I’m not sure but I do know that the public, of course, is forever confusing the Sierra Club with the legal defense fund. Each is forever explaining that they are a separate organization. I think the Sierra Club has gotten more credit, if you will, than they wanted for things that they were really not a part of, where in some cases [they] may not have even been plaintiffs on cases that the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund brought. But the headline in the newspapers reads “Sierra Club stops timber sale.” My understanding is that at some point the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund wishes to assume a different name to avoid that confusion.

What I was starting to say was … I think that if the Oregon Wilderness Coalition did not exist, who can say, probably more people who became involved with us would have otherwise been in the Sierra Club. It would have been a stronger organization than it was. Holly [Jones] was one of the major advocates, as you know, for the Diamond-Theilson. I guess it was Ron Eber and others who worked to have Holly’s Ridge named. You can see it as you drive across the Klamath Marsh–it’s the north side of a big canyon that runs east-west, perpendicular to the Cascade Range [near Thielson] . It’s also in the latest revised edition of Oregon Geographic Names.

It’s very recent?

Yes. It’s recent because it is almost a ten year process from the time that you make a nomination. I was involved with this for another peak that we named for one of our governing council members who was killed by a log truck. It’s called Dynamo Peak for Dinah Ross, and went through the entire names board bureaucracy. Once you get something named, which is difficult–it’s particularly difficult in the wilderness ironically enough. Nobody wants to name a peak for someone, only to have it logged or mined (both laugh). There aren’t many peaks which aren’t already named and those in the wilderness are more limited still. So it’s even harder to get something named in the wilderness and then the geographic names board for Oregon has to consider it.

Isn’t there another lag with USGS revising the map for an area?

The one place I had personal experience with was the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area. The Forest Service, assuming it’s on Forest Service land, can definitely help or hinder how rapidly that designation is made. It helps to have the cartographer willing to put it on the map.

Going back to ONRC, James Monteith had a very long run as executive director and suddenly left the organization. There’s not much explanation in print about that.

It’s one thing to be committed to an issue philosophically and it’s quite something else to run an organization. Running an organization is really more that somebody with business experience does. People with strong business experience are out making money by working for the corporation, not running advocacy organizations. I think it’s probably fair to say that the complexities of raising money to sustain the organization became more than what James was able to handle. I don’t have those skills or talents, and don’t aspire to do that [but] somebody needs to (laughs). I think it was a case where for a long time it was robbing Peter to pay Paul, in terms of hoping that the money you need to sustain the effort was going to arrive … that the next mailing or whatever would do it or you’d find a donor to write the check just in time. I think James had just too many plates spinning so to speak, and that led to some conflicts with the board. He’s still very respected by everybody who was ever in the organization and the board members [who served] at that time. I think being a financial manager was not his greatest strength. He was best at masterminding the vision for the organization and what our role should be in terms of conservation.

You asked in your questions why did ONRC have several executive directors [in short succession after Monteith]. About the time that James left, Andy [Kerr] had emerged as being the person most [publicly] associated with the organization. I would also guess that Andy Kerr’s name was better recognized by the populous than was ONRC or the Oregon Natural Resources Council. I think some of the directors who came after James were sort of in Andy’s shadow. They were the executive director, but Andy was in the public’s mind as the main person. I think that made things difficult. The executive director now, Marc Smiley, has to be very skilled and interested in just doing a lot of the fundraising for the organization. That becomes more and more the demand, rather than when you’re first starting with a few people sitting around a table editing the press release. That’s the difficulty with growing pains, in nonprofit organizations generally, whether they’re environmentally oriented or otherwise.

How has fundraising changed? Are foundations more of a factor than they once were?

Yes, in the context of how responsive we are to grass roots [groups] and forest activists. I don’t think any of our funding came from foundations in the early ’80s. As the ancient forest issue has been nationalized, foundations that were environmentally aware have gotten involved in funding. I don’t know what the percentages are, but a much bigger portion of our funding is from foundations than it was initially. I can believe and disbelieve the criticisms that have us being more receptive to the foundations than grassroots forest activists. But I do think that whoever pays the piper calls the tune, so to speak. In that sense, the foundations have made it easier for us to be a little more autonomous from our membership than would be the case if we were only looking to the activists for funding. What it comes down to is the activists don’t have any money. If you’re dependent upon them, you’ll be concerned that you’re addressing what they want.

We were criticized by the forest activists when the Clinton Forest Plan was about to be approved by the court. That plan had some ancient forest within what are termed “matrix.” The matrix is the cut zone, if you will. When the Clinton Administration first got into office, there were implied threats that they wanted to make sure that there was some timber supply and wanted to keep everybody happy. If we were to release some of the sales from the injunction, since they were going to be cut anyway, then [the thought was] we would have more favor with the administration. I think that ONRC took the most blame for it because we were felt to be the leader among the dozen or so plaintiffs in the spotted owl case, but all the plaintiffs agreed [to the deal]. That was dubbed by a lot of the forest activists as “The deal of shame.” Several years ago, I think it was 1994, we had a conference in Portland … Kathie Durbin witnessed all this, I think she wrote about it in Tree Huggers … Andy [Kerr] did this as a way for people to air their feelings. We thought it was better to let everybody say what they had to say and discuss this whole issue. One guy presented Andy Kerr with the golden chainsaw award for having given away forest. There were several people from the national conservation groups around and I remember feeling that he [Kerr] had died for their sins (both laugh). He was the guy who got crucified … Andy said afterwards, “The next time the nationals call me up and I say the grassroots won’t stand for it, they’ll know what I mean.” When Marc Smiley came on as executive director he said that he heard some people say to him “Gosh, are you sure you want to do that? The environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest eat their young.” It was sort of an interesting comment to me, since I realized it was definitely true, but I wondered if it was different anywhere else since this has been my only experience.

What I’m saying is, just in our recent history, that there’s a case where ONRC has softened, if you will. From the perspective of the commodity exploiters and the anti-environmentalists, they don’t even notice it. To them ONRC is the devil incarnate and to them if there’s any little blips in our position it’s not even worth recording. I think we tried accommodation, but I don’t think we benefited from doing so. David Brower made the comment that every time he compromised, he lost. I see that increasingly myself, [because] I don’t think you engender more favor by compromising.

There’s increasingly less pie to cut up?

Yes. I’ll give you another example of where we’ve been criticized. We have two corporations now, we have a [5011 (C) (4) which allows us to do unlimited lobbying and take [political] positions, so we endorsed Tom Bruggere [for senator] in the primary. He was clearly not a strong environmental candidate. The pragmatic argument for us [to endorse him] was that by being on his side early on, if he’d been the eventual winner–which he was not–we would have engendered more favor with him. I suppose that would have been the right decision had he won, although it might not have been. In other words, I think it confuses the public and confuses our members when we don’t do what we’re expected to do. It isn’t to say that you should always do what you’re expected to do, but I think we’ve tried a few things that were a little unconventional. That’s why they’re unconventional, because they usually don’t work. [This included] making deals with the Clinton Administration to give up old growth trees, and endorsing candidates–I think we hoped that Bruggere would have taken a stronger stance than he did, but were embarrassed by a couple of comments he made. I’ve said to Marc Smiley, our new executive director, and Ken Rait, our new conservation director, that they certainly have an opportunity to unite the grassroots [groups] and forest activists who we once worked with closely, by clearly defining ONRC1s position as “Yes, we want it all because there’s very little left.” I hope they do.

Andy Kerr has said that endorsements are a mistake, because once they’re given the group’s leverage decreases. He said that after the ’94 elections and meant, I think, that the candidate might not deliver that much since he already has the endorsement.

Possibly so. I think the philosophy behind the Bruggere endorsement was that by turning our backs on Harry Lonsdale and Jerry Rust–which we did–that he [Bruggere] would owe us for it. I think it works both ways. It was generally acknowledged in the Wyden campaign that the environmental community made the difference by making phone calls and so forth since it was so close. I’m still looking for the payback there–I don’t see it. Again, our restraints on the torture rack aren’t tightened down as much as they were, but we are still waiting for the proactive legislation. Politics is just what it is … what have you done for me lately … where everything is cold and calculated.

As a follow up to the ONRC Fund and Action separation, could that be looked at as an end result of restructuring the organization?

Yes. It was definitely an experiment. I think it’s been difficult for our members to grasp what we were doing. There was a period of time where we were looking to become more politically oriented, more along the lines of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, where we [would] spend a bigger portion of our time promoting candidates. That was at least entertained as a major direction and I think some of our members actually dropped off because they thought “That’s not what I do.” But you can’t say that whoever is elected to office is not important. Take Mark Hatfield, for example, if you [ONRC] used the law effectively, he would simply change the law. Ultimately you have to have politicians, who, if they’re not your champions, are not going to hurt you, or reverse any success you might have.

In setting up the other corporation [ONRC Action] we’ve tried to transfer our membership from the nonprofit tax deductible [ONRC Fund] to the nonprofit, non-tax deductible corporation [ONRC Action]. It’s been a lot bigger effort and it’s taken a lot longer than we thought. I don’t think we’ve lost popular support, but we’ve lost membership in doing it because it was confusing to people. I don’t know how important the $35 donation being tax deductible is, but I don’t think it was clear in some people’s minds what we were trying to accomplish. Right now we’re involved in a strategic planning process and this summer we’ll look at defining what our future role is. I don’t feel like that’s a big question mark–I think it is clear in terms of the salmon and the forest. I don’t think ONRC will become as political an organization that Andy Kerr and Sally Cross thought it might.

I’m glad that we have the 501 (C) (4) corporation. We were audited and found that we were within the lobbying limit of our (C) (3) , but were tired of worrying about it. The threshold is 20 percent of your funding [base] for lobbying. Oftentimes we have different nonprofit groups say that they can’t endorse a bill because they’ll lose their (C) (3) status. I say, “They came after us and didn’t get us.” Easily 80 percent of our time is spent trying to influence the administrative process with the different agencies. Again, we wanted to become more politically active so the ( C ) ( 4 ) enabled us to do it. We may have moved too fast in looking at it purely from a financial standpoint.

Would the membership still be a determining factor that way?

