This is the fourth of four Public Lands Blog posts that examine the topic of national parks in Oregon. Part 1 explored Oregon’s one success in establishing a national park. Part 2 discussed multiple failures to establish additional national parks in the state. Part 3 examined both successful and failed attempts to expand Crater Lake National Park. Part 4 looks at the potential supply and demand for additional national parks in Oregon and the political challenges and chances.
Figure 1. Many painted hills are not (yet) within the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, administered by the National Park Service. Source: Bureau of Land Management.
It is the will of the nation as embodied in the act of Congress [in setting aside the Yosemite government reservation in 1864] that this scenery shall never be private property, but that like certain defensive points upon our coast it shall be solely for public purposes.
Two classes of considerations may be assumed to have influenced the action of Congress. The first and less important is the direct and obvious pecuniary advantage which comes to a commonwealth from the fact that it possesses objects which cannot be taken out of its domain, that are attractive to travelers and the enjoyment of which is open to all.
A more important class of considerations, however, remains to be stated. These are considerations of a political duty of grave importance to which seldom if ever before has proper respect been paid by any government in the world but the grounds of which rest on the same eternal base of equity and benevolence with all other duties of republican government. It is the main duty of government, if it is not the sole duty of government, to provide means of protection for all its citizens in the pursuit of happiness against all the obstacles, otherwise insurmountable, which the selfishness of individuals or combinations of individuals is liable to interpose to that pursuit.
—Frederick Law Olmsted, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees” (1865), in Landscape Architecture 43:1 (October 1952)
I am bearish on the prospect of establishing any new national parks in Oregon, save perhaps one that would be a hell of a long shot. I am semi-bullish on the possibility of modest additions to Oregon’s only national park. But I am bullish on the chances of designating several new National Park System units in Oregon.
Why New National Parks Have Failed in Oregon in the Past
There are lots of reasons why Oregon has failed to gain any new national parks since 1902. Here are what I believe to be the major ones.
Lack of collective vision
In times past, relatively few Oregonians were preservationists, and the squanderers, if not more numerous, were more powerful. It’s always easier to dispose than to propose, and it’s always easier to kill a congressional bill than enact it into law. Members of Congress are only as visionary as their constituency. One Oregon congressional aide recently told me that the Oregon Redwoods were “not national park quality.”
Inertia
President Bill Clinton noted that people are for change in general but against change in particular. In politics, inertia (at least the kind that is not moving) is the default setting. It’s hard to get things moving.
Local opposition
Our political system tends to give more weight to local interests than the national interest. Even though federal public lands anywhere belong to all of us everywhere, locals often have more political weight. As a class, locals, when it comes to the nation’s public lands, tend to be selfish and shortsighted. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, and those locals either go down in history or up in flames.
Agency resistance
Federal land management agencies are large institutions that resist both change and limits on their discretion. It is their nature.
Before the Wilderness Act of 1964, the only way to save National Forest System lands from the ravages of roading and logging by the Forest Service was to transfer them to the National Park System to be administered by the National Park Service. Today, besides establishing certain National Forest System lands as wilderness or wild and scenic rivers, Congress has gotten into the habit of designating overarching conservation areas (including, but not limited to, national recreation areas, national volcanic monuments, national scenic areas, and scenic recreation areas.). While still limits on Forest Service discretion, the agency prefers it to losing land to the National Park Service. Therefore, the agency resists less.
Hunting
One dead-certain standard for a full national park is no hunting. Hunters, understandably, don’t like to lose access to federal public lands. Although the number of hunters has declined to a small fraction of what it was at the turn of the last century, hunters are still given disproportionate political weight.
In the public lands conservation community, a few are anti-hunting, a few are anti–predator hunting (only shoot it if you are going to eat it), many are ambivalent (since their focus is on stopping mining, logging, grazing, and the like), and some are pro-hunting. In the latter category we must distinguish between conservation organizations that favor hunting (easy test: they can spell “habitat” and know what it means) and hunting organizations that consider the act of hunting to be conservation.
National monuments are also closed to hunting unless hunting was specified as a legitimate use when the monument was first proclaimed by a president or legislated into existence by Congress. The 2014 “expansion” of the Oregon Caves National Monument is illustrative. Actually the size of the national monument remained unchanged: 484 acres (less than one square mile) on which no hunting is allowed. By act of Congress, the national monument was enveloped by a new “national preserve” in an approximately tenfold expansion. A national preserve is a unit of the National Park System in which hunting (and occasionally other nonconforming uses) is allowed: national park lite.
I did an analysis using ODFW hunter (deer and bear) numbers for the wildlife management unit of which the proposed monument expansion was a very minor part. The numbers showed that there was far more “game” to “harvest” than hunters to do it—not to mention a declining number of hunters over time. However, the members of the Oregon congressional delegation who were leading on the bill just didn’t want to go there.
Death of Senator Neuberger
Counterfactuals rarely interest me, but the untimely death from cancer in 1960 at age forty-eight of Oregon’s liberal Democratic senator Richard Neuberger extinguished a rising public lands conservation legacy. The Oregon governor appointed someone else to fill the remainder of the term, and then Neuberger’s wife, Maureen, ran and won the seat in 1960. She served one term and did not seek re-election, thereby paving the way for Mark O. Hatfield’s thirty-year Senate career. Hatfield, a party-splitting pacifist and a timber beast, was never defeated. We’ll never know.
