The John Day River through Cottonwood Canyon. Photo from Oregon State Parks.

Oregon Parks and Recreation is getting ready to go public with what it calls, “the most important state park in a generation.”

And if that wasn’t enough, the agency is hoping to add “biggest state park” to that title.

Opening in 2013, Cottonwood Canyon State Park will be located on 8,000 acres along the lower John Day River in north-central Oregon.

It includes some of the most stunning scenery in the state, with rugged cliffs hugging the longest free flowing river in Oregon. It’s also home to one of the state’s largest herds of bighorn sheep.

Park officials hope to double the size of Cottonwood Canyon by purchasing another 8,000 acres of grazing rights on surrounding property. That would open up those lands as additional recreation areas and make this Oregon’s biggest state park.

While 2013 may seem like a ways off, the planning work begins in a couple of weeks. In late April, the Parks and Recreation Department holds a series of public meetings to get input on how to manage this new state park.

“At the public meetings, OPRD staff will introduce the property’s natural, cultural, historic and scenic values; discuss ways to protect its wild setting and natural resources, and open a dialogue on its potential for recreation, interpretive and educational uses. More meetings will be scheduled through spring 2011 leading to the development of a draft master plan for managing the park. A final draft of the plan will then be submitted to the Oregon State Parks and Recreation Commission.”

-Oregon Parks and Recreation Department

Photo from Oregon State Parks

So far, the department has spent about $2.3 million to purchase some 2,400 acres. It plans to buy another 5,600 acres that have been preserved by the Western Rivers Conservancy before the park opens. The money is coming from a special Lottery fund that was set aside for state parks back in 1998. That funding expires in a few years. Parks supporters and other groups want to make it permanent through a ballot measure that voters will be asked to approve in November.

See earlier story: This Fall, Will Oregon Support Water, Parks and Wildlife?

Here’s the schedule for the public meetings – all of them run from 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Monday, April 26
Sherman County Fairgrounds, 4-H Pavilion, Moro

Tuesday, April 27
Memorial Hall, 128 S. Main St., Condon (Next to City Hall)

Thursday, April 29
Tryon Creek State Park Nature Center, 11321 SW Terwilliger Blvd., Portland

For more information:
Oregon State Parks: Cottonwood Canyon Blog

Courtesy National Park Service

It’s not exactly a ban on tourist flights over Crater Lake. But it’s a big step in that direction.

On Monday, the Senate passed a bill that gives the National Park Service unusual powers to regulate air tours over the Southern Oregon landmark.

Normally, the Park Service has to spend a lot of time and money to develop an air tour management plan before deciding if flights would be okay. This bill says they can skip that step – but only at Crater Lake.

Oregon Senators Wyden and Merkley managed to have this feature added as an amendment to a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill.

Wyden has been trying to prevent air tours over Crater Lake since last summer, when we found out that an air tour company applied for permission to fly over the park. The idea of helicopters buzzing right above the heads of visitors made a lot of people pretty upset. They wanted to protect the park’s sense of peacefulness and tranquility.

Wyden and Merkley are obviously hoping that if the National Park Service gets the authority, it will decide to ban Crater Lake chopper flights.

But a number of things have to happen before the bill becomes law, including surviving negotiations in a House-Senate conference committee and new votes before both houses of Congress.

Oswald West State Park. Courtesy Oregon Parks and Recreation.

The reason? It’s the trees. The park is located in an old growth forest, and some of the trees near the campground are so old, they’re in danger of falling over and killing campers. The seriousness of the situation was made clear last June when an old spruce, about 11-feet in diameter, fell over and landed across several campsites. Luckily no one was hurt.

Parks and Rec officials followed up with a study of other trees near the campground and realized that dozens more are also in danger of toppling. So they gave the public a choice. We can cut down the trees and keep the campground open, or keep the trees and close the campground.