The membership is a factor, not only because of the political support, but also because of the financial support that’s necessary. The loss is something we will recoup, but we’ve had staff layoffs and the transition doing that [creating two corporations] was more difficult than anticipated. In hindsight, it would have been easier had we done it more slowly. But we’re through it now and don’t want to get rid of the (C) (4) [corporation] .

You mentioned the staff layoffs. Do you ever recover staff [members] when something like that happens?

People who have been laid off usually go on with their lives and find something else to do. They generally aren’t available to come back–I really can’t think of somebody who we hired back.

Do you tend to hire within a network? Are there ways to tap a broader cross section of people than only activists?

I’d say since the late ’80s that the hiring we’ve done has been publicly advertised. We’ve tried to open it up by running ads in newspapers when there are openings. With the hiring of the executive director and the conservation director, we looked at Ken Rait for either position. It really wasn’t an open process at that point, but that’s because they [ONRC1s board] had gone through this whole process for months in looking for an executive director.

So it’s not a case where the organization becomes an extension of someone’s personality?

I think it’s becoming less so. The force of the founding staff members’ personalities has become less as the organization began to grow. When we were smaller, their personalities dominated the policies and practices of the organization. Not that they didn’t make any mistakes … we wouldn’t be where we are today without them having made some good decisions. As the organization has grown, and as we came to the situation where first James [Monteith and now Andy [Kerr] have left, that the board took a much longer and harder look at finding people who could fill those shoes as best they could and also had some of the broader financial, fundraising, and developmental skills.

Does the board look at you as a carryover from those days when leaders were primarily conservation advocates? I have a little bit of autonomy, I would say, because I’m a veteran, if you will. There’s only one other staff member, Tim Lillebo, who’s been with ONRC longer than I have. I’ve told him that if he doesn’t stop smoking cigarettes, I’ll outlive him (both laugh).

I don’t know if this has been verbalized so much, but I know some people wonder “What exactly does Wendell do down in Klamath County?” A lot of the issues regarding the wetlands and wildlife populations are really different than what our constituency developed around. They organized around saving forests rather than saving refuges and wetlands. I’ve taken every opportunity recently [to do educational work about this]. We did a tour for some foundation [representatives] and [ONRC] board members so that they can see what I’m doing. They were impressed [to see] that they are not simply funding some hare-brained thing that I wish to do. What I’m saying is that I feel accountable to show what I’m doing has some results. I don’t think I can be carried, in effect. Just because I did some grunt work early on, they don’t owe me. I do, though, acknowledge that I have some autonomy because of that reason. There may also be a feeling that “If hers managed to hold on this many years, he must be doing something right.” I’m assuming I get some credit in that regard. It’s interesting to me that while we are doing the strategic planning, which is the catch phrase or whatever, supposedly all of our different programs and policies are on the table. We’re doing interviews with focus groups and individuals to ask what is ONRC doing right, and what are we doing wrong. One of the comments I’ve made to my [executive] director is that it’s a lot like the top ten songs on the radio. They become the top ten because they are played the most often (laughs). If nobody’s heard about the marshes in Klamath County, then nobody knows that it’s a significant issue. I feel it’s still a case where we make the decision, but we listen to what people have to say. There’s always a pragmatic part of it–that you can’t work on something that nobody cares about. If you say that I’m identifying a new issue and we call this to the public’s attention, then at some point the public has to respond.

So ONRC has avoided being labeled as “Willamecentric?”

I’m sure that roughly half our membership is in the Portland Metropolitan Area because that’s where most people in the state live. Our history has been that we were out arguing for desert wilderness before the Oregon Natural Desert Association was formed. We were advocating for roadless areas in eastern Oregon when the Sierra Club didn’t know these places existed. I don’t see that [being Willamette Valley-centered] as a creditable criticism. When I moved to the Klamath Basin, Todd Kepple said “This is interesting.” What he was hearing was that they [environmentalists] were in an ivory tower in Eugene telling us what we should do in the Klamath Basin. Now [that] you have a staff member here, they have to make up other reasons why they hate you.

We’ve been willing to send people to different areas of the state and work on issues where we’ve seen that there’s been major conservation needs. We see far more needs than we have staff and resources to cover. While our office is in Portland for various reasons–administrative, where the politicians are–we’ve by no means specialized on Portland Metropolitan Area issues. In fact, I remember the irrigators in Tule Lake saying to Andy [Kerr], “Why don’t you restore wetlands in the Portland Metropolitan Area?” I think it’s true that in general organizations are responsive to where their funding comes from. Most of our membership funding comes from the Portland Metropolitan Area, but I think those people recognize most of what needs to be done in this state is elsewhere. There’s a big effort by Portland Audubon to protect urban wild areas, so there’s definitely major things to be done in that arena. We’ve worked on the Bull Run watershed since there’s ancient forest. It is important to people in Portland and interesting in the sense that they don’t get to go there and recreate. Their drinking water is still close to their hearts, but most people I think might not make that association between Bull Run and what comes out of their tap. That isn’t something which is thrown up at us very often. We were out looking at Baker City and the lands in their watershed, too. Regna Merritt worked just as hard for that part of the state as she did for Portland’s watershed.

Did ONRC have a role in the [logging] controversy over Ashland’s watershed?

Not as much. We’ve talked with the folks there, but other groups such as Headwaters and the Rogue Group Sierra Club are taking the lead. Talk to Regna, she’s worked all over the state on that sort of thing. There are so many issues in southwest Oregon, more than we can cover. Headwaters is headquartered right in Ashland, so they often take the lead with those types of forest issues.

It’s whoever can fill the niche best?

The fact that I’m not in Ashland is because Headwaters is there. If they didn’t exist, I may have located over there rather than Klamath Falls. I don’t know that, but it’s probable. . I’m saying to people l8You’re talking about the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion, [so] why are you leaving out the headwaters of the Klamath River? (laughs) This makes your story more compelling, that you have the largest wintering bald eagle population and the largest waterfowl concentration in North America.” You have the Klamath River running through the middle of it, so just pull it over the hill [join it to the bioregion] and you can even throw Crater Lake into the pot, along with its 700 or however many [plant] species Peter Zika came up with for the park.

Before you relocated [to the Klamath Basin] did James Monteith carry the flag for the basin?

I never thought he was any more or less interested than in any other part of the state, but he did grow up in the area. When I discovered this place, it wasn’t so much his doing. I visited Lava Beds National Monument on Memorial Weekend in, I think, 1987 and I came back and said “Wow! Have you been there?” “Been there?” James said, “When I was a kid I would coil up a dead rattlesnake and scare people as they walked around the first bend in Captain Jack’s Stronghold.” This was really his back yard, so he was aware of the basin’s features. His father drove a Model A Ford out on Klamath Lake when it was frozen and also to the top of Mount Scott (both laugh incredulously). That little road which I guess goes, up there has fallen apart as you get higher up the mountain. Anyway, James was always interested in the [Klamath Basin] area and its defense, but I would say no more so or no less other parts of the state. When I moved down here, he had left ONRC formally. He was asked by a newspaper about me and said “He’s perfect–I want a bulldog down there.” Stub Stewart, who is a mill owner in Cottage Grove, said “1 really feel sorry for the people of Klamath Falls (laughs).

Did some of the issues you brought to light more recently on the refuges represent the product of some research–or were they known already and you amplified them?

They took a lot of research. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund sent a letter to the Interior Department in January demanding that the changes be made concerning agriculture, who in our belief is dominating the management of the refuges in violation of federal law. Interestingly, the irrigation districts sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Fish and Wildlife Service asking for any information and communications that they [USFWS] had with us. Their implied assumption, I guess, was that [the] Fish and Wildlife Service was feeding us all this information about the illegal pesticide use on the refuges and how water was being mismanaged. My comment was “God, I wish it had been that easy.” A lot of bureaucrats in the Fish and Wildlife Service took the view that anything embarrassing to the agriculture community, or showing that the wildlife was not being adequately provided for, was politically sensitive. We’ve had people in the Bureau of Reclamation and the Fish and Wildlife Service at various levels supply us with information once they saw what we were doing.

I moved down there four years this June and have wondered “Gosh, why did it take me so long [to educate himself about the issues in the basin]?” I’ve thought that somebody who’s smarter could have figured it out faster, but there’s a lot going on. It takes time to develop constituencies. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund is working with us and now we’ve developed a coalition with 13 other conservation groups in California and Oregon, [along with] some of the national groups who are getting involved with the issue. It’s just taken a while to do it. In trying to raise this issue, I’ve been struck by [the comparison with] what we were doing in the early 1980s. I remember James Monteith used to say that his greatest fear was that they’d cut the whole forest down and nobody would notice. It was like being a voice in the wilderness saying that there’s an ecosystem out there and we’re destroying it. All these other issues are important, but what about Oregon’s forests? It’s the same way with these refuges and the water diversions, along with the destruction of the marshes and the precipitous decline of the waterfowl numbers this century. The constituency for these refuges has been the more mild mannered Audubon chapter members. While they very much care about the environment, they haven’t taken the time to do the things that have to be done to protect the resource.

Does a lot of publicity work have to be done before that image gets transmitted broadly? I was thinking of [howl the ancient forest issue [was elevated].

I think that’s a big part of it and what I feel I’m counting on is building constituencies for the basin. Everybody likes wildlife who has any interest in the environment at all. In some ways that’s easier to talk about than what the mycorrhizae fungus was doing for the health of a forest. Not that this was ever a sexy issue in the forest, either.

I think the wildlife is what it’s built around, and is the reason that my board and staff agreed to have me down here. We don’t know of any other area in the country that you can better make an argument for protecting endangered species, [that] wildlife in general is good for the economy as well as the ecology. We have to do some economic analysis fairly soon to show the value of the wildlife resources. The Wilderness Society, for example, has an economist, Ray Rasker, who looks at communities such as ones around Yellowstone Park. He asked people on the street about their economy, [who responded] “Well, it’s 90 percent lumber and grazing.” Little did they know that [commodities accounted for] 20 percent and the other 80 percent is from retirees and tourists. We think you could do the same thing in the Klamath Basin in the context of the refuges and Crater Lake National Park being analogous to Yellowstone. But that’s just a small part of it, because if you look at the Klamath River which has provided about a third of the Chinook salmon caught in the ocean. If you look at all of the recreation sports fishing jobs along the whole length of the Klamath River, in addition to the commercial fish catch from Fort Bragg to Florence, and add the economies associated with the entire Pacific Flyway that concentrates in the Klamath Basin, and how the Klamath Basin [habitat] affects people who look at or shoot birds from Canada to Mexico, the economic values of the so-called amenities in this area are remarkable. To us, it is penny wise and pound foolish to say that we have to log off a hillside or grow these potatoes instead of flooding this national wildlife refuge. There probably aren’t any other places where you can say [as emphatically] that what we do in such a small geographic area could affect such a broad region and number of economies. We see that as a contribution to what the national groups have been saying for years–that what is good for the environment is good for the economy.

