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.
