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.
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.