Might there be room for another guidebook of the type you wrote [on ancient forests], but slightly different in orientation?

Possibly. Maybe it’ll come from different sources. We couldn’t raise the money to do a color brochure because they cost thousands of dollars, but I was very pleased that the San Francisco Wildlife Association did a 30 page booklet on the refuges with color pictures and a good text. I got to provide editorial suggestions. It gives the refuges a sense of place. I’ve jokingly said that I could do a guidebook, on my personal time, on Crater Lake National Park. It would be called “What to do after you’ve seen the lake (laughs) because the park [service] doesn’t talk about it. The lake is very spectacular, and I wouldn’t do the geological interpretation any differently because that’s what you’re most struck with, but there’s lots of places in Crater Lake National Park that people just do not know about. I’ve been doing these little trips in the basin to get public awareness and last year we did “Crater Lake’s secret waterfalls” (laughs). I had so many calls I had to do it two weekends in a row.

Will you do it [the trip] again?

Probably. I’m working on my August and September schedule right now. Seasonal people [who work at the park] understandably tell visitors what’s around the rim. I came in the north [entrance] gate once and said I was going to go to these waterfalls below Mount Scott … it says Anderson Springs on the map. A lot of places called springs are really very nice waterfalls. Their [park employees] lower jaws drop when I tell them what’s there (laughs). I think there’s a couple of other places in the park where some trails [leading to them] wouldn’t have a big impact.

To discuss the Klamath Basin issue more, there are three legs to the stool of concern, if you will. [One is] keeping water in Upper Klamath Lake, which is not only for the endangered fish but also for the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge–which is basically drained every year as it surrounds the periphery of Klamath Lake. It’s sort of like heresy for anybody to point that out. The refuge [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] wouldn’t even say it. Last year we said it and got the Associated Press and the Oregonian to come out and take pictures of me standing out in the middle of the [supposedly inundated] wildlife refuge. A 14,000 acre wildlife refuge stood without water in it while a 200 acre restoration project [on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge] was being dedicated in the parking lot at Captain Jack’s Stronghold [located in Lava Beds National Monument]. Another issue has been water for the lower basin refuges [Tule Lake and Lower Klamath], and the third thing has been water in the Klamath River itself. We’ve probably focused more on the lower basin refuges because we felt that there has been less support [for them]. The downstream tribes are very concerned about flows [in the Klamath River], as are the commercial and sports fishermen, because of the salmon. The Klamath Tribe has been more involved in claiming water rights and [expressing] their concerns in Upper Klamath Lake. There’s been less demonstrated support for the lower basin refuges. The Lower Klamath refuge, according to the refuge staff, has the largest concentration of waterfowl of any place in the Pacific Flyway, and, they added, possibly the largest concentrations of anywhere in North America (emphasis on last two words).

When people look at these areas, the say “Gosh, it’s lovely to see all the birds, but it’s so manipulated.” Were it not for the fact that waterfowl are greatly adaptable to agricultural lands which we’ve so modified, they wouldn’t be here at all. It’s still an incredible resource. The Klamath Marsh and Upper Klamath refuges are, yes, more natural and not as manipulated, but the Upper Klamath produces 4,000 ducks a year versus 40,000 on the Lower Klamath. It’s still important, I should add, to protect areas that don’t produce as many ducks per acre.

Are restoration projects a viable part of the equation? In the ancient forest battle you were largely defensive, whereas restoration might be a way of taking an offensive role, like with your willow planting.

It is in the sense that it’s what can be done for the particular resource. In other words, with waterfowl populations you can show a major response when you restore wetlands. In terms of a broader vision of wanting to restore more of the viability of the whole Pacific Flyway, the Klamath Basin because of the concentration of wildlife and its land values in comparison to the Central Valley [of California] is cost effective. Our conclusion is, from talking with groups such as Ducks Unlimited and others who have looked at every refuge in Oregon, that focusing on the

Klamath Basin is where you get the biggest bang for the buck. There still is a lot left here. As much as people hate taxes, my idea is to have a real estate transfer tax. When you sold a house, you’d pay $100 which would go to creating a wetland. If you could go around the dike on your bicycle or whatever, and every spring and fall have a flock of birds fly over your land, then people would be happy to invest that $100 because they’d have a tangible result.

Sort of like Arcata, where the public has access [to a publicly funded wetland]?

Exactly. Areas which have historic wetlands in interior valleys were the most productive for waterfowl for the same reason they are productive for agriculture. They had the richest nutrients and warmer growing conditions, so restoring these areas is really needed. The thing that is really exciting is it really can be done.

Where agriculture helps wildlife, it’s often just a happy circumstance because it worked out in the farmer’s interest. If it weren’t in their interest, they wouldn’t do what works for wildlife. Some of the flooding for rice, where they were formerly doing field burning in the Sacramento Valley, has been tremendously beneficial to waterfowl. A lot of the waterfowl, as the Fish and Wildlife Service says, that used to go south to California now winter in the Klamath Basin. They don’t go further south because there isn’t anything for them. It also provides sort of an artificial situation where we think things are better than they really are in the Klamath Basin because we have all this wildlife. We should have that, and there should be more than that which goes further south, too.

Would a shift toward wild rice as an agricultural commodity be more helpful than cattle grazing or other uses?

I think so. Things that provide food for wildlife [will help]. This is sort of Wildlife Management 101 … I hear the farmers announce the geese are in their field and how wonderful it is … Wildlife Management 101 is food, water, and shelter. You’ve provided the food, what about the other two? All these things have potential provided that it’s looked at in terms of what the greater need is–you just can’t say that I’m providing food for a certain part of the year. The eagles, for example, right now in the Klamath Basin … there are three major eagle wintering feeding areas, but two of the three really have dropped off in the last few years. The three areas were, in addition to the Lower Klamath refuge–which is still the most viable and important area–are the farm fields north of the Lower Klamath refuge and Tule Lake. Tule Lake has lost eagles because of the dominance of agriculture, where the numbers of waterfowl have drastically declined and so that much less eagle use. They were getting lots of eagle use north of Lower Klamath refuge because the practice had been to flood those lands right at the time the eagles were here, which was in January. Now they’re flooding them earlier for various reasons. The flooding flushes out small mammals–rodents– that the eagles would grab. [The flooding] also makes it attractive to waterfowl, which are the eagles’ main food source in the wintertime. You still have that food being provided by the flooding in October and November, but the problem is that eagles aren’t here. It’s a case where agriculture is always ready to take credit where there’s a picture of the swans sitting in the field with Weyerhaeser’s mill in the background. The Herald and News loves those kind of pictures. It [the provision of food] has to be done in conformity with what the wildlife’s needs really are, rather than the way, in our opinion, its been [with] what’s good for agriculture. Sometimes, yes, it happens that it still works for wildlife. Where that [agriculture coming first] offends us the most is when that seems to be the philosophy that’s governing the management of the national wildlife refuges. The emphasis should be [on] what’s good for wildlife first and that’s what we think the law says.

Has it been the case with current managers [of the refuges] that they are handicapped by long term leases given [to] agriculture that happened a decade, or two decades, ago?

They’ve been handicapped because [of] the peculiar law to the Klamath Basin. It’s called the Kuchel Act and it says that agriculture is allowed, but has to be consistent with wildlife purposes. In our minds, it was an acknowledgment that, in this century, agriculture so dominates the landscape that, without some of the food that’s provided as a residual byproduct of the agriculture, that wildlife would not have the food. But the abuses we’ve seen where agriculture has come to dominate most clearly the Tule Lake refuge, [which is] where waterfowl numbers have just precipitously declined to almost nothing. It has gotten skewed that way because the agricultural interests were in control of the rural community. When I was in college, the Tule Lake – Lower Klamath [refuges] served as a wildlife mecca and everybody still assumes it is. I’m still surprised to find articles that state it has six million birds. Yes, it did in 1960, but in 1997 the six million that used to peak in the refuges is now only one million. It was in the lore, and people kept repeating the number without thinking. So I call [the writers] up and say “Where did you get that number?” The leases are a problem because where they have agricultural lands around Tule Lake, we don’t have marshes anymore. With Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge you have a sump, which is a reservoir, and then you have ag lands. The casual observer first coming to the refuge would not imagine that those agricultural lands were even on the refuge because they look like rows of potatoes and sugar beets. Not what you’d think a national wildlife refuge should look like, therefore it’s about as productive [for wildlife] as any other agricultural field.

Has it been the case with current managers [of the refuges] that they are handicapped by long term leases given [to] agriculture that happened a decade, or two decades, ago?

You can’t tell, other than at the Stronghold, what happened in 1873 because of the tremendous change in the lake.

It’s always possible, in whatever the federal ownership is, to tell that story as part of their history. The refuge does to a limited extent. I think they’re getting a little more spine to tell [the public] what’s really going on, basically because they’re getting a little more political support from the conservation community. You can see the story, but you really have to look for it, I would say. The Lava Beds monument, in discussing how the natives were dislodged when they were, being cut off from the lake. You would ask, “Where’s the lake?” It’s like miles way, well, now they’ve restored this little piece of the lake next to where it was. Similarly, the refuge has this little interpretive thing for a year [now] where you push a button and it shows one quarter of this field–like here’s how many ducks there were in 1950, then next decade a fourth of those are gone, and the next decade of that total is gone and so forth. They have those little interpretive things, but they usually stop short of pointing the finger. Somebody would have to have a very special interest to even ask the question and if you were to walk up to their interpretive people and ask the question, they’d think, “What if this is somebody from the agriculture industry just trying to see what I would say?” You still don’t get the answer.

