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<P><B>Restoring Klamath Heartlands</B> <BR><B>Oregon’s Unique Chance for Justice
and Sustainability</B>
<P>by EDWARD C. WOLF | posted 11.19.03 |
<P>In Oregon’s Klamath Basin -- renowned for its water disputes -- a remarkable
and little-noted story <BR>about land is unfolding. The current story begins 50
years ago, with a since-repudiated federal <BR>policy toward Indian tribes
called “termination."
<P>It involves the chance to right a profound injustice, and an opportunity to
achieve forest <BR>restoration on an unprecedented scale. However the story
ends, it marks a profound moment in <BR>the history of Oregon and the West.
<P>When the Klamath Lake Treaty of 1864 reserved to the Klamath and Modoc
Indians and the <BR>Yahooskin Band of the Snake Indians “the Klamath heartlands,
including Upper Klamath and <BR>Agency lakes, as well as the Williamson and
Sprague drainages,” that two-million-acre territory <BR>contained one of the
greatest ecological treasures of the American West. Despite survey errors and
<BR>fraud that reduced the Tribes’ reservation to 1.2 million acres, the Klamath
Tribes retained an <BR>extraordinary estate of ponderosa pine watersheds
protecting the integrity of the lakes and <BR>marshes that had been the keystone
of tribal life for thousands of years.
<P>“The greatest stand”
<P>The park-like groves of yellow pine sheltered more mule deer than loggers
until the early 20th <BR>century. In 1913, influenced by the ideas of
progressive-era Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot, <BR>the U.S. Indian
Service (precursor to the Bureau of Indian Affairs) worked with the Tribes to
begin <BR>a conservative program of sustained-yield logging on Klamath lands.
Trees were milled locally <BR>and sold to produce income for the Tribes. At an
annual cut of about 80 million board-feet, this <BR>harvest produced an annuity
of roughly $1000 for each tribal member, helping to give the Tribes <BR>an
important measure of stability and economic well-being.
<P>Two-thirds of the Klamath Reservation Forest were selectively cut over the
next forty years, <BR>leaving nearly one hundred thousand acres of old-growth
ponderosa pine untouched. At <BR>mid-century, the forest contained some 4.6
billion board-feet of timber, most of that on lightly-cut <BR>stands. Future
Oregon governor Tom McCall, while working for a committee of the state
<BR>legislature in 1957, described that forest simply as “the greatest single
stand of Ponderosa pine to <BR>be found anywhere in the West.”
<P>The era of termination
<P>In the early 1950s, U.S. Interior Secretary Douglas McKay (a former Oregon
governor) and his <BR>Congressional allies advocated a policy of “termination”
to dissolve Federal trust responsibilities to <BR>Indian tribes. Termination was
adopted as national policy by an act of Congress in 1953. The first <BR>tribes
chosen to demonstrate the policy included the only two in the country with
extensive <BR>timber lands, the Menominee of Wisconsin and the Klamath Tribes of
Oregon.
<P>The Klamath Termination Act, passed in August 1954, dissolved the Klamath
Tribes and forced <BR>tribal members to make a choice: take their share of
tribal assets in cash, or join a group <BR>arrangement that would administer
their collective share of former tribal assets in trust. Misled <BR>about the
implications of the vote they would cast, three-quarters of the enrolled tribal
members <BR>voted to withdraw and accept their shares in cash.
<P>The cash-distribution provision contained in the law forced the public
auction of tribal assets to <BR>raise the money needed to pay withdrawing
members. The tribal estate, consisting almost <BR>entirely of land and timber,
was privatized and would be liquidated to fulfill the law’s intent. <BR>Congress
had put the forested watersheds of the Klamath heartlands on the chopping block.
<P>A Rude Awakening
<P>With the termination of the Klamath Tribes a regrettable fait accompli,
Oregon’s political and <BR>opinion leaders awoke to the fact that an act of
Congress was poised to annihilate one of the state’s <BR>most beautiful and
valuable landscapes. Why? Because public auction would unleash an
<BR>accelerated clearcut of the Klamath forest that was certain to be
economically and ecologically <BR>devastating. Tom McCall observed at the time
that “’boom and bust’ land speculators and lumber <BR>interests plotted to
control the Klamath Basin,” to the detriment of the Tribes, local communities,
<BR>the regional timber market, and the entire state.
<P>To pay the $90 million appraised value of the Klamath forest, private timber
operators would <BR>likely liquidate an estimated two-thirds of the standing
volume of pine in a couple of seasons of <BR>frenzied cutting. This would
require a cut forty times greater than the sustained-yield harvests of <BR>the
pre-termination years.
<P>With unprecedented unity of purpose, Oregon politicians at every level, from
the Klamath County <BR>Courthouse to the United States Senate, swung into action
to prevent this catastrophe. The only <BR>feasible alternative appeared to be
federal purchase of the Klamath forest lands for management <BR>under the
multiple-use sustained-yield mandate then governing the National Forests.
<P>Oregon senator Richard Neuberger introduced a bill in 1957 to delay the
auction of tribal assets <BR>and arrange the federal purchase of the Klamath
Reservation lands. In a compromise with the <BR>Secretary of the Interior,
Neuberger ultimately endorsed and secured passage of a bill that
<BR>appropriated $90 million to purchase the land and required any private
buyers of Klamath forest <BR>lands to log only according to the government’s
sustained yield restrictions ? a clause that made <BR>private purchase
unattractive to nearly all buyers.