With about 640 responses submitted, the Parks Department says the almost all of them supported keeping the trees. “A naturally-aging old forest, this is one of the reasons people come to this park,” says John Potter, Assistant Director for Operations. “We want to preserve not just the look and feel of the park, but its biological complexity. Letting the forest age naturally in this case is the best way to do that.”

The result is not a surprise. Oswald West State Park is hugely popular, getting about a million visitors a year. But only 15,000 of them used the 30-site campground.

Meanwhile Parks and Rec says it will look for a new camping site at Oswald West. But until then, the nearest camping is five miles south at Nehalem Bay State Park.

The 61 acre park will be called the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site (pronounced “ee weh TEMM lye kinn”).  It lies on site overlooking Wallowa Lake.  Locals know of it as the old Marr Ranch property.

The meeting also kicks off a 30-day period for public comment.

The hearing starts at 6pm in the Tomas Conference Room, 309 S. River, in Enterprise.

Copies of the plan are available on the web at:

Marr Ranch Property Master Plan

It’s the trees.

This is one of the last places where you can hike through an ancient spruce-hemlock forest.  Many of the trees are 200-400 years old.  Some are survivors of the great Tsunami that swept the coast in the early 18th Century.

The Trees Of Oswald West State Park. Courtesy Oregon Parks and Recreation.

So here’s the dilemma facing Oregon Parks and Recreation.  Many of the trees pose a threat to campers.  They’re so old and so weak they could come down at any time.  The danger was made clear in June when an old spruce, 11-feet in diameter, fell over and landed across several campsites.  Luckily, no one was hurt.

Since then, the campground remained closed while Park officials studied the other nearby trees.  They’ve identified 49 of them that might fall into a campsite, building, or high use trail.  If the campground is to be reopened, these trees have got to go.  If the campground stays closed, only a few trees need to be removed.

Keep the trees or reopen the campground?  What do you think?

Before any trees are cut, the Parks and Recreation Department wants to hear from the public.

A few points to consider before you weigh in.

• Oswald West gets about a million visitors a year.  Most use the park for hiking, surfing and walks on the beach.  Before it was closed, about 15,000 people a year stayed at the campground.
• Reopening the campground means putting most of the campsites back in service, and gives people another way to enjoy the park.  But officials also say cutting down the trees will leave a visual hole that might be filled by weeds and other invading species.
• According to a 1986 plan, Oswald West is meant to be kept in as natural of a state as possible.  Cutting down the trees means it may have to be more heavily managed in the future.

Parks and Recreation staffers favors keeping the campground closed and only cutting a few trees.  But it’s holding off until hearing from the public.  It’s created a website where you can learn more and provides ways for you to offer comments

Oswald West State Park: Camping Or Trees?

Or if you want, leave comments on this story and we’ll forward them for you.

First, the list of recommendations from the Mt. St. Helens Advisory Committee may not be released today due to staff illness. As more information comes in, we’ll pass it along to you.

More importantly, we’ve had some time to get additional comments on the big decision, that the volcano should not become a national park but remain with the U.S. Forest Service.

Mark Smith is one of the members of the committee who initially started out as a skeptic of the “National Park” concept, but eventually came around to supporting it.

He thinks the committee, and the “whole country” for that matter, is missing an opportunity. “It’s a different mountain now,” says Smith, talking about the changes that have taken place since the 1980 eruption. “If it was still just the campground at Spirit Lake, the Forest Service would have no problem managing it.”

A View From Johnston Ridge. Courtesy: USDA Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

Over the years, five new visitor facilities have popped up between I-5 and the crater. Three of them were originally controlled by the Forest Service. But one of them was turned over to Washington State Parks, and the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center has been closed.

Smith thinks the National Park Service would do a better job of managing Mt. St. Helens as tourist destination. He says NPS has more experience with the marketing and advertising needed to draw visitors. The Forest Service, he says, isn’t geared up for operating tourism sites. Smith has some experience in this area, he owns the Eco Park Resort located just outside the Monument. He also thinks that concerns over access to hunting, fishing and other recreational activities could have been protected under the National Park concept.