This little booklet I just mentioned that the refuge came out with actually has a picture showing the dry marsh with the mud cracked and caked during the summer. Why are they doing that now, [since] they didn’t do it before? They’re doing it for two reasons: one is that they know they have more political support from the conservation community, but secondly I also think that even the refuge managers recognize that [they] look pretty dumb when standing here calling this a wildlife refuge and there isn’t any wildlife. At some point they have to say something. Sure it [may be] forces beyond their control, but did you ever say there’s a problem? When I’ve said to the refuge folks, “Okay, here’s 1960 on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge–3.5 million birds during the peak migration and here’s today, less than 200,000. Connect the dots and where does it go? When are you guys going to get excited?” One guy said to me, “I think we’ve got another ten years.” “Well,” I said, “I’ve never seen the agencies want to drop the boom all at once. If you’ve got ten years, you better get started right now because it’ll take you ten years to turn it around at the pace you move when you think you’re in high gear.” I just keep hearing the engine cranking. We haven’t engaged the wheels yet (laughs) .

Did it take some research or experience to get used to dealing with the Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife after being used to the Forest Service and BLM?

A little bit, but I’m sure my experience with the Forest Service and BLM in dredging out their problems [helped]. In some ways it’s the same approach. It’s asking the questions and keep asking when something isn’t right. As an example, when I first came down to the basin it was marsh restoration, rah, rah. We looked at the ag lands and [asked] “Why do you have these agricultural lands?” [The response was] “The Kuchel Act says that we have to.I1 And then I read the Kuchel Act one day and found it doesn’t say that at all–it said that agriculture was permitted but had to be consistent with wildlife. For years I was told that we have to have this [or that] because the law says it. The refuge would say it as much as the farmers or the Bureau of Reclamation. They were all hiding behind that. So then we asked, “What do they do with crops?” Well, they spray them. [We then asked] “What governs what you’re going to spray?” [The response was “We have this committee and it’s supposed to review it.” [We asked] Where’s what they reviewed? [The response was] “Well, they don’t review it, really, we [let them] go ahead and spray.

Similar to a BLM advisory council?

If you play their game [and ask] whether they are following the rules and find, no, they’re not, they just change the rules. So that’s why administrative solutions have never really been our [preference]. We have to demonstrate to Congress that we’ve tried to play the game and here’s why the game is skewed and so this is why you, Congress, need to change the law to tighten the rules where you’ve left too much discretion and the commodity interests always have their way. There was a committee that was set up where all federal agencies which use toxic chemicals had a representative from each agency. This was in Washington, D.C. We found out that they were not approving the pesticides that were being used on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath refuges. Sometimes they [the pesticides] would be submitted to the group [the committee in D.C.] but before they had a chance to review these chemicals, they were approved by lower levels in the agency [U.S. Fish and Wildlife]. The highest level it ever went was [the state office in1 Sacramento, if it ever got out of the basin at all. We had Freedom of Information Act requests showing that they [the Fish and Wildlife Service] were looking the other way as much as the Bureau of Reclamation was, so we got Kathie Durban, who was with the Oregonian at that time, and she did a big story the first year I moved down here [1993].

Her story embarrassed them into having to restrict a lot of the worst pesticides and the organic phosphates. There have even been wildlife die-offs, with bald eagles having been found dead, and still nobody did anything. What the policy now is that the agency has [to have] contaminants experts who review what is and isn’t compatible for wildlife, but as a concession to the agricultural interests, they are making most of those decisions within the basin. I’ve said, “Look, that’s how you got yourself in this problem in the first place.” It still works while we’re here to challenge them and say “Why this chemical when the experts say this is bad?” And so on and so on … By having the review within the basin, it allows the agricultural community to pound on the heads of the local decision makers. We’re saying this needs to be broadened so that the decisions aren’t made just locally. Those people [refuge managers] are under tremendous political pressure. When they go out to dinner, they walk in and see somebody staring at them and mad because they [the manager] made the right decision. While I appreciate that’s the role of various watchdog groups, I still believe the way the system is supposed to work is that watchdog groups shouldn’t have to make bureaucrats, who are drawing a salary, do [their job]. I also acknowledge the squeaking wheel gets the grease, so it’s my job to keep squeaking.

So bureaucracies respond to outside forces?

They do, and there’s a perception, especially when I talk to people in the media, that somehow I’m [part of] this incredibly well-funded environmental campaign.

That reminds me of the article you wrote in Wild Oregon about how [in responding to a rumor] Wendell Wood makes $100,000 a year (both laugh) .

Okay. I forgot … exactly (laughs again).

It gave the piece a lot of levity.

We’ve had fun from time to time. Sometimes it’s amazing what people come up and say they’ve heard. You just kind of say “Wow” Somebody tells it to somebody else and somebody else believes it.

[short break]

If we could back up just a little bit…You’ve had a number of ideas that sometimes get published. I’m particularly interested in the one about public heritage trees.

It was sort of a fun idea, [but] I don’t know whether it’s gone anywhere. Actually, [the originator was] Ginny Jayne, who is [the] daughter of Dayton Hyde of Yamsi book notoriety … she and Sally Wells started this several years ago. I think you saw the article in Wild Oregon. I was simply picking up on their idea because they were noticing how you were seeing fewer and fewer of those bigger trees. They were talking about a kind of hierarchy of matriarch trees, or heritage trees, of all different diameter sizes. It was simply a way of trying to develop some public identity for this resource and how special it is. I’ve heard the Klamath tribe talk about six and eight foot diameter ponderosa pines. The same thing, I guess, with John Wesley Powell, who was certain when the railroad came in that all those big ponderosas on the east side of Crater Lake would be gone and, for the most part, they are.

His idea, I know, was for the park to be much larger than it is.

Exactly. I put the Desert Creek area in the old growth guide, though I don’t think a lot of people go there. That area, I guess, is a RNA [Research Natural Area]. You can walk from the Chemult Ranger District and by stepping across that line [the national park boundary] walk into a real forest versus a managed one. I don’t know of any other place this far west or on the east slope of the Cascades where you can see a better example of what a real ponderosa pine forest looks like than on the northeast side of Crater Lake National Park. The early explorers talked about how those kind of trees dominated this area. It’s always amazing to me when the Forest Service says here’s this one 24 inch tree growing to this other 24 inch tree and we’ve got to cut one of them down because one is going to take the water and nutrients from the other. What if they cut all the little trees around it and left the two big ones? The big ones we want to leave aren’t really the biggest. You’ve done research on some of the articles we’ve written in Wild Oregon, and when you say we have these things published, we publish our own stuff. The problem is how we get out to the broader public. In expanding beyond the wilderness issue and beyond the ancient forest issue, and here are some trees of this [large] diameter, then let’s protect them.

What are some other strategies to save eastside forests?

In many ways, the eastside forests are harder to get a handle on than the westside [of the Cascades]. There hasn’t been a “spotted owl” [indicator species for old growth] on the eastside, [though] there are certainly several [state listed] wildlife species like goshawk, white-headed woodpeckers, black-backed woodpecker, and [pine] marten that are more mature/older forest-dependent. The westside protection [campaign] and the consciousness about old growth has spilled over to the eastside, in the sense that they were cutting it all down like they were [on] the westside. Even though the spotted owl protection did not pertain to the eastside, other than a little bit of the east slope of the Cascades, the owl issue heightened awareness that this was a forest ecosystem and that if the old growth was important on the west side, then older trees in the eastside ecosystem were important, too. That’s led to greater consciousness, with some political pressure. We appealed the Forest Service’s plan to administratively protect old growth on the Winema National Forest because they hadn’t protected enough. I remember one of the foresters in the Chemult Ranger District saying I1We were protecting old growth and you appealed us.” Well, that led to a suit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council where we lost at the [federal] district court and the ninth circuit [court of appeals] because they [the judges] maintained that we didn’t have enough information to show there were violations under

the National Forest Management Act in terms of species viability. There wasn’t enough evidence to show that the agency’s decisions were harming the environment. After that suit the Natural Resources Defense Council threatened to file a suit, which led to the Forest Service adopting what is generally termed screens,^ [which means] some of the biggest and oldest trees were [to be] protected, or at least not cut. Some of the timber sales prepared initially under Section 318 and with the recent salvage rider went ahead. The big old growth ponderosa pine just south of the Klamath Marsh refuge had potential eagle nesting and roosting trees along one mile of the [Silver Lake] highway were cut down under the salvage rider.

Eastern Oregon has been more difficult [to protect] … we’ve also been arguing that, in order to maintain ponderosa forests, that fire needs to be reintroduced into the forest ecosystem. There have also been the efforts, of course, to inventory and describe where ponderosa pine old growth is like on the west side. What may ultimately evolve next will be some sort of a legislative proposal. Whether our [Oregon’s] delegation will support it initially remains to be seen and is somewhat in doubt. I think there’s definitely a continued emphasis and interest on the eastside forests in terms of their habitat values. I don’t know if there’s going to be any one silver bullet. Public

consciousness is ultimately what it’s all about, but there are still issues in terms of some of the wildlife species I’ve mentioned and certainly, in some cases, salmon and rainbow trout.

I know that some of the agencies have talked about scenic byways. Could those be [part of] a strategy. I know you’ve talked about tying the east entrance of Crater Lake into a sort of byway system.

There’s any number of smaller or minor strategies to increase public awareness about the issue. Our feeling has been the public doesn’t care about things they don’t know, but just because you see somebody walking down a hiking trail doesn’t save it, either. But if you don’t have somebody walking down a trail you sure won’t save it, that’s for sure. Crater Lake National Park has been of interest because you can see with aerial photographs or on the ground as to how the Forest Service clear cuts have defined the boundary around the park. One of the things we’ve toyed with is simply the suggestion that if the park [service] would look at opening the old east entrance into the park, [perhaps] that give some economic advantage to, say, Chiloquin, where people would otherwise turnoff before that exit [on highway 971 to enter the park. We wouldn’t want to send people to the east entrance at Pinnacles if the park

[service] felt there were some biological harm that would be done. If people saw the Forest Service’s clear cuts along that entrance [road], that would give them some cause [to reflect on] what is the function of the park and about the difference in management philosophies [between the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service].

I was thinking about the publicity and effort made to get public support for protecting more ancient forest. What led to the decisions concerning you being the author of the guidebook which came out in 1991, and for ONRC to publish it?

