FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Badlands bill before Senate panel
by Keith Chu, The Bulletin
Jul 10, 2008
WASHINGTON — The
proposed Badlands Wilderness was warmly received by
U.S. senators — and picked up support from a Bureau
of Land Management official — in a Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee hearing on
Wednesday.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,
introduced the bill, along with a bill to create
wilderness near the John Day Fossil Beds.
“These two bills
would protect as wilderness two especially unique
treasures in the High Desert of Central and Eastern Oregon,”
Wyden said, during the hearing.
“Many in the
business community consider this wild area a very substantial
boost to the region’s (reputation) as an area of great
attraction to outdoor recreation.”
A Badlands Wilderness
would encompass about 30,000 acres of High Desert east
of Bend. The area provides habitat for
yellow-bellied marmots, bobcat, mule deer, elk and pronghorn, according to the
Bureau of Land Management.
As a federally designated
wilderness area, the land would be off limits to development and motorized
recreation.
Most other types of
recreation are allowed in wilderness areas.
Wyden’s bill
includes a special provision to allow legally blind sled dog racer Rachael
Scdoris, of Alfalfa, to continue training in the Badlands,
where she sometimes uses motorized equipment. The bill carves out a
25-foot-wide corridor, which zigzags
across the area’s eastern and southern edges, where Scdoris would be
allowed to train.
Michael Nedd, assistant
director of minerals and realty management for the Bureau of Land Management,
said the Bush administration
generally supports the bill, but added that the measure needs to be more
specific to ensure only Scdoris can take
advantage of the waiver.
“If an exclusion
from wilderness designation is going to be made by Congress in this single case
for Ms. Scdoris, we would like the
opportunity to work with the sponsor and the committee to modify the language,”
Nedd said, in his prepared testimony.
Sen. Gordon Smith,
R-Ore., said he would support both wilderness bills in the Wednesday hearing.
Smith held back from signing on as a
co-sponsor to the Badlands bill, though, because he wants to ensure off-highway
vehicle users have enough land to ride
their vehicles. OHVs were banned in the Badlands in 2005.
The Oregon Natural Desert
Association has pushed for years to protect the area as wilderness. After the
hearing, ONDA Executive Director
Brent Fenty said he is happy with the hearing’s outcome.
“I’m very
pleased to see Sen. Smith step up and co-sponsor the Spring Basin bill, and
hopefully he will do the same for Badlands,” said
Fenty, adding that his group had dropped 7,000 acres of land from the Badlands
proposal to address concerns of OHV
users.
Two land exchanges, with
the Central Oregon Irrigation District and Ray Clarno, husband of former
Deschutes County Commissioner Bev Clarno,
are called for in the bill creating the Badlands Wilderness.
Nedd said the BLM wants
to be sure the parcels traded were of equal value, which may not be the case in
the current proposal. Nedd
said it would likely take three years to complete the exchanges.
The committee also
considered the Spring Basin Wilderness proposal in Wednesday’s hearing.
That bill would create about 8,661 acres of
wilderness near the John Day Fossil Beds and John Day River, northeast of Bend.
That bill includes four
separate land exchanges, including a transfer between the BLM and the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
Keith Chu can be reached
at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.
Published Daily in Bend
Oregon by Western Communications, Inc.
© 2008
Read testimony on Badlands Wilderness from Brent Fenty here.
Read testimony on Spring Basin Wilderness from Brent Fenty here.
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