Smith says he eventually went along with the Committee recommendations, but doubts conditions at Mt. St. Helens will improve. “They’ve had 29 years,” he says of the Forest Service, “I don’t have a real good felling we’ll see a lot of difference.”

Smith also appears frustrated by what he sees as public apathy over the future of this Northwest icon. No local group ever came forward to champion the National Park cause. Smith says the public hearings held by the Committee were like visits to a morgue, with the same small group of people sharing the same opinions over and over. “The public doesn’t really care,” he says.

A special committee created to study the future of Mt. St. Helens is wrapping up after a year of work. Its main recommendation? That the volcano should stay under the management of the U.S. Forest Service, and not become a national park.

That doesn’t mean the Mt. St. Helens Advisory Committee is okay with the status quo. Co-Chair Paul Pearce tells us the group also wants the volcano to become a stand alone unit within the Forest Service. Currently it’s managed by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Courtesy: U.S. Geological Survey

How would that help? By creating a new unit, Pearce says Mt. St. Helens would become a line item in the budget, making it more visible to Congress and hopefully lead to increased funding. “The issue wasn’t how it was managed,” says Pearce, “but how it was funded.”

Spending on the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument fell dramatically from 1998 to 2007. Late that year, the Forest Service closed the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center because it didn’t have enough money for maintenance. That event was a wake up call for members of Washington’s Congressional Delegation and a few months later the Advisory Committee was formed.

National park supporters hoped that by turning over Mt. St. Helens to the Park Service, it would be better funded, become a destination travel spot, and grow the local economy.

But Pearce, who’s also a Skamania County Commissioner, says citizens wanted to continue fishing, hunting and snowmobiling near the Volcano. They could lose those activities if Mt. St. Helens became a national park.

Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. Courtesy USDA Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

The tipping point may have come when the Forest Service and Park Service made competing presentations to the Committee. “We saw much more passion on part of the Forest Service,” says Pearce. “We didn’t see that at all with the Park Service.”

Once the Committee releases the list of recommendations, it will schedule a series of public hearings to take in more comment. Look for a new story Monday on what’s next for Mt. St. Helens.

For the Parks and Recreation Department, the new budget reality in Salem means new priorities. Less money for buying park land. Hold the line for spending on park maintenance.

Spokesman Chris Havel says the department faces a roughly 17% budget cut in the 2009-2011 biennium. Most of that is due to falling lottery revenues. That could change when the next revenue forecast comes out in late April.

Hiking At Cape Lookout Courtesy Oregon Parks

In addition to buying less land, Havel says they’ll also have less money for their matching grants which support community parks, trails, veteran’s memorials and heritage programs.

Now the mission turns increasingly towards protecting what they have. Spending on maintenance and operations should remain steady. But even there, visitors may see a difference. For example, Havel says you might find a sign on a park bathroom apologizing that it’s not being cleaned as often.

Havel thinks the department will avoid layoffs. Instead, vacant positions will be left open, hiring for seasonal jobs will be delayed, and non-essential spending like travel will be cut back.

Even before the bad economic news came out, Parks and Recreation proposed raising fees for camping, day use and annual passes. Fees haven’t been raised since 1996 . Back then visitors paid for 72% of the costs of running a park. Now it’s closer to 55%.

Earlier stories:

Enviro Programs Hit Extra Hard By Oregon Budget Cutters

The new rules defers to the state. If state law says you carry a concealed weapon, then you can start doing that on national parks and refuges within that state. Both Oregon and Washington allow concealed weapons, so this opens up such places as Crater Lake National Park and Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.

Interior says BLM and Forest Service already use this approach and it thought it was a good idea to be consistent.

The National Rifle Association praised the ruling, saying it allows people to “protect themselves” while enjoying these areas.

But the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees notes that national parks are some of the safest places in the country and worries that the rule will lead to increased poaching and more hunting in areas where its not allowed.