BLM wants old-growth forests on chopping block

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is seeking comment for a new management direction to manage 2.5 million acres of the old Oregon & California Railroad's public- owned right-of-way land in six of its western Oregon districts.

BLM proposed three logging alternatives in the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR). It selected Alternative Two, timber harvest, in order to quickly - without federal legal protections - clearcut and convert $1 million acres of "designated" ancient forests to industrial forest plantations.

Alternative Two is a short-sighted proposal affecting all six districts. It's designed to broadly and drastically reduce or eliminate outright federal legal protections for riparian corridors, numerous wildlife species, rare plants and conservation sites, known as "Areas of Critical Environmental Concern."

As global extinction and climate destabilization continue, Alternative 2 will quickly liquidate/clearcut ancient forests in western Oregon. Our ancient forests are environmentally significant globally. As a group within the O & C patchwork of existing/legacy clearcuts, these uncut ancient forests remain as fragmented islands; a priceless, irreplaceable, extremely rare storehouse of biologically diversity.

Alternative Two's "timber-first" management regime will add to the list of species near extinction. It will continue the legacy of human economic erosion and destabilization of human communities reliant on services these forests provide beyond timber, such as regional air pollution control, water filtration, storage, tourism, fishing, global climate security and outdoor recreation.

There public lands are owned by everyone. The comment deadline is Dec. 10. See www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr and www.OregonHeritageForests.org.

Rana S. Foster

Corvallis

Details of M49 reveal its unfairness to landowners

Oregon has the most complex and restrictive land use laws in the country. One of the most fundamental provisions in both the Oregon and the U.S. Constitution is the protection of private property.

Over the past 35 years, Oregon land-use laws and regulations have reduced property values by many billions of dollars by zoning 90 percent of private lands for farm or forest uses and making building a home on your property almost impossible.

Measures 7 and 37 were voter-approved by large margins to restore some basic rights to those who owned the land prior to the extreme restrictions. Measure 37 has not and will not have the impact as claimed by Measure 49 supporters. Measure 37 claims include only about 1 percent of Oregon's entire land base. Many Measure 37 claims are very low-impact and others will never be developed at the densities applied for because of required health and safety standards.

Measure 49 is one of the most deceptive measures ever. What the ballot title and talking points claim to fix, the details in the measure itself taketh away. The devil is definitely in the details. Please carefully read the full measure and vote no on Measure 49.

Marlyn D. Weaver

Corvallis

War supporter is proud to be 'exploited' minority

A friend reminded me recently that polls show that my support of the war in Iraq places me in a minority population of Americans. It dawned on me that there is opportunity in being a member of the exploited minority.

I can now claim victimhood and seek legal protection from the tyranny of the majority. I can now focus on nursing my grievances instead of counting my blessings. I can now rationalize my irrelevance, be a merchant of discouragement, and a justifier of self pity. I can now have a short fuse and thin skin whenever criticized by those who obviously seek to muzzle me. I can now spout my ideology of disparagement regarding this loser of a nation. I can now sing with brazen self righteousness: All we are saying is give war a chance. I can now carry protest signs and spew my abject hatred towards those in the majority. I can now in good conscience refuse to salute the flag at my coin club meetings.

Yes, I am a proud dissenter against the oppressive majority in this broken nation. And we all know that dissension is the highest form of patriotism. I am angry; hear me roar.

Gordon L. Shadle

Albany

M37 was land-use lunacy; Measure 49 restores sanity

Imagine you are an insurance agent. A fellow comes in and says "My Cadillac was stolen. Pay me!" However his policy is for a Chevrolet. Furthermore, you notice a Chevy parked outside that matches the policy. "Oh, sure," he says, I bought a Chevrolet, but I wanted a Cadillac, so you have to pay me."

Like most people, you might conclude he wasn't playing with a full deck. Unfortunately, the taxpayers of Oregon were suckers for just such an argument.

I was walking with a friend on his farm, discussing Measure 37. I told him he had a nice farm, and I asked him what it was when he bought it. He said it was a farm. It seems to me that the land-use laws haven't deprived him of anything. He has what he paid for.

That's the lunacy of Measure 37. It requires taxpayers pay for something that never existed. Several landowners north of Corvallis claim the land-use laws prevent them from building golf courses. Corvallis and North Albany already have four golf courses. How many more will the population support? It doesn't matter. Measure 37 allows people to claim they can't build golf courses because of the laws, without requiring proof that they could build one if the laws didn't exist. So you have to pay them for something they never had. It's silly, isn't it?

Measure 49 puts some sense back into land-use planning. It is an important measure to prevent California-style urban sprawl in Oregon.

Phillip Hays

Corvallis

Remove, don't add to, 'junk' in state Constitution

While I have to agree with the editorial page that did a good job of showing the dumping ground that our Constitution has been turned into, that's no reason to dump more trash into it. Instead, we should be trying to clean it up.

The Constitution is about principles and procedures of government operation, and defining the rights of the people and limits on government. Everything else should be removed; granted, that's a monumental task with the garbage that's in it now, but if we changed the procedure for amendments to make it hard to change the parts that belong there and easy to remove the parts that don't, it would at least be a start. Along with not voting to trash it even further…

Alan Batie

Corvallis

Beware of Corvallis' many dangerous bicycle hazards

Corvallis is a great place to live, with an eco-conscious government, a super library, a vibrant downtown and a beautiful position in the Willamette Valley.

The downside of this story: Life here is dangerous!

We're on 13th, north of Walnut Blvd. Walnut has recently been repaved. Traffic is heavy, and goes fast, and walking or biking south across the 5 lanes, plus two bike lanes, is inevitably an adrenalin-producing race for our lives. For those of us who are elderly, it is very much like crossing a NASCAR track in mid-race.

Our wise city officials have refused to paint white lines for us. We think they need two fatalities to justify the expense of painting the lines and making the crossing safer. Volunteers?

So we survive the Walnut crossing and we're headed downtown. Tenth Street is the obvious choice for bikers; not much traffic, nice bike lane.

Wait! The ODOT bicyclist manual (2006) says: "Ride far enough away from parked cars so you don't risk being hit by an opening car door."

Which renders most of the bike lane on 10th Street going south very very dangerous, if not illegal. If we ride in the lane, we risk certain death by door. If we take the lane at 12 mph, drivers curse us and do stupid things.

Corvallis calls itself a 'Gold-Level Bicycle- Friendly Community', yet it has miles of very dangerous bike lanes. We think our wise city officials have some safety issues to address, preferably before anyone (namely, us) gets killed.

Susan and Kirk Nevin

Corvallis