— By TinaMarie Ekker

In January 2003 BLM approved the continuation of the commercial Steens Mountain Running Camp within Wilderness. This provides a commercial operation with special privileges that are without precedent anywhere in America’s National Wilderness Preservation System. The decision allows groups of 190 clients and staff to use the Wilderness as a training ground for competitive running events.

Southeast Oregon is a region of few people, lonesome highways, and rugged high desert terrain. Rainstorms leave the scent of sage on the air. Mule deer, coyotes, and bighorn sheep are at home on the high mountain mesas and in the wide, sweeping gorges slicing down through the flanks of mountains. Presiding over the dramatic beauty of this quiet land is the massive upsweep of Steens Mountain, rising thousands of feet above the surrounding desert below.

The special qualities of this remote region have not gone unnoticed. When the Clinton administration announced that it wanted to make Steens Mountain a national monument, a coalition of ranchers, residents, and conservation groups put forth a different proposal. In October 2000 Congress responded by designating 500,000 acres as the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area (CMPA). Congress also designated 175,000 acres within the CMPA as the Steens Mountain Wilderness.

There was much celebrating – almost everyone believed that the new Steens Mountain Wilderness was now safe from harm, and would be preserved forever as a wild place. However, the cold, hard truth is that wilderness designation is a mechanism that only provides the opportunity to assure that an area remains protected into the future. In fact, the real work of actually protecting it as wilderness has just begun. It was only a matter of months before this fact became apparent in Oregon. Less than a year after designation, storm clouds of controversy were brewing over the new Steens Mountain Wilderness.

During the time that the Steens Act was being negotiated, many local residents and businesses believed that wilderness designation would not change their customary uses and activities on Steens Mountain, including commercial business operations and motor vehicle use for certain purposes. However, when the Steens Act passed it did not contain any special exceptions for incompatible activities inside the wilderness. Despite this fact, many local residents and businesses carried on as if nothing had changed. Nine months after wilderness designation, ranchers were driving in the wilderness to check on cows and drop off salt blocks, a commercial outfitter was driving through wilderness, and a realtor was routinely driving on old jeep tracks through the wilderness to show prospective clients a private inholding listed for sale.

In addition, a commercial training camp for competitive athletes was running groups of 190 clients and staff through the high desert wilderness. This operation continued despite the Wilderness Act’s general prohibition of commercial enterprise in wilderness, and the staggering number of participants, which far exceeds the group size limit in any other wilderness nationwide. Despite its obvious incompatibility, the camp persevered, its participants creating trails across unmarked meadows, their occasional shouting startling other visitors who expected to find solitude in the remote gorges.

When Wilderness Watch voiced concerns about the impacts of these activities on wilderness qualities, BLM acknowledged that the activities were occurring, but did nothing to rein them in. Shockingly, several BLM staffers felt there was nothing wrong with the activities since they did not occur on a daily basis.

When asked to defend their position, the BLM held that one of the general objectives of the Cooperative Management and Protection Area -- which includes the wilderness -- is to promote "historic uses." However, the Steens Act explicitly states that the Steens Mountain Wilderness will be managed in accordance with the Wilderness Act, and does not make exceptions for incompatible "historic uses" -- if the Act had intended every past activity to continue inside the wilderness, then even snowmobiling would be allowed!
The newly formed Steens Mountain Advisory Council heard of Wilderness Watch’s concerns. Made up of local citizens, council advises BLM on management direction for the new wilderness and broader Cooperative Management and Protection Area. Several people directly involved in the questionable activities sit on the council, including the owner of the commercial athletic camp, the outfitter using motor vehicles, and several ranchers. Our concerns greatly alarmed some council members and stirred significant controversy within the conservation community, the media, congressional offices, and the BLM.

An unexpected challenge

The controversy at Steens Mountain became even more complex when a number of conservation groups began lobbying other environmentalists to support adding language to a new wilderness bill that would make it legal for the commercial running camp to operate in the Steens Mountain Wilderness. This action was spurred by threats from Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), who told the Oregon conservation community that he would not support any new wilderness bills until the Steens Mountain Running Camp "was taken care of."

Had it passed, the proposed language would have been the first time that a wilderness designation bill weakened protections for an existing wilderness. It also would have been the first time that the conservation community supported weakening existing protections for a designated wilderness. Wilderness Watch and several dedicated Sierra Club volunteers worked to make groups aware of these implications, along with the fact that alternative routes existed outside the wilderness for the camp’s training activities. Ultimately, the conservation community did not support adding the camp to new legislation.

Almost simultaneously, Rep. Walden also backed off from legislative protection for the camp when he started hearing from local residents that if the running camp was going to get special privileges in wilderness, then they wanted special legislative protections for their own activities as well. The congressman wisely decided to avoid the hazards of that slippery slope.

The BLM has informed people that they need to apply for a permit if they believe they have a valid need to drive in the wilderness. To date no applications have been filed, but local residents continue driving in the wilderness at will, with no reprimand from BLM. This summer the commercial training camp applied for a permit to not only continue its running camp operations inside the wilderness but also to use the wilderness as a training ground for a commercial football camp! The BLM’s stated preference is to approve the permit as an "historic use."

BLM argues that it can do nothing to hinder the motor vehicle driving by outfitters, ranchers, and inholders until it completes environmental assessments and a management plan, which could take several years. However, managers do not need to complete management plans before starting to enforce the law.

Two years after designation, Steens Mountain is not protected as wilderness, except in name alone. When "wilderness" becomes an empty label for lands where we drive motor vehicles and host commercial competitive events, then wilderness as a place in contrast to our mechanized and increasingly crowded world risks becoming a treasured concept that is part of our past but no longer a part of our future.