Clearing Up Some of the Stench in Salem

Posted inNews

Moon Mountain Music Festival…is FREE

The Source Staff

I’ve been keeping an ear out as information about the secondinstallment of the Moon Mountain Rambler's very own music festival, the Moon Mountain Festival rolls out, and tonight finally got confirmation that the two-day event at Elk Lake over Labor Day Weekend is not only a go, but will be free this year.

Last year, the Moon Mountain Fest shocked the pants right off of me, turning out to be one of the most laid-back yet high-quality music events of 2008's summer.

Posted inNews

Rolling out the Greenprint: Inside Deschutes County's largest conservation planning effort to date

Mike Bookey

The Trust for Public Land’s Kristin Kovalik, one of the Greenprint Coordinators, taking a look at area maps. Photo by Ben Murphy.

What if you could ride your bike, expressly on maintained trails, from Bend to Redmond? What if we saw another Shevlin-sized park on the city's perimeters or if more large-scale conservation efforts, like Skyline Forest, were created in Deschutes County? And what if our region became a magnet for federal conservation funding? This could happen, and it could start with a “Greenprint,” a broad planning process backed by the Trust for Public Lands, one of the largest land conservation groups in the country, that's on the ground and running here in Deschutes County with help from a wide range of community groups and agencies.
The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit land conservation group, and its local managers have been working over the past several months with several local government officials, agency heads, conservation and business leaders, tourism agencies and the general public to create this plan for Deschutes County that would identify, among other things, land that could be used for wildlife and water conservation or perhaps recreational trail connections. Again, the Greenprint doesn't create or enforce policy, but what it does do is bring seemingly divergent interests to the table, something that doesn't always happen in this region when it comes to conservation. By May of next year, TPL hopes to have completed the Greenprint, providing the community at large with high-tech interactive maps that will serve as a comprehensive plan for how we, as residents of Deschutes County, would like to protect our land and, in a larger view, our quality of life.
Kristin Kovalik is a project manager with TPL, working in the national conservation organization's Bend office and has been involved with the Greenprint for Deschutes County for about nine months. Although the Greenprint is new to Central Oregon, 24 Greenprints have been conducted throughout the country over the past eight years, including projects in the Seattle and Wenatchee areas. Presently, Greenprint projects are also underway in other areas throughout the country, including projects in Texas, Wisconsin, Maine and Missouri. And while this is the first time a Greenprint has been executed locally, the idea has been floated before – some might remember that Greenprint was mentioned during the Bend 2030 project, which itself is similar to this project in that it's also a community-oriented long-term planning effort.

Posted inOpinion

The BLM's Steens Mountain Freeway

H. Bruce Miller

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.

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