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BLM official to visit monument By PAUL FATTIG Elaine Marquis Brong will get a firsthand glimpse of land she oversees when she tours the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument this week. The director of the Bureau of Land Management's National Landscape Conservation System office in Washington, D.C., will see the monument during a tour with members of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association on Thursday. Her office sets policy and management for the BLM's new national monuments, wilderness areas and other environmentally sensitive areas. Brong will be in Southern Oregon as guest speaker for SOTIA's spring dinner Thursday at Red Lion Hotel in Medford. She is also expected to tour another portion of the monument with local BLM staff and meet with monument supporters on Friday. Brong, 48, is a 22-year veteran of the agency. She has a degree in biology from the University of Maine and has done postgraduate work in organizational development at Marymount College in Virginia. She served in the Peace Corps in El Salvador. Created last June by former President Clinton, the Cascade-Siskiyou monument has been the subject of a heated debate in recent months. Government officials and monument supporters say it covers only 52,947 acres, but opponents say its actual size is closer to 90,000 acres because private land inside its boundaries is impacted. The monument, located a dozen miles east of Ashland, is centered around Soda Mountain. Monument supporters and opponents each have collected about 2,500 signatures endorsing their positions. Some private landholders within the monument support it; other monument neighbors oppose it. SOTIA does not support the monument in its current configuration. "Our message to Brong will be that we would like to see a reassessment of the monument boundary," said Dave Hill, SOTIA's executive vice president. "We think it can be redefined to exclude private property within the boundary at no expense to the public land or to the resource." That change would reduce the monument by a third, he estimated. Many people also want to better understand what resource values led to the creation of the monument, he said. "I don't in my mind have a clear understanding of what the BLM and Clinton hoped to protect there as a monument," Hill said. "A lot of rock? Vistas?" Finally, SOTIA will impress upon Brong the importance of a development plan that provides adequate public access to the monument, he said. "If there is resource to be protected, let's protect it," he added. "But let's also allow public access." Dominick DellaSala, director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Regional Program for the World Wildlife Fund, is one of the monument supporters who will meet with Brong. Supporters plan to stress to Brong that the monument debate has gone on for more than a decade and that the public has had ample opportunity to comment, DellaSala said. "We want her to know that the proper public process has already been completed, and that there is a lot of support locally and across the state," he said. "We want to move on from here," he added. "We want her to know it would be a mistake to open up old wounds." Noting that the monument was created because of its unique biological diversity as well as historic and cultural values, DellaSala figures the monument should be enlarged if there is a change. Meanwhile, the BLM will release its draft plan for managing the monument in mid-May, followed by a 90-day comment period. A public meeting for comments on that draft plan will be held June 2 in the Stevenson Union at Southern Oregon University, said Howard Hunter, a local BLM employee who has been working on the plan. The agency doesn't have the authority to make any changes in the size of the monument, Hunter said. "That's up to the administration to make any changes," he stressed. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.