The acronym “BLM” stands for “Bureau of Land Management.” After looking at what the BLM did in the Steens Mountain area last month, maybe the name should be changed to “Bureau of Landscape Mutilation.”
For reasons as yet unclear, the BLM took a backhoe and other heavy equipment and plowed more than 14 miles of roadway. According to the Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association, which is suing the BLM, the work involved “construction of a newly-bladed two-lane road into the area as well as road construction into the Steens Mountain Wilderness along the Donner Und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River. The development uprooted hundreds of junipers including several old growth trees,” as well as moving boulders the size of cars. The affected area “contains important habitat and breeding territory for Greater sage grouse,” currently being considered for endangered species protection.
ONDA provided before-and-after photos of one stretch of Burnt Car Road, a remote, virtually unused track that runs along one edge of the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area. The contrast is – without exaggeration – shocking.
The “before” photo shows what looks like a meadow with sagebrush and wildflowers and two barely visible vehicle tracks running through it. The “after” photo shows something that looks like an attempt to recreate the New Jersey Turnpike. The natural vegetation has been obliterated; in its place is a two-lane scraped swath of bare dirt.
Picture 14 miles of this beautiful natural area being raped in this fashion and it’s not hard to see why ONDA is furious – and why it’s hauling the BLM into court.
A short stretch of the Burnt Car Road “improvement” extends into the Steens Mountain Wilderness Area, a clear violation of law. The BLM says this was done by accident and it’s sorry.
But it will be harder to claim that the rest of the 14 miles of road grading was just an “accident” – and to justify why it was done in apparent violation of federal law.
Make that “apparent violations of laws” – ONDA in its lawsuit charges that the BLM broke a slew of them. Among other things, the suit alleges the BLM failed to give public notice of its planned road work and disregarded laws “expressly prohibiting off-road vehicle use and creation of new motorized vehicle routes within the CMPA [Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area] and prohibiting impairment of wilderness values” in Wilderness Study Areas.
ONDA wants the BLM to repair the damage, but it’s hard to see how that can be done; once you wreck a natural landscape, it can take decades to return.
ONDA’s second objective in filing the suit, according to Executive Director Brent Fenty, is to find out why the BLM went on its road-building spree. It’s a question we’d like to hear answered too. Was the BLM hoping to provide better access for birdwatchers? Maybe create some cross-country ski trails for winter visitors?
Whatever the reason, it seems pretty clear that somebody in the Burns BLM office either didn’t understand the law or didn’t give a damn about it. Either way they deserve, and hereby receive, THE BOOT.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
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From friends who live in Burns
This is regarding of burnt car road to allow access for equipment to install a well and limited pipe lines on the boundary of an existing WSA on undesignated BLM lands in the South Steens allotment. I saw and drove on part of this in late July. The trees are in an area that is slatted and approved for Juniper control in the very near future, an extension of the cuts that took place outside and around French Glen last year. ONDA would like to see all of this area as wilderness but has been unable to do so, but that doesn’t stop them from saying it is or soon will be. This area is to the south and west of the river and although I haven’t been to the end of the graded road I am quite sure the river was not crossed, not by a long shot. I am going down in that area again tomorrow and I may have time to look around. The well was deemed necessary by the SMAC last year after more than a year of study due to the fencing of the D and B river when it was designed wild and scenic several years ago cutting cattle and wild horse herds access to water over a very large area. My brother and I looked this area over a year ago as part of the scoping process.
Today at a meeting we heard 500 feet of Wilderness was compromised and the obscure way that is not wilderness was graded and sloped and guttered to allow for wild horse gathering purposes. The wild horses cause damage as does a grader. I wonder what onda wants. Attention and money and heart ache for the BLM.
I went down and drove most of the graded area, none of which is in wilderness, and very little in WSA. I will admit it was a very poor grading job and resulted in a greater visual impact than was required but ONDA is very much overreacting in the hope of closing more area I’m sure. There is a SMAC meeting in a couple of weeks in French Glen and I am sure this will be a hot topic.
Please get your facts from the people in the BLM that know what’s going on and not from those that don’t in ondo.
Gotta love ONDA. Maybe someone can help me. Sometimes, according to these guys, junipers are an invasive species that are only thriving in eastern Oregon due to the evil presence of man and need to be eradicated. But out the other side of their mouths, when it is is expedient to their argument, we all should be concerned for “old growth” spceimens.
“The wild horses cause damage as does a grader.”
I’ve never seen horses, wild or otherwise, scrape a two-lane swath of vegetation down to bare dirt.
Post for Dan from Burns
Please post for me, I have seen very large tracks of land that were overgrazed to the point that the entire area looked like a moon scape. It won’t take much research to find areas were horses have starved or died due to lack of feed and water caused by overpopulation. The BLM has had its hands tied by so called ” horse advocates and people like ONDA in every effort it makes to “manage” these so called wild horses. WSA is NOT wilderness, and in many cases never will be, but ONDA would like everyone to believe they are, and would like to spread as much disinformation as possible. The SMAC meeting in French Glen on Sept. 3/4 is slated to have input from ONDA, and public comment is scheduled for Friday afternoon, I’ll be there to get the strait scoop.
WOW…. this is in response to the comment about horses not “scraping a tow-lane path of vegetation down to bare dirt”. How much do you really know the history and health of the area being discussed here? Are wild horses “native”? Are large swaths of juniper native here? When you are able to honestly answer these questions I would be happy to have an intelligent discussion with you on this matter.
I simply can not help myself if I don’t make the equally destructive statement: Wild horses dont confine themselves to a two lane tract, they use/abuse it all.
All this from a guy that loves all that is Oregon and certainly not an employee of any government entity…..BLM or otherwise.
Chow