30 Jan 2010, 12:31pm
Federal forest policy Politics and politicians
by admin

Summarizing the Defects in Wyden’s OEFROGPJA

I fear that I have been too florid in my analyses of Sen. Ron Wyden’s proposed “Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act of 2009″ (OEFROGPJA). My excess verbiage has obscured the key defects. In this post I simplify and specify with minimal artisticality of prose.

Previous posts regarding Wyden’s bill (OEFROGPJA) are:

Wyden Proposes the End of Forest Stewardship in Eastern Oregon [here]

AFRC Sells Out [here]

The Principal Defects in Wyden’s Forest Bill [here]

Harris Sherman on Jon Tester’s Forest Bill (same problems in both bills) [here]

What’s wrong with the eastside forest compromise (by Jack Ward Thomas) [here]

From those I have extracted the main issues, and who made the particular point:

1. prescriptive language violates NEPA and NFMA (Harris Sherman) (Mike Dubrasich)

2. draws action and funding away from other projects (HS)

3. will NOT result in any increased harvest (HS) (MD) (Jack Ward Thomas)

4. creates unrealistic expectations on the part of communities and forest products stakeholders (HS)

5. provisions are duplicative of existing authorities, such as the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2009 (HS) (MD)

6. will not achieve undefined “comprehensive ecological restoration” (MD)

7. proposed management guidance by “plant association” scientifically untenable, unmappable, obtuse (MD)

8. statutory limits on the size of trees removed scientifically untenable, unworkable, will not achieve resiliency goals (MD)

9. proposed management guidance by “site potential tree heights” scientifically untenable, unmeasurable, obtuse (MD)

10. proposed management guidance by “heterogeneity” scientifically untenable, unmeasurable, obtuse (MD)

11. will not limit or preclude obstructionist lawsuits (which have already been threatened by eco-litigious groups) (MD) (JWT)

12. delays and implementation failures will lead to more and larger destructive (severe, high intensity) wildfires (MD)

13. does not protect (increases risks to) heritage, utility, resiliency, sustainability, public health and safety, private property, and other human values (MD)

14. does not protect (increases risks to) vegetation, habitat, wildlife, water, air, soils, and other ecological values (MD)

15. “local forests” managed under separate laws and overseen by advisory panels financed with federal dollars and staffed with federal employees supplant current legally prescribed planning and management processes (JWT)

16. no guarantee of long-term funding (JWT)

17. does not address systemic problems with USFS mission, existing conflicting laws (JWT)

Hope that helps.

1 Feb 2010, 11:19am
by bear bait


I once read a tell-all book about Congress that said the most dangerous place in Washington DC was between Rep. Ron Wyden and a TV camera. That was framed in the words of “more dangerous than getting between a grizzly sow and her cubs.”

That, evidently, was Wyden’s one foray into Wilderness..

Or, the connection between TV cameras and turning a Safeway parking lot into wilderness has meaning. In passing, Safeway parking lot is a vague reference to pre-Columbian aboriginal food gathering, production, value adding (drying, smoking, containerizing), and their parking of temporary settlement in order to do the tasks at hand. That is not Wilderness as defined by the 1964 Wilderness Bill. And if you can create wilderness out of land, by legislation not matter the prior use and settlement of such land, then certainly a Safeway parking lot is candidate land if it falls within the whole of some gerrymandered 5000 acres of contiguous land with the political support to be made into Wilderness.

Boondoggle. That would be a better name. The Boondoggle Wilderness. An honest assessment. Our forefathers would have liked a name like that. The Boondoggle Wilderness.

1 Feb 2010, 11:48am
by Foo Furb


Our forefathers would have had no idea why the word “wilderness” needed a capital letter.

They would have understood the word “Boondoggle” very well, however, and shuddered whenever a capital letter was needed to spell the word other than at the beginning of a sentence.

Wyden has always been irrelevant in rural Oregon, but now he has seniority and has become an expensive distraction. Certainly, a Safeway parking lot is every bit the Wilderness when compared to a downtown bookstore in NY.

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