FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLM drops development proposal for Steens Mountain wilderness areas

by Mac Lacy

In a significant victory that will preserve wilderness values on Steens Mountain, BLM has dropped its proposal to build an extensive network of water projects on this iconic eastern Oregon landscape. The agency pulled its decision just one day before the deadline for ONDA and others to administratively appeal the projects.

As proposed, the South Steens Allotment Management Plan (“AMP”) would have allowed construction of 13 new reservoirs, 14 reservoir rehabilitation projects, 3 new wells, up to 5 miles of new pipelines, installation of 11 new troughs and 2 new storage tanks, 3 spring redevelopment projects, and new fences throughout the project area. Nearly all the projects were slated for construction within three designated Wilderness Study Areas (“WSAs”). Several others would have been built within adjacent citizen-inventoried and -proposed wilderness areas.

If it had been implemented, the project would be one of the most egregious violations ONDA has ever seen of BLM’s management policy for WSAs on the public lands. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (“FLPMA”) requires BLM to manage WSAs “so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation [by Congress] as wilderness.” These projects would have utterly reworked this wild desert landscape on Steens Mountain, converting it from “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man” to one where “man and his own works dominate the landscape.” 16 U.S.C. § 1131(c) (quoting from Congress’s definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act).
 
ONDA made clear in its October 2008 comments that BLM’s proposal was utterly inconsistent with FLPMA’s non-impairment obligation. The scope and scale of the projects proposed here couldn’t have been more inappropriate than on Steens Mountain, one of the crown jewels of Oregon’s high desert. The projects are inherently unnatural and would result in creation of completely denuded sacrifice zones, evenly spaced throughout 90,000 acres of public land on Steens Mountain. The project area is immediately adjacent to the Steens Mountain Wilderness and the Donner und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River corridor. If implemented, this project almost certainly would have precluded future wilderness designation in these spectacular areas.

The extensive and wide-ranging water projects also would threaten the viability of the sage grouse, a species whose populations already are at an all-time low due to grazing and agricultural impacts. If it had been implemented, the project would have fragmented and degraded this landscape. By failing to provide sufficient buffers of non-disturbed areas around critical sage grouse habitat areas, and by failing to restore rather than degrade this important habitat, BLM’s proposal would have restricted sage grouse to confined nesting sites, increased potential predation, reduced reproductive capabilities, increased the threat of West Nile virus among dozens of new late-season water sources, and further fragmented habitat.

ONDA applauds BLM’s decision to withdraw this destructive project. BLM should be trying to enhance the naturalness of Steens Mountain, not expand livestock impacts. ONDA will closely monitor any future permutations of this proposal.

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