A river that shouldn't be so hard to save

The Oregonian, Saturday, May 31, 2008

Oregon's proposed Copper Salmon Wilderness Act should have been a slam dunk in Congress.

It passed quickly and unanimously in the House. It breezed through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with vigorous support from both of Oregon's senators. It would cost so little that the Congressional Budget Office gave it a perfect revenue-neutral rating of zero.

And back home in southwest Oregon's Curry County, the legislation has no organized opposition. Quite to the contrary, the bill is backed by an astonishingly diverse group -- loggers, hunters, fishing guides, environmentalists, port authorities, business owners and county commissioners -- that doesn't always see eye to eye on land-use issues.

Yet the Copper Salmon Wilderness Act, instead of sailing through the full Senate, is now stuck there. And it's all because of one senator, Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has emerged this year as the overzealous enemy of Oregon wilderness expansion.

Last winter, Coburn used an arcane and undemocratic Senate hold to block a proposed Mount Hood wilderness bill that otherwise would have passed with ease. In a frenzy of election-year pandering to his constituents, he has placed holds on about 90 such Senate bills that call for new spending without offsetting cuts elsewhere.

It's easy to see the hypocrisy, as Coburn supports spending billions of borrowed money on the Iraq war. What's harder is to see how Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith are going to outflank him and win approval of the popular wilderness bills.

Now the Copper Salmon proposal is caught up in the same tangle as the Mount Hood legislation. Their best hope is for it to be bundled with dozens of other land-use bills -- enough so that the resulting package has the backing of at least 60 senators, the minimum required for overruling Coburn's hold.

The Mount Hood proposal gets most of the attention, but Copper Salmon must not be lost in the crush. This 12,000-acre gem in the rugged Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest would be one of Oregon's smallest wilderness areas but one of its most important because wilderness designation would forever protect the pristine Elk River, one of the nation's most productive salmon and steelhead spawning streams.

Named for its location between Copper Mountain and Salmon Mountain, this watershed is so steep that it could never be logged. As a result it contains one of America's biggest surviving stands of low-elevation old-growth forest.

Ten times larger, the Mount Hood wilderness expansion is a must for Oregon, but Copper Salmon is also an opportunity that should not be squandered. If the obstructionist senator from Oklahoma won't get out of the way, Wyden-Smith & Co. should run over him.

Trout Unlimited Praises Restoration of ESA Protection for Oregon Coastal Coho Salmon

Conservation organization and its Oregon Council looking forward to stepped-up recovery actions for Oregon’s signature salmon

(Portland, Ore.) ­ Trout Unlimited today praised the decision by NOAA Fisheries to restore federal Endangered Species Act protection as a “threatened” species for Oregon Coastal coho salmon. The agency, charged with salmon and steelhead conservation, had been under court order to reconsider its 2006 decision not to list the Oregon Coastal coho. Trout Unlimited was among a group of fishing and conservation organizations which sued to force a re-listing after it was dropped in 2004.

“What a federal listing for Oregon Coastal coho gives us is a bigger lever to use in concert with on-the-ground efforts to accelerate coho recovery to a level where federal protection is no longer necessary,” said Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited. “With declines outpacing recovery for too many salmon and steelhead stocks up and down the Pacific Coast, we need to use every tool in the box together to make up lost ground and work toward restored fisheries.”

“The goal at the end of the day is fish recovery and restoration, and an ESA listing in the case of Oregon coho brings added incentive and public attention to bear on meeting those goals faster,” said Tom Wolf, Chair of TU’s volunteer arm in the state, its Oregon Council.

“Trout Unlimited and its Oregon members are increasing our own commitments to working on the ground with local land trusts, conservation groups, businesses, watershed councils, citizens’ groups and private landowners on recovery for Oregon’s salmon, trout and steelhead stocks wherever we can reach them,” Wolf said.

Senate panel backs Oregon coastal wilderness

Posted by The Associated Press January 30, 2008 14:56PM

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee today endorsed a plan to create federal wilderness protection for nearly 14,000 acres of national forest land along Oregon's southern coast.

The Copper Salmon Wilderness, proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will be included in a huge public lands bill to be debated by the Senate. The measure was among 42 separate bills approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Seventeen bills -- including the Oregon measure -- will be combined in a measure that includes about 60 individual lands bills, Senate aides said today. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring the bill to the Senate floor soon.

Wyden said he was pleased at the committee's unanimous vote and noted that Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., is a co-sponsor. The bill would protect 13,700 acres of coastal forest and salmon streams at the headwaters of the Elk River near Port Orford.

The proposed wilderness is part of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and is considered one of the best habitats on the West Coast for chinook salmon, winter steelhead, coho salmon, cutthroat trout and rainbow trout. Copper Salmon also supports healthy populations of blacktail deer, elk, black bear and mountain lion, and it provides opportunities to hunt in freedom and solitude, Wyden said.

Wyden said later he would seek to bring to the Senate floor separate legislation expanding wilderness area around Mount Hood by about 125,000 acres.

Tom Wolf reports that this past legislative session in Salem was one of the most productive pro-environment sessions in the past twenty (20) years. As Chair of the Oregon Council Trout Unlimited, Tom was very active in many of these issues.

The Oregon League of Conservation voters (OLCV) just came out with its Legislative Scorecard. This scorecard highlights individual legislators’ scores, the overall score for the Legislature, and outlines the impact of legislators’ votes on key environmental issues.

The scorecard enables one to find out who voted in support of renewable energy and independence from foreign oil, and who fought hard to clean up our waterways and protect our high quality farms and forests. Learn who’s out of step with voters and what pro-environment bills passed in one of the most pro-environment sessions in decades.

Their website: (www.OLCV.org)

Senator Gordon Smith has signed on as co-sponsor to the Copper-Salmon Wilderness Bill. He joins Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Peter DeFazio in standing together to protect the 13,700 acre Copper-Salmon areas as wilderness. This will protect the headwaters of the Elk River that is one of our prized fall Chinook and winter steelhead streams.

Please write these men and thank them for their dedication and bi-partisanship.

Senator Reid of Nevada has been making statements to require the Hell’s Canyon dams to put in fish passage. Fish passage for Snake River tributaries in Oregon, Idaho and Nevada have been blocked for many years because of these dams. Perhaps salmon could some day be restored to these streams.

There is a perceptible tide shift here. We need to keep up our advocacy for issues that are important to us in order to sustain this shift. This is especially important with this Fall’s and the next year’s elections.

HOME PAGE