Kelpie Wilson, Siskiyou Regional Education Project

Kelpie Wilson is executive director of the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, a grassroots network formed to protect the wild forests and rivers of the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion in northwest California and southwest Oregon.

Yesterday was a Grants Pass day. Let me explain the geography here a little. The Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument proposal covers slightly more than 1 million acres in the two counties down at the far southwest corner of Oregon -- Josephine and Curry. Cave Junction, where I live, is the smaller of the two cities in Josephine County. Grants Pass, 30 miles to the north, is the big city, population somewhere around 35,000. So I started my day with a quick trip to our office to pick up slides and literature, detoured to Coffee Heaven for a double soy latte, and drove in to Grants Pass.

First on my agenda was a Rotary lunch. I was invited to speak by our tax accountant, who likes the idea of a national monument here because it would protect the BLM land next to her property. There were other guests there besides myself, including a candidate for county commissioner who was angry about the Siskiyou Project's success in restricting a miner's access to the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. To him it was a violation of the sacred principle of property rights. Later, while shopping, I ran into a woman who had been at the lunch. She told me that her impression was that the man supporting property rights was acting out of purely personal interest, while the Siskiyou Project proposal was in what she called "the global interest."

Then I dropped by the newspaper office to deliver press materials on a new economic study and talk to a reporter and editor about them. The Southwick report is a comprehensive look at 410 Western counties in 11 states. It's a rigorous piece of work, involving "cluster analysis" and other such statistical arcana. The data indicate that counties with a large percentage of roadless wildlands are doing significantly better economically than counties where resource extraction is still dominant.

I still had a few hours to kill before an evening forum, so I escaped to the library. The Grants Pass library is much bigger than our Cave Junction branch, so it was a treat to spend some time looking at magazines I don't usually see and checking out some new fiction. Then I met Romain and Barry for dinner, before heading over to the auditorium.

This was a forum that the Siskiyou Project booked in order to answer questions about our monument proposal and dispel myths, like the very common one that a national monument can take away private property. Fortunately, this group had a lot of people who were interested in hearing more about the actual proposal. By the end of the evening, it had turned into a discussion about long-term sustainability of timber harvesting, management of recreation to reduce impacts, and other real issues.

Unfortunately, a good, civil discussion about civic issues seems to be all too rare these days. People shy away from politics even at the local level. Politics in this country have been so poisoned by the corruption of big money that most people don't want anything to do with it. But I believe that our only hope is to engage in politics again -- we can't just turn it over to corporate control like everything else! A productive discussion like last night's almost makes me feel like we could save our last wild places and learn how to live sustainably on this planet!

Perhaps you would like to help bring a stimulating political discussion to your community. I am about to head in to our 10 a.m. staff meeting, and a major topic on the agenda is how to get Lou Gold back out on the road. Lou is our travelling storyteller, and since 1985, he has spoken to more than 100,000 people across the country about the need to save our last ancient forests. Lou retired last year, but he's going back on the road this fall to get the word out about Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument. Give us a call if you'd like to help bring Lou and his slideshow to your community or school -- especially if you live in one of the swing vote states of Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, or Washington. Our objective is to make the Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument a campaign issue in the presidential elections. You can reach us at 541.592.4459 or email Lou at lougold@siskiyou.org.

This is my last Grist diary entry. Thank you for reading about my week. I hope you've been inspired to take action for the Wild Siskiyou. If you haven't yet, please go to the Siskiyou Wild Rivers website and send your letter to the president. And you can keep up with the doings of the Siskiyou Project through our website or by emailing me at kelpie@siskiyou.org. Have a good one!