‘A lot of culture and a lot of bloodshed’: Inside the fight to preserve Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Drive 50 miles from Boise, Idaho, past the suburbs, exurbs, and farms into Oregon, and you’ll find yourself in the largest conservation opportunity left in the continental U.S. In the Owyhee Canyonlands, Western sagebrush landscapes surround rock formations reminiscent of the Colorado Plateau, leading some to liken it to the Grand Canyon. It stretches across roughly 7 million acres of high desert in Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada. Roughly a third of that landscape is high-quality wilderness—more land than in many existing national parks—with no roads or cell service.  Some of the last pristine sections of the rapidly declining sagebrush habitat that once dominated much of the Western U.S., the Owyhee Canyonlands—named for the phonetic pronunciation of Hawaii after three island natives were lost in the wilderness and never found—have remained wild despite little federal protection. “Its remoteness protected it,” said Ryan Houston, the executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, an environmental group leading efforts to protect the area. But the Owyhee is under threat. The population in Idaho’s Treasure Valley and Boise, to the north of the canyonlands is growing, with suburbs expanding into the area. The south is home to a new mining boom, with the second approved lithium mine in the U.S. now under construction just over the Nevada border. In between, invasive weeds have invaded the area, sparking bigger and hotter wildfires that are turning portions of the region from sagebrush to grasslands, threatening the entire ecosystem and the cultural sites found throughout the canyonlands that are important to local Indigenous tribes.  For decades, groups have pushed to protect the Owyhees and come up short. Current legislation introduced by Oregon’s senators to protect the area has broad local support but stalled in Congress. So a growing grassroots coalition is taking matters into its own hands, urging President Joe Biden to designate just over 1 million acres in the Owyhee Canyonlands as a national monument under the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to protect naturally or historically significant places without Congress.  “It used to be you could find a place like this, write a bill and protect it,” said Aaron Kindle, the director of sporting advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation, who has helped lead the conservation group’s involvement in the monument push. But times have changed, he said, so communities and conservationists are turning to the nation’s highest office, rather than just representatives from their state. They believe now is their best chance to protect this stretch of land in eastern Oregon. In his first few weeks in office, Biden issued an executive order tasking his administration to conserve 30% of America’s lands and waters from development by 2030, establishing conservation as key to addressing the climate crisis. That led to the America the Beautiful initiative, which outlined how to work with local community stakeholders to protect biodiversity, the natural resources needed to address climate change and Americans’ access to wild spaces.  The initiative has signaled to local communities, tribes, and environmental groups a willingness of the Biden administration to work with them to protect culturally and environmentally important spaces from unwanted developments like mining for uranium and lithium, fossil fuel production, and the development of renewable energy projects, all of which are possible in the Owyhee Canyonlands, where the federal government owns much of the land. Since 2021, the Biden administration has established five new national monuments, but advocates worry the time is running out for the nation to conserve more land in an election year.  “If somebody other than Biden is elected, the opportunity for a monument is lost,” Houston said.  It’s a sentiment shared across the country, with local advocates urging Biden to designate nine national monuments in seven states. Last week, Biden expanded the size of the San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain national monuments in California, the latest in his conservation efforts. All but two of the proposed new monuments would be in the western half of the country, which holds most of the conservation opportunities remaining in the continental U.S. in the vast undeveloped federal lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. [Image: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News] As Congress has become more polarized over the past decade, less land has been protected, with conservation becoming a hot-button topic despite broad public support. Republicans often oppose protections that might limit grazing, mining, and drilling on public lands. That has led to presidents, typically Democrats, conserving more land using the Antiquities Act, with Biden on pace to set the record for the most