Wyden says he will lead effort on new Owyhee initiative

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, announced last Saturday he will spearhead an effort to generate a multi-use plan for the Owyhee Canyonlands. Wyden, delivering the news at a town hall session at the Oregon Army National Guard Armory in Ontario, said the aim is to create a land use blueprint with input from ranchers, conservationists and residents. He said he wants to create a land use template for legislation that could reviewed by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as early as this fall. Wyden is a member of the committee. Wyden emphasized the effort will be collaborative. He said it will focus on finding a philosophical middle ground for an area that has long fueled debate between conservation groups and Malheur County ranchers and residents. “Our team will be talking to everybody. That’s how we do it,” he said. He dubbed the endeavor the Community Empowerment for Owyhee – or CEO – and said his office will “have to reach out to a lot of people.” He said the Owyhee Basin Stewardship Coalition, the local rangeland advocacy group, approached him for help last December, when group leaders visited Washington, D.C. Coalition chair “Steve Russell and the group asked me to step in,” said Wyden. Wyden said the CEO effort will focus on protecting current ranching uses in the Owyhee area, preserving the unique culture of the area while also protecting “the bedrock environmental value” of the Owyhees. In that effort, he said, “everyone will have to be talking to people who they disagree with.” “We need to get going on this because it has been going on so long. The Owyhee is a special place, and this has dragged on for years and years,” said Wyden. After the town hall, Russell and coalition vice chairman Mark MacKenzie said they are encouraged by Wyden’s effort...MORE

That is certainly not the process used by NM's two Senators. Their approach is:

---Receive a proposal from the NM Wilderness Alliance
---Make a big show of public input and collaboration
---Ignore the above and make only minor, insignificant tweaks to the NMWA proposal
---Encourage the President to create a monument by executive fiat, or
---Use the Heinrich Maneuver to attach legislation to an omnibus or must-pass bill

That, my friends, is a quick synopsis of how federal lands policy is made in NM