After reading "Sleep Well Tonight" (MOTHER NO. 13) we're appalled... we know what the dream and the fulfillment of being on the land can mean to one's life.
If there's anything we can do or if writing letters will help-just anything-let us know and we, in turn will let all our friends know. Our hearts are with the Morisses.. . please tell them not to give up.
Dore and John Cuddy
Shevlin, Minn.
We are very concerned about the Bureau of Land Management's actions against John and Betsy Morris and have written a number of letters in support of their position. In the course of our action, we've learned that quite a few congressmen have acted on the matter... and we hope that heat from this source will help the BLM to make the right decision.
While the whole issue of eminent domain requires more legal research, the concept seems a definite threat to MOTHER'S readers and worth another article or two.
Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Naylor
Lexington, Ky.
We cannot pass by the plight of Thornfield Farm and say, "Gee, that's too bad." We're both very upset by this injustice, and several thoughts have occurred to us about the Morisses dilemma. One is that as American citizens, all draft-aged men are asked-in effect-to forfeit their very lived for a cause... usually that of individual freedom and often someone else's, halfway around the world. Isn't it possible that continued trespasssing by US government on its citizens' lives and lifestyles eventually might make them willing to fight and die to preserve their own individual freedom at home? Now, obviously the Morrises are a peaceful family and, for that matter, so are we... but doesn't this possibility occur to anyone?
Another thought is that bureaucracy is run much like the military... if there's much complaning done TO the higher levels ABOUT the lower levels, something must happen.
Last but not least, we think that the Morisses-though peaceable and prone to privacy-should not be trying to fight this alone. The Morrises' cause is every man's domain. What better way to express commitment to individual rights and environmental responsibility than by writing letters, by demonstrating (which is still the democratic way) and-if need be-by creating a blockade to protect the Morrises' land and their family right?
Roger and Kerry LaFleur
Oakland, Calif.
I'd like to do what I can to help John and Betsy Morris save their farm from the BLM... maybe if all of MOTHER's readers wrote letters to protest we could do some collective good for the couple. Dreams of glory: maybe we could even cause a change in the BLM's mode of operation.
I suggest writing to the President, congressmen, Senators, the director of the BLM, the Governor of Oregon, Oregon's State Legislature (after all Oregon is being ripped off as badly as the Morrises are), conservation groups, old ladies group, bird watching clubs, news media....
If the government can't be persuaded with logic or appealed to on the basis of responsibility to future generations, maybe it can be embarassed into the right course.
Regrettably our government has become so detached that it's forgotten that is a governement "for the people and by the people". Somehow when a human being-like Mr, Dose-of the North American continent attaches "US Government" to his name, he ceases to be one of the people and forgets that his job involved working for the people... not for the lumber companies, General Motors or the Pentagon.
Pamela Rogers
Alstead, NH
Thanks for the exposition on Thornfield Farm, MOTHER. Please follow up... I think a lot of folks would like to see who wins the "battle". Once again it's government of the people, by the government, for the industries. May it perish from this earth.
What follows is the text of a letter I wrote to Mr. Joseph Dose, District Director of Eugene's BLM:
I find your official attitude toward the construction of two forest access roads through the Thornfield Farm of Mr. and Mrs. John Morris reprehensible. Such an action by a government agency raises broad questions concerning the protection of public and private lands.
Please let this letter serve to inform you that what may have seemed to be a local issue has now reached a national audience and will, I'm sure, draw closer attention to the putatively protective function of the Bureau of Land Management.
Stephen T. Dunn
Rochester, NY
Is there anything we can do to help John and Bety Morris on Thornfield Farm? We feel awful for them.
Jim and Patty Hall
Poway, Calif.
Enclosed is a copy of the letter I received from the Bureau of Land Management concerning the January 1972 MOTHER article about Betsy and John Morris' farm... use it as you wish if it can help in the struggle. (Editor's note: the letter sent to Alan was "signed" by the Assistant Director of the BLM and, except for the first paragraph is identical to the "official letter" annotated on another page of this feature.)
Alan L. Goldstein
Flint, Mich.
