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By Joseph Vaile KS Wild July 21. 2015 5:53PM Wild Side: Summer vacation lessons from the heartland The wild Rogue River offers a wilderness experience that is much sought after, and an economic driver for the local community. Photo by Momentum River Expeditions This summer, like most, my vacation was a trip to the Midwest. I love visiting my family in Illinois, but there is nothing like a trip to America’s heartland to remind me of the natural wonders of southern Oregon. This year, after spending time with family, we drove five hours from Illinois to Indiana to attend my wife’s high school reunion. Once we made it through the road rage-inducing sprawl of Chicago, we were back into the intensively farmed landscape that makes up most of the middle of our country. If you’ve been there, you know that the vast majority of the Midwest is dedicated to the production of animal feed crops with two species: soybean (Glycine max) and corn (Zea mays). Genetically modified to produce high yields and resist pesticides, these two plants have almost entirely replaced the native prairie. Don’t get me wrong. There are wonderful natural places in America’s heartland. I find a bucolic beauty in the red barns and fields of corn. Along the creeks and rivers, where the plow fails to reach, are small natural areas and state parks. My wife and I even found a 1,000-acre remnant prairie preserve with a small herd of relocated bison that is in the process of being restored by local volunteers. The areas untouched by industrial agriculture are small, yet they offer a glimpse of what once was: A vast tall-grass prairie with remarkable wildflower displays, buzzing bees and fluttering butterflies. It takes imagination, but you can feel what the wide-open prairie must have been to native cultures. But the Midwest is now so dramatically altered that the Environmental Protection Agency lists the name of the eco-region we visited as the Central Corn Belt Plains. It has completely lost not only its ecological integrity; it has lost its identity as an ecosystem altogether. This is the fate shared by too many of the earth’s regions. The great cedar forests of Lebanon once shaded the hills, but they have been deforested. Closer to home, the Oregon Coast Range could almost be renamed the Oregon Tree Farm Range — large expanses are dedicated to industrial forestry practiced with short rotation clear-cutting, single-species replanting and widespread herbicide application. This is what makes southern Oregon such a special place. Don’t get me wrong, our region is far from pristine — some of our large rivers are dammed, industrial timber owners continue to clear-cut and there are many places where the human imprint is clearly dominant — but we still have expansive areas that remain relatively intact. Clean, clear rivers flow untamed through a backdrop of ancient forests where species native to the region live free and unfettered. And that is why all the great work to protect what is left and create a more sustainable relationship with the natural world is so important. The desire to extract what remains from our wild landscapes is constant. Every day brings new proposals to convert forests to tree farms or subdivisions, and we are now facing the potential replacement of pristine watersheds with nickel strip mines, as well as the installation of a gas export pipeline. We don’t have to sit by and just let this transformation happen. With hard work and dedication, occasionally compromise and more often than not controversy, we can save these special places. For example, the forests above the Wild Rogue River were recently pegged for clearcut logging, but are now part of a wilderness expansion proposal. The Wild Rogue alone brings in $30 million to a growing regional recreation economy, demonstrating that the human spirit seeks out this communion with our natural landscapes. Back in Indiana, as I sat explaining to my wife’s classmates what I did out in Oregon, I said, “I work to save one of the last, best regions left in North America.” After I gave them a flavor of what we have in southern Oregon, I think they all want to come out for a visit. Joseph Vaile is executive director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild, 541-488-5789, www.kswild.org). His Wild Side column appears every three weeks.   http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20150721/NEWS/150729936 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->