Proposed Zane Grey wilderness is safe from congressional rider

A legislative rider in a budget proposal agreed upon by congressional leaders would block an administrative plan by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to make millions of acres in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection, but it isn't expected to impact the proposed 58,000-acre Zane Grey wilderness along the lower Rogue River. "The Zane Grey proposal would be a result of congressional action, not administrative policy," he said. "The rider in Congress won't affect it directly." Last spring, following months of negotiations with conservation activists, the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry coalition based in Portland, dropped its opposition to wilderness designation for the 58,000-acre Zane Grey tract immediately upstream from the Wild Rogue Wilderness in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The Zane Grey roadless area, located on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District, is the largest proposed BLM wilderness area in southwestern Oregon. Under the compromise, the proposal was reduced some 13,000 acres from the original, while cutting the Wild & Scenic Rivers protection from 143 miles of tributary streams to 93 miles and reducing stream buffers...more