It was part of what I was describing as an educational effort to increase public awareness of those forests by telling people where they could go see it. We sought to include an example in each of the BLM districts and national forests [located] in the state. The guidebook we did [focused on] particular areas that we were trying to protect. There was a lot of editorial comment compared with most guidebooks as to what the good and the bad was. In other words, it was very hard to go through one of the premier ancient forest groves in Oregon without driving through one of the premier clear cuts. The Gold Beach Ranger District [staff] read the book and objected to it because of our editorial comments about their logging practices and decided they did not want to sell the book with their publications.

Has it [the book] been a financial success?

I think it more than paid for itself. I remember when we [ONRC] were having some tight times financially in the ’90s and our bookkeeper said we made this amount of money this month from sales of the Walkins Guide. There were a few months that it really helped our financial situation, not that it floated us, but the real purpose was [as] an educational conscious-raising [device]. We [ONRC] felt that we made enough money on the book that it was not, by any means, a financial drain. There were a few months there, when revenues [derived from it] arrived at a critical time.

Was there any connection with William Sullivan’s book [Exploring Oregon’s Wild Areas] since he does mention ONRC?

Yes. Interestingly enough, he began doing his book about the same time [that] I began researching mine. We had an arrangement with him where we made our files on different roadless areas available [for his use]. We initially got some small percentage of his profits. We worked with him closely because he know that we were a major source of information about where different areas were [located].

Part of the arrangement was that when he got more information bout some of these roadless areas, he added to the files–which I think are still in Eugene. I remember I did a slide presentation with him in Eugene, where he talked about his book and I talked about mine. I remember laughing because this was what I expected–I don’t blame him at all– he didn’t want to discuss the timber management part of it and, of course, I did.

Have these areas ever suffered by [conservationists] calling attention to them?

We would run into this attitude within the conservation community from people you talk to, but I don’t think it was ever really a controversy. You do hear “Oh, I don’t want to tell the public about that because that’s a place I go.” We basically reject that kind of argument out of hand because it [the publicity] and the increased recreational use which goes with it is a small price to pay for saving the area. If nobody knew about it [the area], then it could be more easily logged. Where we’ve called attention to the issue of timber theft has been more where it was in a wilderness or something. More often than not, the Forest Service has acknowledged [the problem] when they’ve found it. For the most part, conservationists have not been motivated to monitor timber sales because once it’s cut down nobody’s interested. The Forest Service from time to time tries to interest various groups in going out to see how they do it [log], but why would anyone want to see a beautiful portrait with little squares cut out of it? They tell me that I won’t notice it … Where timber theft has been acknowledged, there were a few cases where conservationists have discovered it. Paul Dewey found some on the Sisters Ranger District, I remember, but I think in most cases the Forest Service has admitted [that it happened]. I think they recognize that not to admit it and have it discovered later would be embarrassing … that it was better for them to say it was happening.

You hear this comment made that if we talk about an area too much people will come there. That has not been anything we’ve really heeded, nor have we really had any significant criticism for featuring an area [in Wild Oregon or other publications]. As forest issues in Oregon began [to heat up] , everything that was protected [stemmed from] a constituency who drew a line on a map and identified a particular area. [It was] what Brock Evans, formerly with [the] national [organization of] Audubon called “name it and save it.” When we started arguing the old growth issue, his fear was that … history had shown we named something and that created a public identity. So now we have all these ancient forests and don’t have names for them and there’s no public identity. It also became a matter of there’s more to be saved than what could be named. You couldn’t create an identity for each of these [groves]. I remember working in Eugene constantly doing media and realizing that I’d done the three worst timber sales of the week, so to speak. Not that we ever identified three, but it was sort of like the media, even if they were moderately sympathetic and interested in the issue, could only absorb so much in a certain amount of time. There was more being cut down than what we could even begin to martyr, if you will.

There were only several places that could generate that kind of name recognition, such as the Millennium Grove or Crabtree Valley?

Exactly. I think those two you mentioned, Millennium Grove and Crabtree Valley, were both cases of where there was a major effort made to create that image. Certainly with timber sales around Crater Lake National Park, we didn’t have to tell people what Crater Lake National Park was–that was easy in the sense of harm to this national park. Millennium Grove …you were asking me earlier about conscious strategies … that was probably more of a conscious strategy. I was hiking a trail near Breitenbush with Andy Kerr and Brian Heath, who organized some of the nonviolent civil disobedience efforts of several years ago, and he was saying how they were up in a clear-cut and somebody counted the rings on this tree and there were 900 or something like that. Andy stopped and said, “We talked about Crabtree Valley as having almost 1,000 year old trees.” That’s how it got to be [called] the Millennium Grove–as part of a very conscious [publicity] effort. A portion of that was a roadless area in the South Santiam [near] Gorton Meadows. We felt the Forest Service knew those trees were that old and never said that because if they acknowledged it during the wilderness debate prior to 1984, some of that area might have been protected as wilderness if it was known that those [trees] were the oldest ones in Oregon. The agency kept silent, so the forest activists counted the rings on the trees and that’s how it was discovered. [Saving it] was elevated, not by what ONRC did, but by what other people and groups were motivated to [do] by civil disobedience. When they’re cutting down the oldest trees in Oregon, that is worthy, if anything was, of a disobedient act.

I know that Opal Creek achieved a kind of national status, whereas places like, say, Sugarloaf led to confrontation but were ultimately lost.

As I explained, there were only so many issues or places that could be elevated, even if you had the resources to focus on them. Opal Creek was in the [I9841 Oregon wilderness bill and Mark Hatfield took it out only to “save it as part of his legacy [in 1996]. Mark Hatfield had a chance to save that years ago, well, he wanted to save it later. It was that calculated, I really believe. Opal Creek, interestingly, attracted people who were involved with it [the issue], and to their credit, had financial resources to lead that effort. There was more money spent and it was deserving of everything that people said about it. [interrupted by telephone call]

How were different areas identified for protection?

When groups came to us and said to us “this is an area that deserves protection,” we were pretty open to identifying everything that anybody cared about. What really worked was the formula for the wilderness effort, where we were the broader statewide group. There were local interests and we could point to the person on the ground and if the media was interested, somebody could take them out and show ’em the neat spots. There were areas which we identified through the agencies and found where old growth is and where previous roadless areas were. Examples would be the Coleman Rim and Deadhorse Rim, which are really the only remaining areas of really big, old pine on the Fremont National Forest. Sometimes we would even approach people if we knew somebody was in the area who was a wilderness advocate and say, “By the way, have you heard about this? Would you like to be the sponsor for that area?” Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Did Coleman and Deadhorse play out as successful efforts? I know they’re on the way to Gearhart Mountain.

Today they’re kind of in limbo. Deadhorse Rim is an interesting example in itself. Augur Creek is the drainage [which goes through it] and the Augur Creek Timber Sale is ready to go. It’s just a wonderment to me that it [the sale area] is still there. The Forest Service has planned so many times to cut that. We raised [public] consciousness about it and we appealed it several times. The status now is portions of it [Deadhorse Rim] have been proposed as a research natural area, because even the forest ecologist has said that is the best that is left. The forest [service] asked him, “Why didn’t you tell us before?” He said, “1 didn’t know, and now I do. Coleman [Rim] and Deadhorse Rim are standing because the Forest Service has “screens” today, [which] in our opinion are lax, and [still] let them cut the biggest and best. This isn’t one-tenth of one percent, it’s one-thousandth of one-tenth of one percent of [what] once was.

In terms of old growth protection now, we haven’t had enough political power to save it, in order to get legislation to draw circles around places and permanently protect them–in the same way the timber industry hasn’t had enough political power to cut it. That’s the kind of stand off like at Opal Creek for a number of years, even though it was supposedly released with the Oregon wilderness bill [of 19841. I remember we did a dedication for some of the additions to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness after the ’84 wilderness bill passed. Someone from the logging community asked the district ranger at that dedication, “Are you going ahead [with logging] in Opal Creek?” [He replied] “You bet we are, by God.” There’s been kind of a stand off in things, even if the agency didn’t administratively [save old growth] in their forest plans, which are for ten years anyway and then you have to argue it again. The Forest Service recognized that it would pay a political price if some areas which had gained [public] recognition were cut, part of it was threats of litigation. I don’t give the agency credit for doing it [saving old growth forest] for the right reasons, really. It was because of public pressure in various forms that some of the ancient forest groves that we sought to protect as wilderness, and are still not [permanently] protected today, were not cut down. Why they’re still around is, again, because of some public consciousness. The agency saying “We don’t do it that way anymore is the line I’ve heard dating back to the 1970s when I first got involved in the issues.

Were the wilderness dedications useful for launching this second phase aimed at saving old growth?

A little, maybe. It was a decision of James [Monteith] and Andy [Kerr] to do that. It was time to stop and recognize that this was a benchmark in the campaign and as a way of thanking the various people who were involved in the effort. We had eight or ten of those things scattered around the state. We did it over the course of a year. It was sort of interesting, the various discussions we had with the Forest Service. It is interesting to me [how] the agency opposed wilderness protection and anything that draws a line around [land] and says they cant t manage [cut] it. Once it’ s designated there is an acceptance, too, and it’s kind of like suddenly that’s our wilderness area. You talk to them and you’d think that they had been supportive of it [wilderness designation] back when they fought it tooth and claw.

It’s accepted by the time when their map comes out?

Yes, exactly. They like to take credit for anything that’s forced on them to show what sensitive guys they are.

Nevermind that they would have happily cut it they hadn’t been forced to be more sensitive. I went around with the Chemult [District] Ranger a few years ago … once they started administratively protecting some of these old growth areas on the Winema [National] Forest, this guy was thinking that maybe they could design a little brochure for the public and people could go see some of these areas. [He asked about] which areas would be suitable for driving through, and where we could do some little hikes, or maybe build a trail. He gave us a little introduction about how this was really neat that the Forest Service, gosh, was doing this and nobody litigated or anything. I always enjoy when people make these comments … they don’t know. We know [for] every line on the map, somebody fought for that area– including Crater Lake National Park–but nobody remembers who or when. Other places people just sort of assume that it’s always been a state park or always been protected, and who would destroy anything as magnificent as that, you know. [For] every one of these places, there’s somebody who stood up for it or it wouldn’t be there.

Has it [the book] been a financial success?