Just read about Thornfield Farm... how about getting and published the address of that Dose dude from BLM. Mother's thousands of children should be able to help-or at leat make themselved heard. No telling what 25 or 50 thousand letters could do.
Ed Cloos
Rochester, NY
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IF YOU WRITE A LETTER IN DEFENSE OF THE MORRISES TO ANYONE IN OR NEAR THE WASHINGTON BLM, CHANCES ARE YOU'LL GET A REPLY SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW (HIGHER-UPS HAVE APPARENTLY DEVISED A SORT OF FORM LETTER TO SEND BACK TO PEOPLE WHO WRITE IN ABOUT THORNFIELD FARM). THE MORRISES FEEL THAT THE LETTER IS AT BEST MISLEADING SO HERE IS...
BETSY'S NEW ANNOTATED VERSION OF THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT LETTER ON THE MORRIS CASE.
Dear Sir:
President Nixon has asked to respond to your letter of January 17, 1972 in which you expressed concern about the environmental problems facing this country and referred to an article about a proposed road construction project of the Bureau of Land Management.
We share your concern about environmental problems and wish to assure you that the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies of this Department do comply with the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and Executive Order 11514 relating thereto.
The Bureau of Land Management each year finds it necessary to acquire several hundred easements across private property to afford access to public lands for their development, protection, administration, and utilization. Eminent domain is used only as a last resort, and the necessity for such action occurs in less than one percent of the situations. 1 The Uniform Relocation and Assistance and Land Acquisition Policy Act of 1970 (P.L. 91-646) ensures that private landowners will receive fair and equitable treatment in any easement or other acquisition affecting their property, whether by negotiation or eminent domain. 2
The article to which you referred appeared in the January 1972 issue of Mother Earth News, and is entitled "Sleep Well Tonight: The Bureau of Land Management is Protecting (?) Your Land."
This article seems to be largely based on "Background Statement" prepared by the owners of a 761 acre farm in the Bear Creek drainage of Lane County in Western Oregon. It sets forth their veiws concerning the Bureau of Land Management's proposal to construct a road in this vicinity.
The private property owned or being purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Morris and David Morris and David and Jeanne Eastman of Deadwood, Oregon, lies between a public road and a block by revested O & C grant land managed for sustained yield pursuant to the Act of August 28, 1937. This Act states in part that the O & C land".. shall be managed .... For permanent forest production, and the timber thereon shall be sold, cut and removed in conformity with the principal (sic) of sustained yield for the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply, protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, and contributing to the economic stability of local communities and industries, and providing recreational facilities... " 3
The development of a road system into the Main Fork and South Fork of the Bear Creek drainage is essential to the management of some 3,000 acres of this federally owned O & C timber land. 4 The Bureau's District Manager at Eugene, Oregon, is in the process of analyzing the possible routes for access to and management of this area. To permit consideration of these routes, it is necessary to survey the locations on the ground.
The Morrises and Mr. and Mrs. Eastman seem to have acquired their property without being aware of earlier road survey work done by the Bureau in this area and over what is now their property. These earlier plans to develop a road system were delayed, mainly due to a shift of emphasis required by the Columbus Day Windstorm in October 1962, which necessitated a massive timber salvage program.
