All across the West, it's shaping up to be a wondrous whitewater season. Snowpack levels have been high, reservoirs have had a healthy amount of water, and over at the Owyhee River, everything is looking "just right" for weather and water — meaning many hopeful water-lovers may just get that trip they've long been hoping for in the Owyhee.
With many minds on the Owyhee, there's another piece of news: A new poll about the area shows massive support for protecting the Owyhee Canyonlands through a presidential monument designation. The May poll commissioned by the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and the advocacy group Protect the Owyhee Canyonlands showed that some 73% of Oregonians support protecting the Canyonlands as a national monument. Broken down by party lines, the poll found that 95% of Democrats, 76% of non-affiliated voters and 40% of Republicans polled support the notion of a monument.
Currently, the Owyhee is the largest unprotected area in the western United States, with just 5% of it protected from development. At this point, designating the area as a monument appears to be the most realistic method of seeing something happen there.
Five years ago, Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley began to introduce legislation that would do much of the same things that a monument does — protecting this important natural resource while also paying heed to the concerns of ranchers, hunters and anglers. Their efforts brought together tribal members, ranchers, outdoor recreationalists, local businesses and others who may not be assumed to agree, to get behind legislation that would protect 1.1 million acres of the 2.5-million-acre Owyhee. It's been a coalition of strange bedfellows, and it proves that when people work together, even the most polarized company can get things done. Under that legislation, grazing would continue; hunting and fishing would, too, while at the same time the area would be protected from the pressures of industrial development, climate change and more.
The irony is, Congress itself has been at impasse much of the time, and with that, the legislative approach has thus far not borne fruit. Yet what those efforts in the legislative arena have borne is more understanding of the needs of the area and why it deserves protection.
This most recent poll is one more piece of evidence that by and large, a monument for the Owyhee Canyonlands would not just be the right thing to do for the sake of environmental protection, but that it would be largely well-received in Oregon.
The effort toward protecting the Canyonlands has thus far proved that it is possible to bring together people with varying priorities, and to emerge with a compromise that makes everyone feel they're winning. One could argue that the same thing could now be done in Congress — that interested parties could mount an effort to convince enough members of the House and Senate of the validity of the cause. But with that same House and Senate barely able to muster the political will to pass basic things like a budget, finding other methods also seems expedient.
A poll is a poll and it gives people a read of the room — yet each individual can still take action, too. A petition to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands is currently open at the Protect the Owyhee Canyonlands website, protecttheowyhee.org or at the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, olcv.org/protect-the-owyhee.