Was there any connection with William Sullivan’s book [Exploring Oregon’s Wild Areas] since he does mention ONRC?

Have these areas ever suffered by [conservationists] calling attention to them?

There were only several places that could generate that kind of name recognition, such as the Millennium Grove or Crabtree Valley?

saying how they were up in a clear-cut and somebody counted the rings on this tree and there were 900 or something like that. Andy stopped and said, “We talked about Crabtree Valley as having almost 1,000 year old trees.” That’s how it got to be [called] the Millennium Grove–as part of a very conscious [publicity] effort. A portion of that was a roadless area in the South Santiam [near] Gorton Meadows. We felt the Forest Service knew those trees were that old and never said that because if they acknowledged it during the wilderness debate prior to 1984, some of that area might have been protected as wilderness if it was known that those [trees] were the oldest ones in Oregon. The agency kept silent, so the forest activists counted the rings on the trees and that’s how it was discovered. [Saving it] was elevated, not by what ONRC did, but by what other people and groups were motivated to [do] by civil disobedience. When they’re cutting down the oldest trees in Oregon, that is worthy, if anything was, of a disobedient act.

I know that Opal Creek achieved a kind of national status, whereas places like, say, Sugarloaf led to confrontation but were ultimately lost.

As I explained, there were only so many issues or places that could be elevated, even if you had the resources to focus on them. Opal Creek was in the [I9841 Oregon wilderness bill and Mark Hatfield took it out only to “save it as part of his legacy [in 19961. Mark Hatfield had a chance to save that years ago, well, he wanted to save it later. It was that calculated, I really believe. Opal Creek, interestingly, attracted people who were involved with it [the issue], and to their credit, had financial resources to lead that effort. There was more money spent and it was deserving of everything that people said about it. [interrupted by telephone call]

How were different areas identified for protection?

Did Coleman and Deadhorse play out as successful efforts? I know they’re on the way to Gearhart Mountain.

Were the wilderness dedications useful for launching this second phase aimed at saving old growth?

It’s accepted by the time when their map comes out?

Yes, exactly. They like to take credit for anything that’s forced on them to show what sensitive guys they are.

I was thinking about some other issues that came to the forefront after the wilderness bill [of 19841 passed. One of those was public lands grazing. ONRC has, at times, taken some innovative approaches to things. How did a program like Cow Cops arise?

The grazing has been another frustration as an impact on public lands and I guess I’d say that we ran hot and cold on devoting more resources at one time or another on that issue. I think that if everybody just went all out and jumped on the cows more, we could make some changes. So why don’t we? Again, it’s because the big trees are falling. It’s not to say that the cattle aren’t every bit as big an impact on the land as the logging, it’s just that we can still get the range back in our opinion. Some of the people who are real big desert advocates and anti-grazing would probably think that this is too broad brush and simplifying it, because you can point to numerous examples where we are losing salmon not just from the sediments [caused by] logging but caused by grazing as well. We sort of made the decision that when the big trees are falling, that’s the most critical. But if you asked me what’s the most endangered ecosystem in Oregon, I would say that it’s native meadow. Think about it, if [a piece of land is] flat and has grass on it, either it’s in agriculture or has cattle grazing on it. Finding little pieces of land that are really natural [is difficult] so that’s why I’m so taken by the Klamath Marsh [even] though, yes, it has been grazed. You still basically have a natural meadow wetland that’s 38,000 acres in size that has only a small amount of grazing. Late in the fall they put some cows up on the north end. A neighbor across from me here used to have a garden, but it always failed because it freezes in July. I said, “Look, Carolee, if you could grow your tomatoes out here, instead of a marsh this would be a sugar beet farm (laughs).

As to the grazing issue, I think it’s a case where ONRC is spread too thin. Other organizations have come into existence where we couldn’t cover everything. An example of that would be some of the groups which have developed around the Siskiyou resources because of the tremendous biodiversity there. Headwaters in Ashland, similar to the Oregon Natural Desert Association, has raised more consciousness in recent years than I think ONRC has in regard to grazing, desert, and riparian issues. Cow Cops was in many ways like a lot of things we’ve done. I won’t say it was a flash in the pan–it called public attention to the issue. It made the ranchers just incredibly paranoid because when it was first proposed, they heard about it in the media and envisioned hordes [of people] from the Willamette Valley were going to walk all over the lands and tattle on every cow that was there. I don’t want to say that was a short lived effort–it [just] isn’t being pursued as it was at that time. I think it’s something that could be re-energized. I think the value of it was calling attention to the fact that cattle were beating up the land. In one way it’s how you spin [the message] and market it.

For years we’ve gone out and told the agency “There’s cows here. They say, “Yeah, we know” and the guy who is grazing the cows gets a little slap on the wrist. It is part of the custom and culture that the agency gets more upset when trees are being stolen than when grass is being stolen. It seems like an endless cat and mouse game, not a game I forever want to play–having to chase cows and the ranchers turning them out again the next year. I think the Oregon Natural Desert Association’s Clean Stream Initiative, which was unsuccessful, probably did more in terms of getting signatures to get a measure on the ballot.

Because it represented legislation?

Yes, because it provided a solution to get the cattle off. I attribute its failure to the public’s perception to give these guys [ranchers] another chance. They weren’t aware that we’d been giving them a chance, in my memory, for 20 years. In the public’s consciousness, it was like “We’ve just learned about the problem, and so isn’t it reasonable to give them another chance?” As much as anything that’s why I feel it wasn’t successful, but I feel at some point that the public will see the incredible benefits of wildlife that occur in areas where cattle are removed from the streams. Again, it’s penny wise and pound foolish to do anything else.

Maybe there could be some demonstration projects?

There are some examples. So often people make, and we appreciate it, suggestions for things we could do. Usually the limitation is simply having the financial resources to do it. Any program really becomes a public education campaign, and it costs money. A lot of things where we’ve been effectively at getting publicity have been efforts where we’re, yes, doing something–timber sale appeals, litigation, getting something on the ballot. When you’re doing something, you get more media attention, and there’s more interest generated about a particular issue and amongst opinion leaders.

Maybe there could be some demonstration projects?

Going back to the Klamath Basin, I know there have been things written about Hatfield’s working group. Did you perceive that [group] as having a long ‘ term pay off- -was that why you withdrew your participation?

I can explain that. First of all, ONRC raised issues back in the early ’90s and litigated. We supported the petition of the Klamath tribes to list the short nose and Lost River suckers and raised issues which led to acknowledgment by local authorities in Klamath County that things would have to be done to restore the environment. Species getting listed and so forth, if nothing else, would get in their [the locals] way of doing business. Senator Hatfield, to his credit, and his staff were aware of what the problems were–as much as any politician in the country. They proposed a committee where different interests would be represented and in their very Republican way kept it confined to having just local people [on the committee]. I looked at that as progress, in the context [that] it was an acknowledgment of something that had to be done.

Nevertheless, I felt the way Hatfield set it up was to allow the people who were the problem in the first place to control the process. Initially it [the group] was not federally funded, but it’s now a federal advisory group. It was doubtfully legal, in the context that there was federal participation, yet it [the meetings] were closed to the general public–which is a violation of federal laws allowing public participation. The first meeting of the committee–I was invited by virtue of the fact I was in the Klamath Basin, and it was promoted as all sides being represented–they couldn’t very well not invite me or that facade would have fallen quickly. I felt the whole thing was being set up in a [skewed] way. We’ve dealt with so-called consensus groups in various capacities in the past and basically felt that environmentalists are there as token representation. It’s an attempt to play on people’s sense of fairness, and then works to ignore environmental concerns. There’s a lot of psychology that plays on people to go along with the group. The Forest Service, for example, has liked to put mill owners and environmentalists in the same room, and it’s kind of like “We all love little children and Junior needs a few logs for his mill. Peter over here likes to hike in the forest and can’t we both accommodate each other?” It basically lets the agency off the hook, and in this case, the Senator off the hook, if you can get everybody to agree. I would argue the Senator and the Forest Service don’t care what we do to the land if everybody agrees, they’ll do what everybody agrees to. That’s just the path of least resistance to them.

At the first meeting of the Hatfield Working Group everybody was told that anything we talked about in this room could go no further. I didn’t announce it there at the meeting, but I knew I was leaving. Later on, when people asked why I was leaving, I told them “I’m sorry, but I work for a public interest organization. What I do is make public what is being done, not agree to negotiating in secret.” I could also see that there were 20 people and me, and could see the set up coming. If I hadn’t left, it [the charges] would have been “Well, look, you sat in the meetings like everybody else, and you were heard [the] same as everybody else, and the group decided this and you were outvoted.”

Either way, whether I participated or not, I was going to be vilified.

The agriculture interests are going along with various restoration projects. Basically, the way the government has portrayed this to them is that “Look, the government comes to town with pockets full of money–you’re used to this and we’re used to federal subsidies for agriculture–this is just another subsidy. It’s okay, we’re going to flood a couple of tules this time but don’t worry, you’ll get yours.” There was also a water resources committee that ONRC had a member on, which first proposed the Wood River Ranch development. In both cases–the water resources committee and the Hatfield Working Group–the agriculture interests withheld their support for the restoration unless they could get some other thing. In the case of the Wood River Ranch, the deal was, that in order to restore the marsh, old growth ponderosa pine was to be given away. I had to appeal that part of this land exchange [between BLM and private owners]. That was BLM1s dirty little secret. All their publicity talked about restoring the marsh, it didn’t tell you what they were giving away. With the Hatfield Working Group, the deal was that the farmers would support the Tulana Farms restoration provided they could get the pesticides back that we had blown the whistle on. [We felt] the review process had been subverted and wasn’t working to restrict the worst pesticides. We ended up, as the local paper put it, “having outsiders from Berkeley to Bellingham signing letters opposing the deal.

