Over the past 20 years, ONDA has earned many successes including the protection of Steens Mountain as the nation’s first “cow-free” Wilderness in 2000, and the removal of livestock grazing from both the Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in 1992, and the Wild and Scenic Owyhee River in 1998.

Accomplishments in 2006

ONDA’s Oregon Desert Outreach and Restoration Project engages volunteers to participate in hands-on fieldwork to restore desert habitat throughout Oregon’s desert wildlands.

Our 2006 field season was a huge success. Erin Barnholdt, ONDA’s outreach and restoration coordinator worked, with the BLM, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation to lead eleven trips. In total, 188 individuals volunteered for our work trips (100 of whom were first-time volunteers). We removed more than twelve miles of barbed wire fence, obliterated five old routes, and repaired one mile of trail.

WILDERNESS PROGRAM
ONDA’s wilderness program seeks permanent protection of special areas throughout Oregon’s desert wildlands. Our greatest opportunity for a successful desert wilderness designation in Oregon is Spring Basin, along the John Day Wild and Scenic River. In 2006, our successful grassroots campaign mobilized landowners, our members, volunteers, and the general public to advocate on behalf of Spring Basin Wilderness.

Also as part of our overall wilderness program, we continued our Wilderness Research and Rescue Project, inventorying more than 335,000 acres of BLM lands for wilderness characteristics in the John Day Basin in preparation for the upcoming John Day Resource Management Plan (RMP), a draft of which is due out from the BLM in 2007.

JOHN DAY WILD SALMON PROGRAM
ONDA’s John Day Wild Salmon Program seeks to restore native fish populations and improve overall watershed health by removing livestock grazing (through buy-outs of federal grazing permits) from critical areas within the watershed. In order to retire a federal grazing permit, it must be authorized either by federal legislation or administratively through the agency planning process.

With that in mind, ONDA remains actively involved in BLM’s planning process for the John Day Basin, as well as the forest planning process for all of NE Oregon. In both cases, our goal is to secure language that provides for retirement of ecologically unique grazing allotments.

This past year, ONDA staff also worked within the social network of the ranching community to further our goal of retiring federal grazing allotments on public lands.

LEGAL DEFENSE PROJECT
ONDA won an important legal victory in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals protecting the public’s right to participate in grazing decisions on public lands, when the court ruled that Annual Operating Instructions for grazing permits are final agency actions justiciable in federal court. The ruling is incredibly significant and will allow ONDA and other groups in the West to challenge the Forest Service’s annual grazing authorizations, rather than permits issued every ten years, or allotment management plans issued more sporadically.

We achieved another significant federal court victory on our East-West Gulch case, which recognizes that BLM has an ongoing wilderness inventory obligation. In this case, the court ruled that the BLM unlawfully approved a range improvement project without considering ONDA’s wilderness inventory. The upshot is that the BLM will be found in violation of NEPA if it authorizes projects without considering impacts to wilderness characteristics.