Then the Bureau desired to resume its plannning in the Bear Creek drainage, the new landowners objected and refused to allow Bureau employees to go upon their property to examine the previous survey and to survey other possible access routes. 5 This continued refusal made it necessary that a complaint be filed in the US District Court of Oregon to allow Bureau personnel to go upon their property. Subsequent to the filing of the complaint negotiations with the Morrises have been successful to the extent Bureau personnel were allowed to go upon their property. The District Manager and his staff are in the process of developing a land use plan for the Bureau lands in the Bear Creek area. To develop a land use plan for this area, it is essential that road route surveys are made and that factual resource data are collected. When this is done, all feasible routes will be studied by the Bureau to ensure that environmental, aesthetic, economic, and other factors are known before a route of access is selected. The results of this study and analysis will be discussed with the adjacent landowners before any final decision is rendered. 6
It may be of interest to you to read the following listed articles in which the desire of the members of the public to have access to public lands was the subject: "Cloud in the Big Sky" in the July 1971 issue of Outdoor Life; "The Big Lock-Out" in the October 1971 issue of Field and Stream; and "New Perils for Our Public Lands" in the November 1971 issue of Sports Afield. These articles express a different aspect to the matter of access to the public lands. 7
Sincerely yours,
Deputy Assistant,
Secretary of the Interior
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1 We're not sure just what the BLM is trying to show with this bit of information unless it's how unreasonable we are being because we intend to defend our home. At any rate, the assertion about the need for us using eminent domain does correspond with what one BLM official told us.... that about 50% of the landowners over whose property the Bureau acquires access object at first, but that they all eventually come around. We take this to mean that the desires of private landowners are never really respected in cases such as ours... everyone "comes around" after being subjected to the kind of pressures that we've been dealing with.
2 Such treatment apparently involves what the BLM deems "fair and equitable" means allowing us to remain unmolested in our own home. Perhaps thats asking a lot.
3 Well, the BLM may be in 1937, but a lot of us are here in 1972 facing the ecological realities of today and it seems to us that the influence of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 should outweigh that of the pro-logging Act of 1937.
4 This bit of trick wording implies that the proposed roads through our property are necessary to reach the 3,000 acres of Oregon and California grant land referred to as the Windy Peak area. Not so! According to what we were told, only 360 acres of BLM property are inaccessible without such routes (and we're even a bit skeptical about that piece of information since, way back when - before the story was changed - one official tried to show how unreasonable we were being by pointing out that if roads weren't built through Thornfield Farm some logs would have to be pulled up by two-cable systems instead of one). When we asked about the seemingly false statement we were informed that it wasn't really a lie because of the term "road system". Yes, the roads through our land would be only a PART of that system... but no, the wording wouldn't be changed in the official letter.
5 This particularly aggravating point has been in every official BLM letter that we've seen for over a year now... despite our complaints that it's misrepresentative. The first crew of BLM personnel to appear at Thornfield Farm (the one we refused to allow on the property) did NOT ask if they could come here to look for alternate routes to Windy Peak would be on our property anyway, there actually has been no need to ask our permission to study them.
6 What a mind boggler all of this is! We couldn't believe it when we read it, but there it sits in black in white... while we were told - in no uncertain terms - that BLM personnel would not be working on road surveys but would be studying environmental factors. Our whole objection has been to the building of any roads across Thornfield Farm, and there's a real discrepancy between what we were told when we did let BLM people on our property and what the higher-ups are now saying.
7 We're still trying to figure this one out. I guess the reader is supposed to think that we're trying to keep hoards of sportsmen out of public land, although that seems very irrelevant in our case for several reasons. First, access for recreation could just as easily be arranged through BLM land, although hunters probably couldn't DRIVE through wilderness areas in that case. Second, most fishing is illegal in the areas that roads through Thornfield Farm would open up. And is there the possible implication here that our land should also be made available for hunters and fishermen?
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It often seems that we've been fighting endlessly for Thornfield Farm and all that it implies, grinding countless gears and receiving nothing but countless bad vibrations. To suddenly have so much compassionate support flow in as a result of MOTHER's article on our plight ("Sleep Well Tonight, NO. 13) was an amazingly revitalizing force.
Although we haven't lost sight of our very personal concern-that a govenment agency can apparently stramroller over all of us "little guys" to help industry exploit our natural resources-our current situation is little better than it was six or eight months ago.
Many good people have written letters to officials on our behalf and the replies they've received seem to be saying that the Bureau of Land Management simply plans to be more thorough in pursuing its long-established intent to open up a new area for logging by putting roads through our property. However, a ray of hope continues to come from the local Eugene, Oregon BLM. Reports from that office seem to indicate that all work on the Windy Peak has been called to a halt until environmental studies are completed. Those studies will then provide background data for an analysis of ALL suitable alternative uses for the public acreage (we have a recording of the conversation between Eugene BLM's Al Schaffer and John and Betsy in which this is set forth).