Hatfield amended an appropriations rider and basically eased the restrictions on those pesticides and made it more difficult for the Fish and Wildlife Service to object to them. We beat that rider, and they were going to renew it again, but that was finally withdrawn. I really felt that the battle over pesticides in the Klamath Basin [refuges], in terms of defeating Hatfield’s attempts to pass a rider on an appropriations bill, was a fight we had to have. The issue in my mind was never really over pesticides, I felt that what the agriculture interests were doing was an assault on the wildlife refuges. They wanted to see if the conservation community would notice and if we would act. Given other kinds of bills that were introduced in the 104th Congress which adversely affected wildlife refuges around the country, there was no doubt in my mind that had we not had that fight, Representative Cooley, now Bob Smith, would have been introducing legislation to privatize agricultural lands on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath refuges. While I think Senator Wyden has not been a great help on the Klamath Basin issues, I feel that his office has at least conveyed to the working group that’s now set up by this [Hatfield’s] legislation, a sense of fair play. Hatfield’s legislation authorized what’s called the Upper Klamath Working Group, but Senator Wyden’s office–while I think they need to be watched, too–is in effect saying that if it’s legitimate restoration they’ll go along with it, but please don’t embarrass them by doing things that are not what supposedly what the goals of this group are supposed to be.

I think the economic interests in the Klamath Basin know that they have to do this–that they’re foolish not to take the money to do the legitimate restoration work simply because people are not going to want to develop businesses and move to this county if Upper Klamath Lake smells like a sewer like it does every July. Any time we go along with something that had ecological restoration in it, or something the agriculture interests weren’t normally supportive of, it was like “What do we get?” That means “What do we get that makes it easier to make money or rip off a little bit of the resource? Basically we were saying “If this is about ecological restoration, then that’s what it has to be.” We aren’t going to accept ecological restoration where we create something with one hand while destroying something else with the other.

Was Cell Tech helpful at all?

Cell Tech is interesting. With the Hatfield Working Group, its composition included Cell Tech, the Klamath Tribe, the Nature Conservancy, [and] included other people who considered themselves conservationists that were really trying to work it out with the locals, but I think did not recognize some of the inevitable pitfalls we’ve been through with the Forest Service doing these kinds of consensus groups. We were always very careful that ONRC was not to attack the individuals on the working group who were there that had legitimate concerns about the basin and were trying to do the right thing. Cell Tech falls into that category. In other words, I don’t have any complaint with what they do. Regardless of what people think about the algae, in terms of its claim to food value or energy it gives you, Cell Tech has never sprayed one ounce of pesticide or diverted a single acre foot of water and have supported the restoration efforts within the basin. I view them as the kind of industry that we would like to have. When I’ve talked to Cell Tech and explained what we [ONRC] in the context of the Hatfield Working Group [were doing], one of their staff [members] said to me, “Hey, your job is to raise hell–I understand.”

Nevertheless, some other people took it more personally. A representative from Concerned Friends of the Winema went off that committee because she acknowledged deals were being made outside of the room and that she would learn about things [actions taking place not discussed previously] when she came to the meeting. She saw the deck was stacked, it was unfair and that it [the Working Group’s agenda] really wasn’t open as they were claiming it to be. And then a lot of the interest by the farmers in the upper basin was really [an attempt] to take power away from the Klamath River Fishery Task Force that had been set up ten years earlier for doing restoration projects on the river. This was a federally funded and authorized advisory group. They had concluded that to restore salmon in the Klamath River, you needed to restore the marshes in the Klamath Basin. The farmers were very much afraid of the commercial fishermen and the tribes who dominated that group telling them how to restore the marshes. So the Klamath Forest Alliance, which is a [conservation] group out of Etna [California], and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations were also unimpressed with the Hatfield Working Group and what they were doing. Basically, we spoke out against them [the working group] because we had some other allies in the broader conservation movement. Whether it’s the Hatfield Working Group or other things, we’re happy to sit down and work out solutions and so forth. As I’ve explained earlier, where we’ve compromised on the forest issues with the Clinton Administration, or tried to get along with the politicians by endorsing the Democrat who had the poorer environmental credentials, I feel that we’ve lost for doing so. I feel like there will always be somebody else out there who will be willing to negotiate, [that] they’ll be willing to give things up. What I think is harder is to say “no.” ONRC has been asked why we are so confrontational, [and] the answer is “I don’t wish to be confrontational, I just don’t know anybody else that is willing to do it.”

When I’ve had people come to me…some of these people want to be employed in the environmental movement … they say “What do I do?” I say “The hardest thing is to say no because there’s all these pressures on you.” I can feel it very much just in living in Klamath Falls. I’ve lived in rural areas before, but my social support mechanisms or whatever are not based in this county. I can see how [it is for] people whose living is tied to who they know, if they take a contrary position. These pressures that are brought to bear are just tremendous, and so there’s no way I can really expect somebody who works [here to deal with that]. One of the local Sierra Club members works for the Bureau of Reclamation, and outside of people who are retired or have some other income, the pressure to conform and to go along to get along is just incredible. There’s nothing wrong with going along and getting along, but if it means harming the environment to do so. I can’t remember it exactly, but one of David Brower1s quotes is something like “The only mark that reasonable conservationists leave are scars upon the land that wouldn’t be there if they’d only held their groundl1 (laughs) . [I think of it] combined with Brower’ s comment that “Everything I’ve compromised, I’ve lost.” You look at every single situation and wonder “What are the options here?” I mean it’s become easier and easier for me over time for my default setting to be against compromise because there will always be somebody else who will do it. It’s harder to find individuals or organizations who will take the stronger, purer stand.

Has that been one benefit of experience, in that it’s taught you to say no?

Well, yes. James Monteith and Andy Kerr had a big impact on my understanding how the political system wears you down and what ONRC’s proper role was and why this was our niche that other groups weren’t willing to fill. I don’t know if there’s something about my psyche–this sounds very self-serving– but I feel like I’ve been able to do what wasn’t necessarily the popular thing to do. I had interests even in my youth of things that weren’t what other people would praise me for doing. It wasn’t that I was picked on when I was at school, but I was bullied a little bit because of my smaller stature. In other words, I wasn’t part of the “club,” if you will, with my peers. I don’t know how to express it, because it wasn’t like I felt I was left out of things–I did get along with people and so forth, but on the other hand, I wasn’t part of the main social clubs when I was in school. [This was true] in high school and even college. In college I think I found more identity with people I knew that were interested in the natural environment as I was. I developed a little bit of a “skin early on, and maybe that made it easier for me. Not that it [being confrontational3 doesn’t bother me, not that my stomach doesn’t wrench and everything else when I’m in a stressful situation, but I continually find that I will not compromise [and] knowing that I’m saying something that is making somebody upset and is unpopular. I really can’t think of many situations where I’ve held back. I think that’s what I have to do to live in Klamath Falls and defend the environment. Otherwise, it would be easier to live in Eugene and defend the environment of Klamath County [from there]. By being down here I see things and learn about things I wouldn’t [otherwise], or I’d get distracted on other issues if I wasn’t here.

Appendix B: Advance Questions

Questions for Wendell Wood Oral History Interview, 5/5/97

Based on our telephone conversation several weeks ago, I thought we could format the interview somewhat chronologically but with emphasis on the three topics (OMC, ancient forest issues, and Klamath Basin restoration) you mentioned.

A. I read the preface in your book, A Walking Guide to Oregon’s Ancient Forests, and a few questions come to mind concerning your experiences prior to moving to Oregon in 1976.

Where were you raised in Ventura County? How did childhood there spark an interest in nature and the environment? Were there teachers,. or perhaps a particular aspect of your schooling, that cultivated your appreciation of the outdoors?
You state that your parents migrated from the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s. Did you visit Oregon or Washington as a child? If so, what sort of impression did those visits have on you?
How did you come to spend many of your summers as a teenager at Mono Lake? Were you aware then of the issues related to water delivery from the Owens Valley? Where did you go in the Sierra Nevada during those years? Was there a person that you particularly wanted to emulate at that time?
Which classes at Humboldt State were the most memorable and/or valuable to you? Did you get a chance to explore the area around Arcata during your college years? How did you come to be active in environmental issues at that point in your life? Which issues were the biggest and what was your role in them?
How did the Northcoast Environmental Center come about? What lessons in organization and staffing the NEC provide for future reference?
Being a teacher in Myrtle Creek during the late 1970s must have given you a few insights concerning how to reach different types of people. The following questions pertain to how you transferred your previous experience into a new setting.

What led to your hiring as a science teacher? Was there a single issue in Douglas County that led directly to your involvement with environmental groups in Oregon? What repercussions were there from being identified with environmental issues at that time?
Which issue concerned you the most while you lived in Douglas County? What sort of outside support (such as from Eugene or elsewhere in Oregon) did you obtain to help with critical issues such as the fate of roadless areas on federal lands? Where did you spend most of your spare time during this period?
What led to your “discovery” by ONRC? How quickly did you make the transition from working in local groups to helping them through a statewide organization? Did you suddenly have a much higher profile with the media when you joined ONRC in 1981?

C. ONRC has been at the forefront of virtually all public lands issues in Oregon from its inception in 1972. You joined at roughly the point when it changed its name from the Oregon Wilderness Coalition and seemed to significantly broaden its base.

What sort of influence did the founders of ONRC, such as Holway Jones, have on the organization by time you joined? What sort of contact was there between the board and staff members at that time? What duties did you have initially and how did your position grow?
Why did the name change to ONRC take place in 1982? How did it affect relations with member groups? To what extent was centralization of operations an issue? How did the idea of deploying field representatives arise?
What sort of involvement did you have in issues pertaining directly to southwest Oregon throughout the 1980s? In what ways did you support the Southwest Field Coordinator? How was ONRC’s position on controversies such as the Elk Creek Dam formulated?
A Conservation Fund study published in 1992 stated that the majority of conservation groups are perpetual management experiments. To what extent has this been true at ONRC? How has the turbulence surrounding ONRC’s executive director position been a reflection of restructuring or infighting within the organization? What led to Jim Monteith’s departure and why have his successors had relatively short terms at the helm? In what ways has ONRC allowed its leaders to cross organizational boundaries and work out joint strategies with other groups such as the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society?
How have the funds supplied by membership in ONRC changed over the years? Have there been changes over the years in the way that ONRC activates and listens to its membership? What role have foundations played in ONRC’s work and direction? How did certain fundraising ideas such as the Karl Onthank Society, the Waldo Weekend, and the ONRC Auction originate?
You wore a variety of hats at ONRC over the past 15 years. How was your role as Education Programs Coordinator different from being West-Central Field Coordinator or Conservation Coordinator? Were you financially independent during most or all of your time with ONRC?