<P>From reservation to national forest
<P>The array of the bill’s supporters read like a “Who’s Who” of post-war Oregon
politics. The outcome <BR>allowed members of the Klamath Tribes to receive the
cash distribution promised them by law, <BR>while creating the new Winema
National Forest and adding acreage to the existing Fremont <BR>National Forest.
The upland pine forests encircling the Klamath Basin were spared the
<BR>consequences of a reckless act of Congress, a conservation victory that
foreshadowed the forest <BR>protection battles of later decades.
<P>Neuberger’s celebratory article in the April 1959 issue of Harper’s, “How
Oregon Rescued a <BR>Forest,” failed to enumerate the costs of that rescue to
the people of the Klamath Tribes. The <BR>termination policy proved to be a
social and economic disaster for the tribes, a dark era in which <BR>the
community's land and resource wealth was converted into money that quickly
dissipated, <BR>given the obstacles to purchase of the former reservation lands
by tribal members. Tribal identity <BR>suffered under the duress of the times.
The minority of Klamath individuals who had agreed to <BR>have their share of
tribal assets managed in private trust by U.S. Bank voted in 1970 to dismiss
<BR>the trustee; the bank interpreted the vote as one to dissolve the trust
itself. Senator Mark Hatfield <BR>overcame the opposition of the Nixon
Administration to achieve federal purchase of the lands that <BR>had been held
in that trust, adding 135,000 acres to the Winema National Forest.
<P>Slow steps toward sovereignty
<P>It took another decade and a half for the Klamath Tribes to petition
successfully for the restoration <BR>of their status, finally accomplished and
signed into law by President Reagan in 1986. Though the <BR>Klamath Reservation
was not reconstituted at that time, the law did require a plan for the Tribes’
<BR>economic self-sufficiency. The return of tribal lands became the natural
centerpiece of that plan, <BR>submitted to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce
Babbitt in 2000. The Tribes’ effort to build a <BR>secure future emphasized
developing their capacity to manage the former reservation for <BR>ecological
health and the economic well-being of Klamath members.
<P>Meanwhile, in the four decades since the creation of the Winema National
Forest, the U.S. Forest <BR>Service replaced its historically conservative
sustained-yield policy with an emphasis on <BR>even-aged management and elevated
timber harvests. Unconstrained road-building and logging <BR>in the 1980s and
early 1990s gave way to the near-shutdown of commercial logging on federal
<BR>lands during the past decade. The forests of the former Klamath Reservation
bear the scars of this <BR>policy whip-saw, though had the land been clear-cut
as foreseen at termination, restoration would <BR>be far more challenging.
<P>More than 300,000 acres have been degraded by heavy cutting or recent
clear-cuts. Another <BR>300,000 acres have been “structurally simplified” by
logging and fire suppression. On roughly <BR>100,00 acres stand “structurally
complex” forests with the big pines that characterized most of <BR>the Klamath
Reservation Forest until the middle of the 20th century. More than half the
forest is <BR>well-suited to restoration work that could generate modest timber
revenues, reduce the risk of <BR>wildfire, and restore conditions conducive to
the Tribes’ treaty-protected subsistence hunting and <BR>gathering practices.
<P>A hopeful chapter
<P>Working with a team of nationally renowned forest scientists led by K. Norman
Johnson of Oregon <BR>State University, the Klamath Tribes have developed a
forest management plan anchored in the <BR>tribe’s vision and values.
<P>In 2002, President Bush appointed a cabinet-level Klamath River Basin Federal
Working Group <BR>chaired by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, which is due to
make policy recommendations on a <BR>number of contentious Klamath Basin land
and water issues this fall. Many people believe the <BR>Working Group is
sympathetic to return of the Klamath Tribes’ reservation -- which would
<BR>constitute about 690,000 acres and would include forest lands within the
Winema and Fremont <BR>National Forests that fall within the boundaries of the
former reservation. The Klamath Tribes <BR>have begun an ambitious effort at
community outreach, to explain their goals and vision for the <BR>former
reservation to their Klamath Basin neighbors and others.
<P>Fifty years ago, the Klamath heartlands could easily have become a brushy,
cut-over moonscape <BR>prone to flash floods and droughts that would have
further destabilized the Klamath Basin’s water <BR>situation.
<P>Instead, the forest stands diminished from its former grandeur but in a
condition to respond to <BR>restoration efforts guided by the Tribes’ values.
Return of the forest to the Klamath Tribes under a <BR>sustainable management
plan could fulfill a struggle toward justice and sustainability that is
<BR>unique in Oregon’s history.
<P>Feelings run high on all sides of the issue. But Klamath Tribes member and
planning specialist <BR>Anna Bennett finds hope expressed best in the Tribes’
vision for the forest:
<P>“When we heal the land, we also heal people.”
<P>? 30 ?
<P>Edward C. Wolf is currently working on a book titled “Klamath Heartlands: A
Guide to the <BR>Klamath Reservation Forest Management Plan,” scheduled for
publication in 2004 by the <BR>Klamath Tribes and Ecotrust. The views expressed
here are his own.
<BR> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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