Dedicated to the conservation and restoration of nature, The Larch Company is a non-membership for-profit organization that represents species that cannot talk and humans not yet born. A deciduous conifer, the western larch has a contrary nature.
Most Americans get their drinking, bathing, and flushing water from surface sources, most of which are unprotected from logging and other exploitation.
A giant in nature conservation and restoration died just a few days short of the autumnal equinox. Like few others, he inspired generations of advocates of wildlands, wild waters, and wildlife to reach for the greater good and to demand more.
Compared to its political equal Washington, arch-liberal California, arch-conservative Idaho, and politically purple Nevada, Oregon has the least designated wilderness acreage and the smallest percentage of the state’s lands protected as wilderness.
As Jim Weaver quietly lives out his days in his beloved Oregon, this and future generations are in his debt because even though he represented the congressional district ranked highest for timber production in the nation, Weaver was a strong and tireless proponent of wilderness. There are wilderness areas today safely on the map, both inside and beyond his congressional district, because Jim Weaver stood up for the wild in Oregon in ways that no elected official had done before or has done since.
The intent of this Public Lands blog is to each week give the reader a ~750-word exposition on some aspect of federal or state public lands in the United States. Some weeks you will a find a piece that goes rather deep and serves as a useful (I hope) backgrounder on particular areas, matters or issues surrounding public lands. Other weeks, you’ll find a topical piece addressing a public lands controversy of the moment.
The rest of this maiden column summarizes why I’m qualified to write it.
