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Bulletin Editorial: Limbo works well for the Badlands

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The Badlands, occupying roughly 30,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 20 miles east of Bend, has been a wilderness study area since 1980. WSAs are large areas that possess the basic wilderness characteristics laid out in the Wilderness Act of 1964, according to the BLM. The agency created an inventory of such areas many years ago under the assumption that Congress would come along sooner or later and bestow the official wilderness designation upon truly deserving WSAs. But Congress — surprise, surprise — has essentially skipped the intended follow-through. After a quarter-century, the agency's WSAs have settled into a regulatory limbo that Congress shows no inclination to disturb.

That's not entirely a bad thing, at least as far as the Badlands WSA is concerned. Federal law expressly requires the BLM "to manage such lands (WSAs) ... in a manner so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation as wilderness." Until Congress says otherwise, this mandate will remain. Pressure from Central Oregonians could motivate the state's congressional delegation to push for a wilderness designation. Barring that, however, the area's WSA designation and the protection that comes with it are very unlikely to disappear.

In practice, this status gives Central Oregonians something they shouldn't be so quick to surrender: a comparatively flexible wilderness.

Some people, we suspect, truly believe the Badlands needs the kind of rigid protection wilderness designation would afford. This doesn't square with recent history, which has seen a steady reduction in the number of activities allowed in the Badlands. The current management plan, adopted in 2005, bars the use of motorized vehicles there. It caps the size of organized groups, it prohibits competitive events and it even limits the number of "geocaches," which are tracked using GPS devices in a modern-day form of treasure hunting. Preservation can — and does — happen quite well without a wilderness designation.

The WSA designation, meanwhile, allows greater management flexibility than a wilderness designation would. At the moment, for instance, mountain bike use is permitted in the Badlands along designated routes. Considered a form of mechanized transportation under the Wilderness Act, bikes would be prohibited by the stricter designation. Mountain biking, from what we hear, is not a popular activity in the Badlands at the moment. In the future, however, who knows where Central Oregonians will want to ride their bikes?

In fact, wheels of almost all kinds are a problem in wilderness areas. People regularly tour the Badlands in horse-drawn carts, taking advantage of its "old, fairly wide roads," says Greg Currie, outdoor recreation planner with the BLM's Prineville district. Would carts be allowed under a wilderness designation? Currie doesn't know. They're regularly prohibited in wilderness areas elsewhere, as are strollers, including beefy jogging strollers that can tolerate rough and sandy ground. These uses do not degrade the Badlands. Yet Central Oregonians will, at the very least, have to fight to preserve them (and likely many others) if Congress declares the Badlands a wilderness.

As a WSA, the Badlands enjoys a heightened level of protection that allows it to function much like a wilderness area. But its status also allows the BLM, informed by the wishes of area residents, to permit various low-impact uses that might be barred under the stricter classification.

A Badlands Wilderness would enjoy a certain amount of prestige that the Badlands WSA does not, of course. But this prestige would come at a cost to Central Oregonians, who would inevitably surrender much of their — and their children's — ability to determine what happens there.

Some day, of course, Congress could seek to remove the Badlands' WSA designation. Given the past quarter-century of thumb-twiddling, this isn't likely to happen soon, and it certainly isn't likely to happen over the objections of the state's congressional delegation. BLM spokesman Michael Campbell has been in the bureau's Portland office for a decade, and in that time, he says, "I've never seen any attempts to delist or alter WSA status unless it's in the context of moving from WSA status to wilderness." Still, the possibility does exist. If and when it happens, a wilderness designation might make sense for the Badlands. Until then, Central Oregonians should appreciate the authority they have and seek to preserve it.

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