VALE, Ore. - A letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland urges her to preserve 1.2 million acres of southeastern Oregon, including parts of the Owyhee Canyonlands and "Sagebrush Sea."
The area was identified as having wilderness characteristics by the local resource advisory council and the Bureau of Land Management district office, in an update to the region's Resource Management Plan. But in 2019, the Trump administration advanced a plan that didn't protect any of the land.
Julie Weikel, a retired large animal veterinarian and southeastern Oregon resident who was on the advisory council, said even some Oregonians aren't aware of how special the landscape is.
"Those who do meet it, or have met it in the 25 years or so that I've been showing it to some select people," said Weikel, "are astonished that we have something so grandiose, right here in the southeast corner of our state."
The roughly 1,400 people and groups that signed the letter want the BLM to reexamine the resource plan before signing off on it. The Trump administration had said other management alternatives would be more costly for the agency.
Jim Hammett, a retired superintendent of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, says the BLM under the former president didn't weigh recreation and conservation as highly as other interests.
"They were mostly interested in maximizing commodity uses," said Hammett. "Grazing, you know, any future for mining, electrical transmission lines, that sort of thing. And that became the focus of the preferred alternative."
Hammett said the sagebrush habitat of southeastern Oregon has been devastated by wildfires and invasive species and, while those factors can't be fully controlled, a revised plan that does more to protect the landscape is something the BLM can control.
The letter to Haaland starts off by thanking for her for committing the agency to preserving 30% of the nation's land and water by 2030. Weikel noted protecting this landscape in southeastern Oregon could play a role.
"We're talking a huge chunk that could go a long ways to satisfying the requirements of the '30 by 30,'" said Weikel.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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Crews have been ramping up wildfire resilience projects to thin out brush and dead wood in California's giant sequoia groves, clearing twice as many acres in 2023 compared with 2022.
The Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition is trying to avoid a repeat of the disastrous mega-fires of 2020 and 2021 - which killed about 20% of large mature trees in their native Sierra Nevada range.
Joanna Nelson, Ph.D. is the director of science and conservation planning with the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
"We remove fuel," said Nelson, "we get to a safe place to do prescribed burning and to do cultural burning - which is always led by indigenous people, which is another practice of taking care of the forest and reducing wildfire risk."
Sequoia National Park is just one part of California's giant sequoia groves, which stretch over 26,000 acres.
A new report shows that in 2023, the program treated nearly 9,900 acres in 28 groves - and more than 14,000 since 2021.
Crews have also planted 542,000 native tree seedlings in severely burned areas over the past two years.
Nelson said the groves must be re-treated about every 8 to 10 years.
"The cost of inaction is loss of giant sequoias in their native range," said Nelson. "And big fires that spread because of the fuel continuity. We risk further loss of trees that are anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 years old if we do nothing."
The groves have built up quite a bit of dead wood fuel because, until the last few decades, it had been national policy to suppress almost all fire - which led to intense firestorms that incinerated entire groves of old-growth trees.
It is now understood that judicious use of fire can clear out the understory and be beneficial to the forest.
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The Bureau of Land Management has proposed expanding the public land available for solar power production in 11 states, including Montana.
The BLM's Western Solar Plan builds on a version first released in 2012 and focuses on harnessing the potential in Western and Plains states most amenable to solar production.
Nick Fitzmaurice, energy transition engineer for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the expanded plan reflects the country's growing demand for solar energy.
"It's projected that 700,000 acres of solar development are going to be needed to meet future clean goals, and in the range of about 5,000 of those acres are going to be in Montana," Fitzmaurice explained. "It's a small part of the picture but important that all our open land that is able to contribute to solar can do so."
The Wilderness Society released a statement supporting the proposed Western Solar Plan expansion. The BLM is taking public comment on it until April 18.
The BLM has already done an environmental impact statement, which can sometimes be a stumbling block for such projects.
Fitzmaurice pointed out Montana was not part of the first Western Solar Plan. He thinks adding the state and having the BLM involved in siting the facilities will be crucial as Montana takes advantage of its alternative energy opportunities.
"It's really important that BLM gets ahead of this," Fitzmaurice asserted. "As these applications for development come in, they are able to be sited and put in locations that will minimize the impact on this important public land resource that we have."
Fitzmaurice added the plan proposes solar facilities be built near existing power transmission lines but not near culturally sensitive areas of Montana. Critics of the proposal said additional solar development could threaten wildlife species and habitat.
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The remote landscape of southeastern Oregon is receiving additional protections.
The Bureau of Land Management has finalized its resource management plan for the southeast corner of the state and it includes protections for parts of the Owyhee and Malheur Rivers and canyon lands in the region.
Michael O'Casey, deputy director of forest policy and Northwest programs for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said it's an exciting announcement, which will protect sensitive landscape from activities like surface development and road building.
"When that landscape is impacted, it's really hard to bring it back and restore it," O'Casey pointed out. "And so, it's really important to protect the places out there that are healthy and intact and resistant. And resilience is a term that we use, to stresses from climate change or whatever else."
O'Casey noted the plan still allows for traditional uses of the land like hunting and fishing. The BLM's final resource management plan for the district covers four-point-six million acres of public land.
O'Casey stressed the agency deliberated for years on this decision.
"This planning process was initiated in 2010 and so it's been 14 years in the making," O'Casey emphasized. "The good news is that, even though it's been a really long time, was that there was a really robust public comment process throughout this."
O'Casey added appointing the Southeast Oregon Resource Advisory Council in 2014 was an important part of public involvement. The council was made up of a wide variety of area people including grazing, energy and conservation interests, who made recommendations for management in the region.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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