Oregon: Wilderness and the John Day region
About the Issue
The contemporary ideal of wilderness in America encompasses more than the deserts, remote places, and uninhabited lands reflected in biblical words for wilderness. More than being an uninhabited borderland for refuge, escape, and cattle-grazing, American wilderness signifies our attempt to celebrate and preserve God’s creation, and observe Sabbath wisdom by restraining productive human enterprise. In Eastern Oregon, particularly in the John Day region, God’s lands and rural communities define this area of high desert, big rivers, and some of the few remaining salmon that make it past the dams.
Our Resources and Links
- The National Council of Churches has partnered with the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon to help to protect public lands around the John Day River in Eastern Oregon for the use and benefit of individual communities and future generations. By lifting the faith voice on land protection through local and state efforts, the partnership aims to educate both the faith and secular communities about the importance of wilderness and land stewardship from a faith-based perspective.
- Click here for the NCC's fact sheet on the John Day Basin.
- Prayer for the John Day Basin – Written by Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon
- John Day Basin and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
- Check out the Oregon Natural Desert Association. Wild, pristine wilderness areas are a precious—and unfortunately endangered--part of Oregon's natural heritage. Wilderness may be an intact forest ecosystem. It may be a vast landscape of desert sagebrush and lava rock, or a marshy wetland vital to the lifecycle and survival of numerous plants and animal.
- Oregon's pristine wilderness areas provide the purest habitat for salmon and are home to many rare and endangered animal and plant species. Check out Oregon Wild for more information.