The Public Lands Conservation Legacy of Senator Ron Wyden, Part 1: Very Respectable but Not Yet Stellar
Top Line: Ron Wyden has a way to go to exceed the Oregon public lands conservation legacy of his predecessor, Mark Hatfield, but he can do it before he retires.
Figure 1. The official portrait of Representative Ron Wyden in his first year in political office in 1981 at age thirty-two. Source: Wikipedia.
If he were to retire today, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would have done much to elevate the conservation status of certain public lands in Oregon. Through the designation of numerous wilderness areas and wild and scenic rivers and through protecting the Bull Run watershed (Portland’s drinking water source), the Columbia River Gorge, Steens Mountain, and more, Wyden has left a mark. Yet there is both great need and great opportunity for Wyden to make a far greater mark before he leaves the US Senate.
One More Time?
Last April, the month he was turning 76, Ron Wyden declared to Oregon Public Broadcasting that he intends to stand for reelection in 2028. A lot could happen in the coming three-plus years that might cause him not to run. Or a lot could not happen and he could run again. If Wyden were to be elected to another six-year term, he would take office in 2029 during his 80th year on earth and end the term in his 86th year.
According to the Social Security Administration, a 76-year-old male has a life expectancy of 10.3 years (50 percent will live longer and 50 percent will live fewer years). As a cohort, US senators are generally more vigorous and enduring than the nation as a whole, and Wyden appears—at least for now—to be more vigorous than the average US senator. Nonetheless, age could well be an issue in the 2028 elections.
The age debate for elected officials has at least three components. The first is the question of whether one is still able to do the job at an advanced age. The second is whether the candidate has been in office so long as to be out of touch. The third is whether it isn’t just time for a younger generation to take power.
Wyden has been elected to the US Senate six times. Only his first Senate election, which he won by eighteen thousand votes, was close. All his subsequent elections gave him healthy margins of victory: 61 percent in 1998, 64 percent in 2004, 57 percent in 2010, 57 percent in 2016, and 56 percent in 2022. The trend could continue. Or not.
Figure 2. The Table Rock Wilderness in the Molalla River watershed, Oregon. The only reason this wilderness exists today is that then Representative Ron Wyden insisted that Senator Mark Hatfield include it in what became the Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984. Source: Bureau of Land Management.
Political Chances
Wyden has been consistently popular throughout his electoral career, and such could continue in 2028, which is a presidential election year. Democrats tend to show up in those years more than they do in off-year elections. The Republicans could again in 2028 run nonviable candidates against Wyden, as they have since 1998.
As Oregon has trended toward consistently electing Democrats statewide and with near majorities or supermajorities in the Oregon legislature, the biggest threat to another Wyden term may be his own party’s primary. One effect of occupying high office for so long is pent-up demand by a lot of Democratic holders of lower office who would like to be a US senator (and aren’t getting any younger!).
It’s worth noting that Wyden was first elected to the US House of Representatives by successfully challenging the Democratic incumbent, who was notoriously out of touch with his district. Wyden primaried a fellow Democrat before primaried became a verb (“to challenge or oppose [the incumbent] in a primary election, usually for strong ideological reasons”), and primarying is an increasingly standard operating procedure in gerrymandered House districts that strongly favor one political party or another, or in dark red or dark blue states.
Wyden isn’t particularly out of touch with voters, but he is increasingly old. (Hey, it happens to all of us.)
In Oregon in 2028, the winners of the Democratic primaries are increasingly likely to be the winners of statewide elections. Unless, of course, the Democrats continue their unpopularity with the voters, which includes most Democratic voters at the moment.
Wyden’s Two Big Things: Health Care and Old Growth
In the summer of 2006 or 2007, Ron and I were walking a short segment of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail on Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest. Wyden was examining some of the areas that would achieve protection in the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009. While the entourage was large, we nonetheless ended up walking alone for a bit.
Wyden and I go way back. In 1979, he was trying to defeat a conservative incumbent Democrat in Oregon’s ultraliberal Third Congressional District. As a board member of what today is the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, I convinced the national League of Conservation Voters to endorse Wyden, one of his first national endorsements, which led to others, etc. Due to running a brilliant, if cash-strapped, campaign (and also with a huge assist from the eruption of Mount St. Helens two days before), Wyden won that primary on Tuesday, May 20, 1980, which assured his election to US House of Representatives in November.
During the peak of the Northwest forest war (when the northern spotted owl hit the fan), Wyden was the only one in the Oregon congressional delegation whose office door was still open to me.
As we walked the trail, I sensed Wyden wanted to tell me some things, so I didn’t try to lobby him. What I recall most is that he said there were two big things he wanted to get done before he left the Senate: health care for all and saving old-growth forests. This was before the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which Wyden had quite a large role in enacting. His commitment to health care has continued to this day (and I’m sure will until his dying day).
As for the mature (old-growth-in-waiting) and old-growth forests, they still haven’t been saved. In fact, with Trump 2.0, the mature and old-growth forests on federal public lands are as threatened now as ever before.
During the early teens of this century, Wyden had legislation that would have saved the mature and old-growth forests on Bureau of Land Management holdings in western Oregon, but it did not become law. The protection language of that bill is still the model for mature and old-growth forest legislation.
