The genesis of the Oregon Natural Desert Association was like so many other groups across the West where concerned citizens gathered together to develop a unified and orchestrated response to the BLM's public inventory process to identify lands having wilderness values and characteristics.

By way of history, Congress mandated BLM (via the Federal Lands Management Act of 1976) to undertake a complete and thorough inventory of all lands its lands having wilderness values, with the intention that identified lands would be considered by Congress for Wilderness designation. Up until that time, only the Forest Service was obligated to inventory lands under its management under the original 1964 Wilderness Act.

Through BLM's public input process, like-minded citizens began coordinating their efforts and developing a citizen response to BLM's inventory that many considered biased against wilderness in favor of extractive activities such as grazing, mining and geothermal development.

Thus the stage was set for stalwart desert rats to begin meeting in 1988 to discuss the need for an organization that could develop an on-going response to BLM's wilderness review and, more importantly, advocate for future designation of BLM Wilderness in Congress (while BLM can recommend lands suitable for Wilderness, only Congress can designate).

In 1989, ONDA was formalized its status as a non-profit with the mission of protecting, preserving and restoring the High Desert of Eastern Oregon.  While BLM's formal inventory process ended in 1991, ONDA has continued to push BLM to maintain the accuracy of its now dated inventory, and has refined the citizen wilderness proposal which has now identified nearly 8 million acres of  BLM lands having Wilderness values deserving of formal protection by Congress.