Wednesday, 6 Sep 2000
CAVE JUNCTION, Ore.
Have you ever read Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion? If so, you know there is something to mourn in the passing of the rough and ready way of life that was big men and timber and big women and fish. Or something like that. But the big trees and the big fish are mostly all gone now, so what is to be done?
"From Careers in the Great Outdoors to Confinement in Cubicles: Oregon Workers Trade Forest, Sea for Florescent Lights, Four Walls" -- that's the title of a recent New York Times article about the new high-tech industry moving into Coos Bay and other "pretty" areas of the West. Coos Bay is on the Oregon coast, just north of Gold Beach, where I went yesterday to attend a workshop sponsored by the county commissioners on the Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument proposal.
People and their businesses are moving here to take advantage of "quality of life." That's one way to look at it. The other way is to acknowledge that there are a lot of environmental refugees floating around. The more areas are clear-cut, paved, and polluted, the more precious the remaining forests producing clean water, clean air, and wildlife become. It's the simple law of supply and demand.
This is Rough and Ready Creek. A miner wants to strip-mine this watershed for nickel -- one reason we are promoting a national monument for the Siskiyou.
In Gold Beach, the county commissioners and a crowd of about 25 heard from the Siskiyou Project and a timber industry representative. The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were present. Questions and comments ensued.
A majority of the commentary concerned things like the impending occupation of all national monuments by United Nations forces and rumors of confiscation of private property by the dreaded Federal Government. We've heard these points before and they all seem to emanate from a single source, a group called "People for the USA." PFUSA is a self-styled "grassroots" group funded primarily by the international mining industry. The group seems to specialize in spreading rumors. Here are some of the doozies we've been hearing around here: "the UN wants to confiscate the federal land so they can sell the valuable minerals to pay off the United States' back UN dues," and "the federal government will confiscate your private property or at least tell you what color you can paint your house, if you live next to a national monument."
Interestingly, even the timber industry representative admitted he was not primarily concerned about the jobs issue. He said he was there because he's worried about "where this country is going, and increasing government control of our lives."
My colleague Romain Cooper and I patiently explained to the folks from Gold Beach that under the Antiquities Act, a national monument can only be created on land already held by the federal government, and that our proposal is not a federal takeover, but just a change in the management direction of land already owned by the citizens of the United States, as represented by the federal government. What's needed now, we explained, is a new kind of multiple-use management that emphasizes restoring the fisheries and providing ecosystem services like clean water and clean air. Recreation can provide a great economic benefit to local communities, and quality of life will bring in new businesses and jobs.
This is a nickel strip mine in Riddle, Ore., 60 miles north of Rough and Ready Creek. It's one of the biggest toxic waste sites in the state.
Above all we need to stop taking the last old-growth trees and we need to quit mining the watersheds. One of the biggest threats we are facing is a large strip mine proposed for Rough and Ready Creek. This creek is the most botanically diverse watershed in the state of Oregon -- not an appropriate place for a strip mine!
Unemployment in southwest Oregon is at its lowest point in 30 years. The new economy is here already, whether we like it or not. We can keep mining and logging our land to death, or we can grab the brass ring, create a Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument, and assume our place in the booming economy of the Pacific Northwest.
Please go to Siskiyou Wild Rivers website and send your fax to the president urging him to proclaim the Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument. And if you'd like to learn more about our proposal, check out the Siskiyou Project website.
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