BEND, Ore. - January marks the 25th anniversary of the Oregon Natural Desert Association. Today, ONDA has 4,000 supporters and is unique in the conservation community for its focus on the high desert country and wildlife in central and eastern Oregon.

At first, it was a handful of people who answered a newspaper ad to form a "desert group."

Founding member Alice Elshoff recalls that in the early 1980s, the federal Bureau of Land Management had just inventoried its land for potential wilderness protection - and the group wasn't happy with the results.

"That was really what kicked it off," Elshoff says, "that they had missed a lot of places that we knew - those few volunteers of us who spent time out in the desert - knew about and loved and treasured. So, we started going out and doing our own inventories, and feeding that information back to the BLM."

Since then, ONDA has worked closely with federal agencies on some projects - and sued them on others. The group has won protections for Hart Mountain, Steens Mountain, the Oregon Badlands and the Owyhee River area.

Another founding member, Craig Miller, says they could not have imagined some of the current threats to a healthy desert ecosystem, including climate change and renewable energy that makes the desert a prime spot for wind and solar development. But he says they also could not have foreseen their successes.

"All in all, we're very optimistic about the future, because we've seen some very positive changes happen," Miller says. "Even though we see a lot of dangers, we also see a lot of opportunity and a lot of hope."

ONDA says its goals are to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands on the Oregon-Idaho border, as well as pushing for new wilderness designations for the Horse Heaven and Cathedral Rock areas near John Day, and keeping wind turbines off Steens Mountain.

Miller says he was at a tense public meeting long ago when someone made a comment that stuck with him.

"He said, 'Well, you know, the environmental movement is just a fad. It's going to go away.' At that time, I made a vow to myself that environmentalism wasn't going to go away as long as I was alive," Miller says. "And I'm very thankful that it's not just a fad."

ONDA has identified almost 8 million acres of wilderness-quality land in eastern Oregon. Elshoff's advice to people who don't see what's so special about it is to get off the main roads for a closer look.

"They need to see it in the morning when the sun comes up over it," Elshoff says. "They need to see it in the evening, when you have a desert sunset. They need to see it at night, when you have just this huge starlit sky or full-moon sky over the desert.

"I mean, that is truly magic."


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Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.

Arizona conservation groups and sportsmen alike say they're pleased the Bureau of Land Management will now recognize conservation as an integral part of public lands management.

The agency's new rule puts protecting the environment on par with other land-use priorities.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said historically the BLM has done what he termed a "pretty good job," not only managing about 12 million acres of public lands in Arizona, but also protecting natural resources.

"They've got a tough job," Garlid acknowledged. "I think this rule helps make their job a little bit easier because it gives them some tools to balance those different demands on the 12 million acres that they manage."

Garlid predicted the rule will raise what he terms "harder-to-quantify conservation values" to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses like oil and gas exploration and mining. He thinks most Arizonans will recognize the new rule as a positive. A solid majority of Arizona voters across party lines say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.

To Garlid, the rule makes it clear the BLM is recognizing certain parts of federal lands, in Arizona and around the West, have been degraded. He contended restoration leases will be a good tool, allowing the BLM to lease acres to groups specifically to improve the conditions on a given landscape. He noted opponents of the new rule might see the leases as a way to "lock up" land but he argued it is not true.

"One example could be a nonprofit, like the Arizona Wildlife Federation," Garlid pointed out. "We could get a conservation lease from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work, or work to remove invasive species along a creek bank."

According to the BLM, while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, casual uses of the leased lands like recreation, hunting, fishing and research activities would generally continue.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


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