Walden in C.O. for briefing on wilderness permit proposal

The number of visitors to Central Oregon’s public lands keeps growing.

“We’re estimating this year we could approach 4 million visitors per year on the Deschutes National Forest,” Supervisor John Allen said Tuesday.

All that added traffic is taking its toll.

“We’ve seen a four-fold increase in the number of visitors into the wilderness in the last six or seven years, and that number in itself isn’t alarming,” Bend-Fort Rock District Ranger Kevin Larkin said “but that means we’ve seen a fourfold increase in the amount of garbage people leave behind.”

Rep. Greg Walden met with the Forest Service and other stakeholders, including the Chamber of Commerce and Visit Bend, to discuss protecting wilderness areas while still allowing public access to them.

“We’re seeing enormous growth on these limited trails into these very pristine and I would say fragile areas up in the wilderness,” Walden said.

Allen said, “I would never want to see the day on social media where you just see hundreds, maybe thousands of Twitters and Facebooks saying, ‘Don’t go to the Cascades outside of Bend, they’re overused and trampled.'”

Earlier this summer, the Deschutes and Willamette national forests proposed new visitor management strategies for several wilderness areas. They include a limited-entry permit system.

“Well, so far, people have a lot of questions about it, and I think that’s fair,” Walden said. “They want to know what the price is. Do (they) have to get two permits now? Northwest Forest Pass and this? Well, probably, and the other piece is what happens to the money that we pay?”

Walden said the money will go back toward improving trails and campsites. The Forest Service is refining its initial proposal, looking at more than 450 public comments.

“This is why we’re so overt about our public input request,” Larkin said, “because it’s not just us that gets to determine what that balance looks like. These are public lands. We’re all in this together.”

A revised proposal is expected in January, and the public again will be asked to weigh in. A final decision will likely be made next summer but won’t go into effect until 2019.