Oregon’s redrawn congressional districts will affect the prospects for federal public lands conservation.

Perhaps it’s just my crankiness index rising alongside my age, but I don’t think our democracy works as well as it used to. Not that it ever worked well enough, but I believe that all three branches of our national government are more dysfunctional than they used to be.

This is the second of two Public Lands Blog posts that examine the management (and mismanagement) of more than 2 million acres of federal forestlands in western Oregon, administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Part 1 examined the history of rampant clear-cutting of old-growth forests and vast windfalls of revenues to local counties as a result. Part 2 examines the current threats to these public lands from the timber industry and local counties, and the opportunity that could present itself to secure permanent comprehensive congressional conservation of these imperiled lands.

Climate change is an existential threat to the human species. The rapid decarbonization of the economy of the United States and of the world is our only chance of maintaining the climate that we generally know and love.