The following is adapted from remarks I made upon receiving Oregon Wild’s David SimonsAward for Vision in May 2024 on the occasion of Oregon Wild’s fiftieth anniversary. From 1976 until 1996, I served as western field representative, conservation director, and executive director of Oregon Wild (then the Oregon Natural Resources Council). Since then I have advised, continue to be a fan of, and am a donor to Oregon Wild.
Top Line: When political realities come up against ecological realities, the former must be changed because the latter cannot.
Figure 1. Andy Kerr on the cover of Northwest magazine, then included with the Sunday Oregonian (circa early 1990s). Source: Oregon Wild.
Thank you, Oregon Wild, for this award. I am honored.
It is very nice this evening to reunite with old friends with whom we stood shoulder to shoulder in the conservation trenches. It is even nicer to see some of today’s—and tomorrow’s—Oregon conservation warriors.
About that vision thing.
There are political realities and there are ecological realities—realities often in opposition.
While equally real, ecological realities are immutable, but political realities are mutable. Because ecological realities cannot be changed, that leaves us with no choice other than to change political realities. All that is needed to change political realities is—in the words of that great environmentalist Winston Churchill—“blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
The legendary Oregon conservationist Brock Evans of La Grande always speaks of “endless pressure, endlessly applied.”
The legendary Oregon conservationist James Monteith of Joseph would often observe that “our job as wilderness advocates is to make everyone else more uncomfortable than we are.”
Advocating for the conservation of public lands is like a relay race where each leg is a marathon, where neither the course nor the distance of the marathon is set, where the path is full of hurdles and holes, and is seldom smooth and rarely downhill. We all were handed the baton, and we all will hand off the baton. (There is nothing like carrying the baton.)
The world’s scientists have told us that to having functioning ecosystems and watersheds across the landscape and over time, we must permanently conserve 30 percent of the world’s lands and waters by 2030. President Biden in an executive order in 2021 pledged the United States to the goal of 30x30.
(You should know that 30x30 is a milestone to be reached, but the ultimate necessary milestone is 50x50—50 percent of the world’s lands and waters permanently conserved by 2050.)
What does “conserved” mean? It means national parks, national monuments, national wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers, and national what-have-you (recreation, scenic, conservation, etc.) areas.
“Conserved” does not mean community forests, working forests, regenerative agriculture, or urban parks. These are all good things, but they are not nature conservation.
Let’s talk about 30x30 Oregon. If you believe the US Geological Survey, Oregon is currently 13x24—13 percent of the state’s lands and waters are conserved in 2024. If you believe me—and you should because I caught several USGS mapping and classification errors—Oregon is 7x24—just 7 percent (~4.1 million acres) conserved in 2024.
In the currently clogged congressional conservation pipeline, we have ~3.5 million acres in waiting (Wild Rogue Wilderness additions, the Smith River National Recreation Area Expansion Act, the Southwest Oregon Salmon and Watershed Protection Act, Sutton Mountain National Monument, the Rogue Canyon [National] Recreation Area, the Molalla [National] Recreation Area, and the Owyhee wilderness bill. Passing these would bring Oregon to 13 percent by 2026—if we are lucky.
For that additional 17 percent necessary to attain 30x30, we need another 11,107,180 acres of conserved Oregon areas (but who’s counting?). (I have a list if anyone is interested.)
To get to 30x30 Oregon, we have six years to do 3.3 times the conservation in Oregon that Oregon conservationists have done since the establishment of Crater Lake National Park in 1902. If we continue at our current conservation rate, we won’t reach 30 percent until the year 2424.
While almost all Oregon conservation organizations give lip service to 30x30, their announced political agenda is only what is in the currently clogged congressional conservation pipeline.
Oregon conservationists are not asking for enough.
We need to add three to six zeros to our political asks of Congress, of presidents, of secretaries of the interior, and of secretaries of agriculture.
We can no longer ask for a congressional conservation area or two in the tens of thousands of acres and take years to finally get it “conserved” before asking for another area or two in the tens of thousands of acres.
Instead, each of our asks must be in the hundreds of thousands and millions of acres.
We must ask that all roadless areas on the national forests and all wildlands on BLM lands become units of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
We must ask for more and larger national parks, more wild and scenic rivers, for more and larger national monuments, for national conservation areas, for more and larger national scenic areas, for more and larger national wildlife refuges, for more and larger national recreation areas, for more national preserves, for national wildlife areas, for national heritage areas, and for more national scenic and recreational trails.
Oregon has the 30 percent—nay, 50 percent—of lands that are, in fact, able to be conserved. Our first task is to ensure that the health of these lands is not destroyed in fact before it can be conserved in law.
Let me close with some words from that great conservationist St. Luke:
I tell you: ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. [Luke 11:9 FBV]
We Oregon conservationists have to ask, seek, and knock!
Figure 2. Andy Kerr briefing the Reverend Jesse Jackson on a few of the finer points of an old-growth forest (ca early 1990s). Source: Elizabeth Feryl.
Bottom Line: Oregon public lands conservationists need to up their game to conserve a scientifically adequate quantity of functioning ecosystems and watersheds across the landscape and over time.
Bottom Line: Oregon public lands conservationists need to up their game to conserve a scientifically adequate quantity of functioning ecosystems and watersheds across the landscape and over time.