D. The ancient forest campaign in Oregon broadened about the time that legislation passed designating a number of wilderness areas on national forest lands in 1984. You took part in many of ONRC1s efforts to preserve both roadless areas and smaller groves containing ancient trees.

What was the first wilderness issue to grab your attention upon coming to Oregon? Did you participate in the campaign to save French Pete? Why were just three areas in Oregon selected for consideration as part of the Endangered American Wilderness Act in 1978?
Which aspects of the 1984 wilderness bill did you consider to be the most important while it was still in draft? How effective were ONRC staff and board members in influencing Senator Hatfield’s version of the bill? What effect did the input from field hearings have on the legislation? What role did you play in shaping ONRC1s position on the legislation? Do you think that there will ever be another wilderness bill enacted? Why?
What non-wilderness issues concerning old-growth forests concerned you the most between 1976 and 1984? How did ONRC become so adept at evaluating forest plans and targeting certain timber sales to appeal? What factors brought ONRC to the forefront of so much litigation? How did the organization pay for its legal work?
Which timber sales in southwest Oregon attracted the most attention from ONRC after 1984? Why did lands surrounding Crater Lake and Oregon Caves receive special attention? How successful was ONRC in calling attention to timber management practices on BLM and state forest land in this part of Oregon?
How did the idea for a walking guide to Oregon’s . ancient forests originate? Had you previously helped William Sullivan with his Exploring Oregon’s Wild Areas? What led to the decision for ONRC to publish the walking guide? To what extent did you rely on information supplied by federal agencies in finding the areas featured in your book? which-areas became your favorites? How successful has the book been in political, educational, and financial terms?
What led to your proposal for “Public Heritage” trees? Did it tie into increased cutting of eastside forests in the early 1990s? Has “ecosystem management” by federal agencies, in your view, led to noticeable improvements in perpetuating ancient forests? Have cultural resources ever entered into the Oregon ancient forest campaign, as they have in California? Has there been discussion of expanding the Cow Cops program to include ways to decrease timber theft on public lands?

E. The battle over water and wildlife in the Klamath Basin is something of a new arena for you and ONRC. These questions concern your involvement with these issues since 1991.

How had you been involved with issues affecting the Klamath Basin prior to your move from Eugene in 1993? Did you write any or all of the staff reports on the basin which appeared in Wild Oregon? Has reformatting of the publication from a magazine to newsletter been a help or hindrance to getting the word out about the battle over restoring marshland?
Has it been difficult to get people who reside in other parts of the state interested in issues affecting the Klamath Basin? Have the trips you’ve led attracted people from outside the basin? Given the warning issued by Rachel Carson long ago, why didn’t the local conservation groups bring more media attention to the wildlife decline? How did the drought of the 1980s and early 1990s allow the Klamath Tribes and ONRC to share a common interest?
Do you see the upcoming adjudication of water rights in the basin as possibly altering the water delivery of USBR? Has the water allocation plan ordered by Secretary Babbitt had a beneficial effect on wildlife? What led to your withdrawal from the basin working group funded by Congress?
How has leasing of refuges for agriculture been detrimental to wildlife? Can strategies such as sump rotation help to improve conditions? Has Lava Beds National Monument approached you about restoration of the historic scene?
How did the idea for a willow planting weekend come to mind? Will it be expanded to other areas in the basin? Does ONRC have a vision for large-scale restoration efforts in the basin, such as along the Wood River? Would most of these projects be publicly funded, or might foundations have a role? IndexArcata, Cal. 5, 71
Ashland, Ore. 61-62

Audubon Society 1 , 6 65, 89

Axline, Mike 34

Baker City, Ore. 61

Boulder Creek Wilderness, Umpqua N.F. 14, 18

Breitenbush, Ore. 90

Brower, David 52, 108-109

Bruggere, Tom 52-54

Bull Run Watershed 61

Bureau of Land Management 13, 34-35, 77-78, 86, 103

Bureau of Reclamation 64, 77, 108

Chiloquin, Ore. 85

Clinton Forest Plan 50-51, 53, 107

Coleman Rim, Fremont N.F. 92-93

Cooley, Wes 104

Concerned Friends of the Winema 106

Crabtree Valley, Willamette N.F. 90-91

Crater Lake N.P. v, 62, 66-68, 81-82, 85, 90, 96

Cross, Sally 55

Deadhorse Rim, Fremont N.F. 92-93

Dewey, Paul 89

Donner Lake, Cal. 6

Douglas County, Ore. 11-12

Douglas Timber Operators 14-15

Ducks Unlimited 70

Durbin, Kathie xii 1114, 51

Eber, Ron 42, 47

Endangered American Wilderness Act [of 19781 18, 32, 34

Eugene, Ore. xi-xii, 32, 60, 88, 90, 110

Evans, Brock 24, 89

Franklin, Jerry 7, 32

French Pete drainage, Willamette N.F. 18, 32

Frenkel, Liz 45

Friends of the Three Sisters ix

grazing on public lands 96-99

Hager Mountain, Fremont N.F. 5

Hatfield, Mark 17, 20, 22, 30, 55, 92, 101, 104

Hatfield Working Group 100-103, 106-107

Headwaters 61-62, 98

Heath, Brian 90

Heyward, Dennis 30

Hyde, Dayton 81

Jayne, Ginny 81

Jones, Holway R. 42-44, 46-47

Kalmiopsis Wilderness, Siskiyou N.F. 32-33

Keene, Roy 14

Kepple, Todd 60

Kerr, Andy x-xi, 19, 21, 23, 33, 36, 41, 43, 49, 51, 53, 55, 58, 60, 95, 109

Klamath Basin 5, 58-60, 62-63, 65-66, 68, 70-72, 74, 100-101, 104-105

Klamath Falls, Ore. xii, 12, 62-63, 108, 110

Klamath Forest Alliance 107

Klamath Marsh N.W.R. 47, 70, 84, 97

Klamath River 62, 66, 69, 107

Klamath Tribe 69, 81, 100, 106

Kuchel Act 74, 77

Lava Beds N.M. 62, 69, 75

Lillebo, Tim 58

Lower Klamath N.W.R. 69-70, 72-74, 78, 104

Mazamas vi, viii, 5

Merritt, Regna 61

Millennium Grove, Willamette N.F. 90-91

Monteith, James x-xi, 19, 21, 25-26, 29-30, 37, 39-43, 48-49, 58, 62-63, 65, 95, 109

Mount Bailey, Umpqua N.F. 5

Mount Hood, Mt. Hood N.F. viii

Mount Jefferson Wilderness, Willamette N.F. 48, 94

Mount Scott, Crater Lake N.P. 4, 63, 68

Mount Thielson, Umpqua N.F. 4, 18, 47

Myrtle Creek, Ore. 5, 11-13, 18

National Park Service vi-vii, 67, 86

Natural Resources Defense Council 83-84

Nature Conservancy 106

Northcoast Environmental Center 7-9

old growth forest 7-8, 16-17, 26, 30, 82-84, 86, 89, 92-94, 103

Opal Creek, Willamette N.F. 91-92, 94

Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area 31

Oregon League of Conservation Voters 54

Oregon Natural Desert Association 60, 98-99

Oregon Natural Resources Council x-xii, 1, 4, 11, 16, 18-21, 24-26, 28, 31, 35, 39-43, 45-46, 48-60, 63, 66, 80, 86-87, 91-92, 96, 98, 100, 103, 106, 108

Oregon Forest Wilderness Act [of 19841 17,-19-20,2 9, 33, 91-92, 94, 96

Oregon Wilderness Coalition (see Oregon Natural Resources Council)

Orick, Cal. 8

OrToole, Randall 29

Packwood, Bob 27

Portland, Ore. 60-61

Prevost, Marc 41

Rait, Ken 40, 53, 57

Rasker, Ray 66

Redwood N.P. 8, 12

Rogue-Umpqua Divide Wilderness, Umpqua N.F. 18

Ross, Dinah 47

Scott, Doug 26

Sierra Club 26, 31, 42-43, 45-46, 60-61, 108

Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund 27, 46, 63-64

Simons, David 44

Skillman, Greg 33

Sky Lakes Wilderness, Rogue River/Winema N.F. 33

Smiley, Marc 49, 51-53

Smith, Bob 104

South Santiam River 31, 91

South Sister, Deschutes N.F. 4

Steel, William Gladstone vi

Stewart, Loren “Stub” 63

Sullivan, William 87-88

Table Rock Wilderness, BLM Salem District 35

Three Sisters Wilderness, Willamette/Deschutes N.F. ix, 32, 44

Trinidad, Cal. 9

Tule Lake, Cal. 60, 72, 74

Tule Lake N.W.R. 69, 74-76, 78, 104

Umpqua Wilderness Defenders 14, 18

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 64, 69, 71, 76-79, 104

U.S. Forest Service vi-ix, 20, 27, 34, 39, 48, 77, 82-83, 85-86, 88-89, 93-96, 102, 106

Upper Klamath N.W.R. 68-70

Vandermark, Dave 8

Vinyard, Lucille 8

Vinyard, William 8

Waldo Lake, Willamette N.F. 26, 31

Weaver, James 20-21

Wells, Sally 81

Western Environmental Law Center 27, 35

Wilderness Society 28, 42-43, 66

Wild Rogue Wilderness, Siskiyou N.F./BLM Medford District 32-33

Wood River Ranch, BLM Lakeview District 103

Wyden, Ron 54, 104-105

Zika, Peter 62

Other pages in this section
Crater Lake Centennial Celebration oral histories

Hartzog – Complete Interview (PDF)

Jon Jarvis

Albert Hackert and Otto Heckert

Hazel Frost

James Kezer

F. Owen Hoffman

Douglas Larson

Carroll Howe

Wayne R. Howe

Francis G. Lange

Lawrence Merriam C.

Marvin Nelson

Doug and Sadie Roach

James S. Rouse

John Salinas

Larry Smith

Earl Wall

Donald M. Spalding

John Lowry Dobson

O. W. Pete Foiles

Bruce W. Black

Emmett Blanchfield

Ted Arthur

Robert Benton

Howard Arant

John Eliot Allen

Obituary Kirk Horn, 1939-2019

Mabel Hedgpeth

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Crater Lake Institute – Enhancing the Visitors Experience

A free and in-depth library about Crater Lake National Park

Wendell Wood