Editorial

The word "unique" is the most overworked adjective in the advertising copywriter's lexicon, but in the case of Bend's Badlands area, it's justified.
The rugged 30,000-acre expanse just 20 miles northeast of town holds a combination of geological features, archaeological sites, wildlife and vegetation - including rare wildflowers and junipers that were growing before Columbus landed - that would be almost impossible to find anywhere else.
For more than a decade, the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) and other conservation groups have been trying to get the Badlands protected as wilderness by the federal government, but their efforts have been stymied in Congress. On Tuesday, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden announced that he's going to take another shot at it.
At a press conference sponsored by ONDA, Wyden said his wilderness bill will include the portion of the Badlands designated by the Bureau of Land Management as a Wilderness Study Area (WSA) plus several hundred additional acres. Creating the Oregon Badlands Wilderness, Wyden said, "will tell the world that Central Oregon is a place with an unbelievable menu of recreation, where you can ski in the morning on one side of town and enjoy the solitude of high desert wilderness in the afternoon on the other."

In the beginning - actually in 1969 - there was Sunriver, and a couple of years later there was Black Butte Ranch.
And Sunriver and Black Butte Ranch attracted thousands of tourists, and that created jobs and brought millions of dollars into Central Oregon, and that was very good.
And when the Oregon Legislature looked at Sunriver and Black Butte Ranch and all those tourist dollars it said: "We need to loosen up the state land use law to allow more places like Sunriver and Black Butte Ranch, because the economies of rural areas like Central Oregon are really hurting and they could help a lot."
And so a peculiar animal unique to Oregon - the "destination resort" - was created, and the legislature decreed that destination resorts could be located outside of urban areas in places that otherwise would be reserved for farms or forests.
But the destination resort loophole turned out to be wide enough to drive an 18-wheeler through, and as time went on "destination resorts" began to look less and less like resorts and more and more like expensive residential communities built around golf courses.