Under the US Constitution, Congress has all power over federal public lands. Unfortunately, as Trump is showing us, Congress has delegated too much of its power to the executive branch. It is time for Congress to reclaim some power, and a good start would be to legislatively and permanently protect the remaining mature and old-growth forests in the United States for the benefit of this and future generations.
By the Book
This year, Wyden published a book, It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change, part memoir and part how-to-make-political-good manual. According to Chabad.org:
Chutzpah is a Hebrew word that has been adopted into Yiddish and then English. Chutzpah has been defined as audacity, insolence, impudence, gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible guts, presumption and arrogance. . . . Chutzpah can be destructive and ugly or vital and fantastic, but never in-between.
Figure 3. Wyden’s 2025 part memoir, part how-to-make-political-good manual (Grand Central Publishing). Source: Hatchette
Wyden, of course, argues for the vital and fantastic chutzpah. The book goes more deeply into the senator’s role in enacting health care reform, regulating internet speech, fighting climate change, and other issues than it does his work on public lands conservation. Where Wyden does write of public lands, it is mostly about the Northwest forest war, which was a loser of a political issue for any politician anywhere near ground zero. I’m only guessing, but I think the book would have said more about his public lands conservation accomplishments had Wyden’s legendary political and policy aide, Mary Gautreaux, still been with us. MG would have reminded him of his numerous contributions to the establishment of wilderness areas and wild and scenic rivers.
See Public Lands Blog post “Pre-remembering Mary Gautreaux, Oregon Conservationist” (2019).
Public Lands Conservation Legacy to Date: Not Yet Mark Hatfield
Wyden has been in the Senate about twenty-nine years so far and will surpass the tenure of Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) before his current term ends in 2028. How does Wyden stack up on public lands conservation against other members of the Oregon congressional delegation, past and present?
Wilderness
Based on Oregon wilderness acres voted for, Senator Wyden (1996–) ranks fifth behind former senators Hatfield, Bob Packwood (R-OR), Wayne Morse (D-OR), and Maurine Neuberger (D-OR). When one adds Representative Wyden’s (1981–1996) votes for wilderness in the House of Representatives to his Senate total, Ron still lags behind Senators Hatfield and Packwood.
See Public Lands Blog post “Preremembering Bob Packwood, Oregon Conservationist” (2017).
Wild and Scenic Rivers
Based on Oregon wild and scenic river miles voted for, Wyden is third among Oregon US senators (you can guess the two he trails) and second among Oregon US House members (77 river miles behind Representative Les AuCoin). Adding his House and Senate river miles voted for together, Wyden is the delegation’s lifetime leader. However, the Senate numbers should weigh more heavily than the House numbers, as the various bills to designate wild and scenic rivers in the state since 1968 were all driven in the Senate and then accepted by the House.
Figure 4. Elk Creek Wild and Scenic River, Oregon. Wyden’s legislation not only made it a wild and scenic river, it also deauthorized the infamous Elk Creek Dam so it could never threaten this stream again. Source: Greg Shine, Bureau of Land Management.
he Flaw in the Hatfield Benchmark
On paper, Hatfield voted for more wilderness than anyone else in the Oregon delegation. However, to Hatfield it was always just about politics and never about policy. Hatfield stood for reelection in 1972, 1978, 1984, and 1990. During each of those reelection years save for 1990, Hatfield enacted Oregon wilderness bills into law. It didn’t happen in 1990 because that was the year the northern spotted owl hit the political fan in the Pacific Northwest. Hatfield also completed a wilderness bill in 1996, his last year in office.
In addition—and more important—Hatfield woke up every single morning he was in office seeking to log more old-growth forest and dam(n) more free-flowing streams. Wyden has not done that.
See Public Lands Blogs posts “Mark Odom Hatfield, Part 1: Oregon Forest Destroyer” and “Mark Odom Hatfield, Part 2: A Great but Complicated Oregonian”
Figure 5. Wasson Lake in the Wasson Creek Wild and Scenic River and Devil’s Staircase Wilderness, protected in 2019 by Senator Wyden’s (and others’) legislation. Source: George Wuerthner (first appeared in Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness, 2004).
The Anti-Hatfield: Richard Neuberger
In 1956, US Senator Richard Neuberger (D-OR) was an original cosponsor of legislation that would become the Wilderness Act of 1964. Now that was chutzpah! The bill was necessary because while the Forest Service had pioneered the concept of wilderness preservation in the 1920s and 1930s, by the 1950s the agency was declassifying several wilderness areas that had been administratively established so that such areas could be roaded and logged. In mid-1950s Oregon, Big Timber was really big and made up a very significant (though unsustainable) portion of the Oregon economy.
(Yes, Dick Neuburger was Oregon’s second Jewish senator, and yes, Congress should name an Oregon wilderness area after him, but only if it’s several times larger than the Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness.)
See Public Lands Blog post “Remembering US Senator Richard L. Neuberger, Oregon Conservationist” (2017).
In summary, Wyden has done much to preserve wilderness and wild and scenic rivers in Oregon but not as much as other members of the Oregon congressional delegation of the past, and he could do more, particularly to achieve his aim of saving old-growth forests. In part 2, we shall look to Wyden’s future and the legacy he still might manage to leave.
For More Information
Dole, Bryce. April 29, 2025. US Sen. Ron Wyden Plans to Run for Reelection in 2028. Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Wyden, Ron. 2025. It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change (New York: Grand Central Publishing).