In the early 1970's, Dr. Seuss scripted The Lorax with one of his most prophetic lines: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot / Nothing is going to get better. It's not." Such language has become somewhat of an unspoken mantra in the environmental movement today. Rising from the mountains of southern Oregon, the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council is a small group with a great deal to care for.
The Council, chaired by the ever-determined Dave Willis, has poured over twenty years of effort into awarding what is now the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument lasting protection through wilderness designation. They spearheaded the campaign to designate the national monument, and consider it their greatest accomplishment to date. Situated in an ecological mixing bowl, the monument encompasses one of the most botanically diverse regions in Oregon. Converging here are the rich temperate forests of the Cascades and Siskiyous--the Klamath Mountains to the west, mingling with the Great Basin of eastern Oregon and California's Shasta Valley to the south. With such a diverse range of habitat, the area is worthy of the focus it receives. However, the road to seeing any concrete protections for the region has been bumpy, despite the "case-closed" effect the National Monument designation implies.
When former President Clinton signed the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument into law, the mission statement read "for the purpose of protecting the objects identified above...." Throughout the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council's struggle, these words have surfaced again and again. Dave Willis has diligently worked with the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign on a buyout of grazing permits from ranchers by the BLM. Cattle grazing is a significant threat to the plant life and riparian areas in the region, and a delicate issue that requires a lot of time, compromise and careful stepping. Ranching interests in Jackson County support the buyout, as do most lawmakers. A buyout bill was introduced in the Senate late in 2006, but time ran out before it could gain traction. The Council is forging ahead with the issue, providing the public with information about the benefits of a grazing buyout.
Raising funds is necessarily an important part of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council's efforts, and they have done it well. Working with the Pacific Forest Trust (PFT), the Council advocates with foundations for land acquisition funds and has received some large gifts that go a long way. Willis has spent many hours talking with BLM officials to better prioritize such acquisitions. In just the last couple of years the PFT has acquired almost 5,000 acres of former timber company properties inside the Monument, including key biologically rich areas. All such land is in the process of being transferred to the BLM, and upon completion will automatically become part of the Monument.
The struggle for the 23,000-acre wilderness designation has met obstacles with a balance of hope and hard work. "We have to earn every millimeter," Willis says. And those millimeters are adding up. A proposal for a two-thirds mile wide energy corridor through the heart of the monument was met with vehement opposition by the Council as they testified against it in Washington, D.C. last June. Recently, they successfully sued the Redding BLM for mismanagement of the Horseshoe Wildlife Area, part of which they would like to include in the proposed wilderness. They have played a pivotal role in a bill, The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Voluntary and Equitable Grazing Conflict Resolution Act, that would buyout grazing permits and designate the wilderness they seek. This bill was first introduced last fall, and it is expected it will be reintroduced anytime in the next few months.
The Soda Mountain Wilderness Council has proved itself more than capable of improving the future of the Cascade-Siskiyou region. Dave Willis is optimistic despite the crawling pace of politics. We are "definitely making progress," he says.