Bearish: New National Parks in Oregon
The failed efforts described in “National Parks in Oregon, Part 2” are areas still generally worthy of national park status, but I’m not optimistic about their prospects. To review:
• Mount Hood National Park
• Hells Canyon National Park
• Oregon Coast National Park
• Oregon Dunes National Seashore
• Steens Mountain National Park
• Owyhee Canyonlands National Park
• Volcanic Cascades National Park
Other national park proposals have been floated, including for an Ancient Forest National Park in southwestern Oregon and northwestern California (Map 1). The website has a nice video, but merely a website doeth not maketh a campaign.
Map 1. The proposed Ancient Forest National Park would include many fully protected wilderness areas, some mostly protected wild and scenic rivers, some semi-protected inventoried roadless areas, and other federal public lands. Source: www.ancientforestnationalpark.org.
Why New National Park Proposals Are Not Being Advanced in Oregon
There are two major reasons the conservation community in Oregon is not seeking to advance proposals for new national parks.
Marginal incremental conservation gains
The conservation gains made by creating new national parks would generally be marginal at best. For example, while we have our problems with the (mis)management of the Oregon Dunes and Hells Canyon National Recreation Areas, the political effort required to convert them from Forest Service to National Park Service administration would be huge, problematic, and uncertain, with very little conservation gain to show for it.
New national park proposals are more likely to gain traction among chambers of commerce and local development interests that become enlightened enough to know that the “good” old days of logging, grazing, and mining aren’t coming back and that the national park brand is a surefire way to draw tourists and—most important—their credit cards. Good for local economic development but not necessarily for the conservation and restoration of nature.
Alternative and easier paths toward conservation
For a comparable expenditure of time, money, and resources, one can attain higher levels of conservation for public lands than through re-designations like a Hells Canyon National Park or an Oregon Dunes National Seashore, by fixing the problems within the statutes that guide and control those national recreation areas. And/or one can attain strong overarching new congressional conservation areas (with underlying wilderness and wild and scenic rivers where possible).
Buarish: Unoccupied Private Lands Reconverted to Public Lands
Sometimes the English language fails: “buarish” (buh-air-ish) is a lame, but needed, portmanteau to describe those matters about which I am neither bullish nor bearish. I think the best chance for a new national park in Oregon is to go both really big and really long. To envision such a thing, it helps to look at history.
In the 1920s Congress established Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. The National Park Service was willing to have a national park in Virginia, but since the state wasn’t a “public land state” in the West, a new national park could not be reserved from existing federal lands. If the Commonwealth of Virginia wanted a national park, it would have to acquire the land and give it to the United States. The National Park Service and Virginia drew a line, and the Commonwealth—using its power of eminent domain (condemnation)—then acquired what was mostly cutover, burned-off, mined-out, grazed-down, plowed-up mountains. Upon the establishment of Shenandoah National Park, the National Park Service announced it was “inviting nature back.” Today, much of the national park is also part of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
It was a radical idea, but the creation of Shenandoah National Park is now considered a very reasonable thing to have done.
An upcoming Public Lands Blog post will reveal what I have in mind in going really big and really long.
Semi-Bullish: Additions to Crater Lake National Park
Modest additions to Crater Lake National Park are possible, I think, in my lifetime, including
• bringing the park boundary out to existing Forest Service roads and/or state highway rights-of-way, and
• extending the park to completely include Lower Sand Creek, including the Sand Creek Pinnacles.
Such an expansion is not worthy of a distinct congressional conservation campaign, but park expansion is a logical part of a larger effort to establish or expand other overarching congressional conservation areas (with underlying wilderness and wild and scenic rivers where possible).
Figure 2. Crack-in-the-Ground is a 2-mile-long ancient volcanic fissure in the Fort Rock Lava Beds in Lake County, which would make an excellent addition to the National Park System. Source: Bureau of Land Management
Bullish: New National Park System Units in Oregon
Again, we must distinguish between full-blown national parks, which are the crème de la crème, the nation’s crown jewels, and other units of the National Park System. Besides full-blown national parks, there are (take a deep breath) national monuments, national preserves, national historic parks, national historic sites, an international historic site, national battlefield parks, national military parks, national battlefields, a national battlefield site, national memorials, national recreation areas, national seashores, national lakeshores, national rivers, national reserves, national parkways, national trails, and sundry other units (whew!).
The diversity of designations reflects the diversity of natural, historical, and cultural features being protected for this and future generations as part of the National Park System. Some designations have within them units of the National Wilderness Preservation System and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
The next president could use authority granted to the chief executive by Congress to establish new or expanded national monuments in Oregon. If a new national monument is carved out of lands now administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM, the largest landowner in Oregon), the president could choose to have either the BLM or the National Park Service administer it (the latter would be preferable). Such is not the case for national monuments created from national forest land, which, by statute, must be administered by the Forest Service.
Let’s focus on some possibilities to expand the National Park System from BLM lands in Oregon:
• John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Additions (Grant and Wheeler Counties) (Figure 1)
• Fort Rock Lava Beds National Monument (Lake County) (Figure 2)
• Lost Forest–Shifting Sand Dunes National Monument (Lake County) (Figure 3)
• Diamond Craters National Monument (Harney County)
• Jordan Craters National Monument (Malheur County)
• Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Additions (Jackson and Klamath Counties)
• Warner Wetlands National Monument (Lake County)
• Lake Abert and Abert Rim National Monument (Lake County)
• Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument (Malheur County)
• Crabtree Valley National Monument (Linn County)
Figure 3. Sand dunes near Fossil Lake in the proposed Lost Forest-Shifting Sand Dunes National Monument. Source: Bureau of Land Management
Come to think of it, essentially every BLM-designated area of critical environmental concern (ACEC) is worthy of being in the National Park System. Of course, Congress also could establish these as National Park Service national monuments, or as national monuments administered by the BLM (or the Forest Service), or as national wildlife refuges administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, or as . . .