Measure 20-373 would still be subject to a proportionality test in court, which evaluates whether a limitation on one right is necessary to protect another. When human rights and nature’s rights conflict, a court weighs the harms to the interests, then decides to balance them. Raging forest fires would take precedence over water use rights, because a decimated forest, damage to family homes and property, would take priority over the potential misuse of water to put out that fire. 

Timber and Ranching industries keep attempting to make taxpayers pay $7 million more annually for fighting fires so they can pay less. The proposed 2024 Oregon bill (Senate Bill 1593) luckily didn’t pass. Industrial timber-owned land and intensive logging increases the risk of severe wildfires, yet again big corporations try to skirt responsibility, which is why Measure 20-373 is needed. 

Healthy watersheds serve as one of the most effective climate adaptation strategies to mitigating wildfire risk and the increasingly common heat domes our region has experienced.