Well, being optimists, we're banking on the latter "ray of hope" and are concentrating all efforts on seeing that our two cents' worth of alternatives get into the official studies.
Air logging is one possibility. If the BLM can't see its way clear to do something creative with the Windy Peak area, we think the least it should do is facilitate air logging. This way the lumber companies wouldn't be able to say that we're being wasteful by allowing trees to just rot there in the woods (seems like every time someone proposes that any Oregon acreage be set aside as a wilderness area or left in any way unspoiled, the lumber interests are there in full force decrying the "selfish waste" of such action... they don't seem to believe that there's a need for the natural life processes to go on anywhere). Since the BLM has also talked a lot about the steepness of the hillsides intended for logging (implying the need for extra roads), it seems to us that air logging in this area might be justified on the basis of conservation alone.
Of course a wildlife/wilderness area seems to us the ideal alternative for the 3,000 acres (plus some) of Windy Peak, and there's much valid basis for our feeling. Numerous small state roadside parks dot the coast and the Coastal Mountain Range, but we know of no extensive tract of land which has been designated as "hands off" to lumber interests. Officials have even told us that the 3,000-acre Windy Peak tract is just about the last BLM holding untouched by roads. We think that's a pretty important reason for keeping it that way.
Being realistic, though, we're sure that the man with the final say, Eugene BLM's District director Joseph Dose, isn't currently entertaining this as a serious alternative. However, if he and his superiors were to be notified from enough parts of the country that the "public" deems it to be in their "interest" to preserve this section of public domain for tomorrow's "public" and to enable future generations of wildliefe to exist in a relatively untouched ecology, perhaps things would change. The economic pressure under which the BLM operates might even be altered-at least in this one case-or maybe balanced by the very real environmental and aesthetic pressures presently building up steam throughout the land.
So if some still feel moved to take up our cause via the mails, we'd really appreciate their letting Mr.Dose and the BLM (or any Senators, Representatives, friends, relatives and so on) know how they feel.
We're also in dire need of professional help on such things as geology, environment, etc... we can't hire experts since we're already in deep with legal expenses, but it would really help to have some well-backgrounded person on our side to answer some of the BLM's official opinions.
The Morrises
IF YOU WANT TO GO ON A LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN TO HELP THE MORRISES YOUR FIRST TARGET SHOULD PROBABLY BE MR. DOSE OF THE BLM IN EUGENE... THEN PICK AND CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING LIST OF PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS-OR THINK UP SOME OF YOUR OWN-THAT COULD HAVE A BEARING ON THE MORRIS CASE.
Mr. Joseph Dose
District Director
Bureau of Land Management
Eugene, Oregon
Larry Williams
Oregon Environmental Council
4315 S.W. Corbett
Portland, Oregon 97201
Alan Coons, Chairman
Sierra Club
2741 Eingate
Eugene, Oregon 97402
United States Department of Interior
Bureau of Land Management
Washington, D.C. 20240
Governor Tom McCall
Salem
Oregon
Senator Mark O. Hatfield or
Senator Bob Packwood
US Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
The President's Council on Environmental Quality
Mr. Russell E. Train, Chairman
722 Jackson Place
Washington, D.C. 20230
The Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. William Reckelshaus, Director
1626 K St.
Washington, D.C. 20460
EPA Regional Office
James L. Agee
Room 510 Pittock Block
921 S.W. Washington St.
Portland, Oregon 97205
Editor's note. A very last minute report from Betsy Morris: the Eugene BLM's review of the Windy Peak situatiion is now complete and is exactly what local officials had promised... a new look at the area. The BLM report no real need for roads through Thornfield Farm, suggests that part of the public area remain untouched and points out that trees slated for logging could easily be left standing for several decades and then harvested by air. The Morrises are heartened... but the BLM recommendations are not yet a reality. "The important thing right now," Betsy says, "is for Mr. Dose to receive support and encouragement in considering such things as the preservation of some virgin land, the importance of respect for individuals and the right we should all have to privacy and freedom from depotism." So write those letters!
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