Home > Some issues you may encounter in discussions of sustainability
Home > Some issues
you may encounter in discussions of sustainability
The word "sustainability" takes on a new meaning in rural Oregon.
To John and Lynne Breese, it means being able to continue making a living off
their 121-year-old ranch through leasing their grazing rights and harvesting
timber.
Now they aren’t sure how much longer they can sustain their lifestyle near
Prineville in central Oregon.
The Ochoco Lumber Mill shut down operations in July 2001 after 58 years. The
last straw for the company was federal denial of their bid for a salvage sale
of burned timber from an adjacent Bureau of Land Management site. A group had
successfully challenged the salvage sale, contending it was in an environ- mentally
sensitive area that should be off limits to logging.
The mill closure cut off the most economically viable market for the Breeses’
lumber.
"I suppose that once we get over the shock, we’ll think of something
else to do, but right now we’re just not sure what," Lynne said.
If they have to move, the Breeses will join a decades-long exodus from rural
Oregon. Residents of places such as Gilliam, Sherman and Baker counties, Reedsport
and Creswell have seen their traditional logging, fishing and mining jobs dwindle
to near-nothing, young people leave, roads and buildings crumble, and prospects
diminish.
Pockets of prosperity can be found in booming Bend and Redmond, parts of the
central Oregon Coast, and in the scenic Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon.
But most of rural Oregon mirrors a national decline in rural communities.
At the same time, residents of Portland, Eugene, Salem and Corvallis wonder
if the peace and the character of their communities will be lost to rapid growth.
To address that concern, these cities have embraced sustainability measures
in hopes of bringing environmental, economic and societal issues into better
balance.
In rural Oregon, however, residents are cautious about embracing new proposals
that originate from cities and promise new economic opportunities.
"Out here, people are skeptical," said Richard Hensley, editor of
the East Oregonian in Pendleton. "They feel that the
governor’s sustainability plan has ulterior motives. They think sustainability
is probably going to affect farms, ranching or timber harvest; that it’s
just a code word for more environmental controls that are going to affect them."
Rural legislators apparently do not agree. In July 2001, they joined legislators
from all parts of Oregon in unanimous passage of the Oregon Sustainability Act.
This legislation approves continuing the sustainability efforts that Gov. John
Kitzhaber launched in May 2000 with an executive order that seeks to establish
sustainable economic, environmental and social operation for Oregon by 2025.
Interwoven economic, social and environmental health sounds good, but most rural
Oregonians would be satisfied with steady work, Hensley said.
"When you go into Grant, Union or Wallowa counties, they have just been
devastated by double-digit unemployment. Go to John Day, and you see a beautiful
place that has no infrastructure it can draw on other than timber. It’s
a real frustration."
Steve Clements, a city councilman in La Grande and computer technician at Eastern
Oregon University, has a more optimistic view of the future for rural Oregon,
and sustainable community development is a part of it.
"People here aren’t spiteful," Clements said. "They are
not here to thrash out a personal agenda. We butt heads, but we don’t walk
out of here detesting the other person. We walk out of here with respect."
Some are walking into new businesses that capitalize on public support for sustainable
solutions.
About 10 years ago, a group of ranchers discussing the continuing decline in
per- capita consumption of beef decided they could make money by filling an
unmet market demand for beef grown without chemical additives. Seven Wheeler
County ranchers banded together to meet that need by starting Painted Hills
Natural Beef, headquartered in Fossil.
The cattle are raised on an all-natural forage and grain diet without the addition
of hormones, steroids or antibiotics.The beef is more expensive, but it also
is in greater demand. As a result, Painted Hills Natural Beef has steadily expanded
to include new locations and new markets.
Yet there is agreement on both sides of the Cascades that more can be done to
smooth a transition to sustainability for rural communities. A renewed emphasis
on better communication is part of the plan, said Paul Burnet, who is overseeing
the administration of the Governor’s executive order on sustainability.
Burnet said one of the main barriers to implementing new sustainability programs
in both state government and elsewhere has been the "but-we’ve-always-done-it-that-way"
mentality.
Burnet calls this "silo thinking," referring to a narrow, established
hierarchy that emphasizes the customary over the innovative, the familiar over
the new.
"Sometimes it’s hard to get people to come down from the silos and
start talking to each other, but once you get started, things start to happen,"
Burnet said.
Laura Pryor, chair of the Gilliam County Commission, said she sees signs of
genuine efforts to enact reforms that would allow rural Oregon to solve long-term
problems.
A bill passed by the legislature in 2001 will allow funds to be held over from
one biennium to the next to encourage better long-range program development.
"The way it is now," Pryor said, "if you don’t spend it,
you lose it. That doesn’t encourage sustainable, long-term solutions."
The Breeses also are working to bring rural and urban Oregonians closer together
to discuss issues of mutual interest.
For the past several years, the Central Oregon Chapter of the Society for Range
Management, which Lynne Breese heads, has hosted a busload of Portland-area
members of the Wildlife Stewards program, administered through the Oregon State
University Extension Service office in all-urban Multnomah County.
The Stewards, who are trained to turn worn urban school grounds into native
wildlife habitat and natural laboratories, spend a weekend with ranch families,
range managers, wildlife biologists and foresters.
Both groups learn from each other, but one of the livelier discussions of the
weekend centers around sustainability issues.
"Sustainability is one of those words that people read and don’t actually
have a single definition for," Lynne Breese said. "Some people assume
if you have a sustainable forest, you don’t touch it. (We) have the concept
that if you have a sustainable forest, you are out there working. It’s
especially true when you mix people who work this ground and those who see this
ground as a place to play."
Breese said she wasn’t out to change the views that urban residents have
of rural areas as a place you come to visit on weekends, but she is sure of
one thing: "We all leave learning a little bit more about each other, and
that is what really matters."