By ZACH URNESS/Salem Statesman Journal
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has released its first proposal on where people can and cannot fly drones at Oregon’s state parks and coastal beaches.
The state agency has been grappling with the growth of drones at popular recreation sites for years because of their impact on other recreation users, wildlife and the ecology of parks and the beach.
The agency released three sample maps and three sets of criteria as a possible model that would govern where people can launch and land drones. It is asking all users, including park visitors and drone users, to comment on the proposal over the next two months.
The agency will take feedback to help it proceed with rules that could be in place as early as next summer.
The agency is live streaming a virtual meeting on the subject at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8 where people can ask questions about the policy. Comments can be emailed to: oprd.publiccomment@oprd.oregon.gov.
“Our goal is to have something in place as soon as we can, because we’re seeing the number of people recreating with drones go up every year,” said OPRD policy adviser Jo Niehaus. “We’ve planned this long feedback period because we want as much prospective as we can get. We really want to have good engagement with drone users on this issue early on.”
The proposed policy came from a working group that included members of conservation groups, drone users and state and federal agencies that met over the past two years.
Currently, OPRD doesn’t have overarching rules other than allowing park managers to prohibit drones in some locations.
How would it work?
The new policy would create maps for every Oregon’s state park and coastal beach, using color coding to show where launching a drone was open (green), prohibited (red) or conditional, meaning allowed with a permit (yellow).
Reasons for prohibiting an area for drone launching includes “areas that pose a negative impact to a cultural resource” or “areas where drone use creates a hazard or poses risk to another use.” It also includes locations such as overnight campgrounds.
A reason for an area being open to drone use would be that it includes “a unique opportunity for drone recreation if the negative effects can be mitigated.”
The “conditional” areas would require a site-specific permit, issued by a park manager. It could include “areas that contain environmental conditions that increase the risk of the loss of control or recovery,” or other issues that make flying potentially dicey.
To give users a sense of how it could work, the agency created three sample maps, including for Tumalo State Park in central Oregon, Nehalem Bay State Park on the coast and Willamette Mission State Park north of Salem.
Each area contains a mixture of open, conditional and prohibited areas for launching. If this policy was approved, there would be a statewide map where people could zoom into and out of places they wanted to launch, Niehaus said.
OPRD can only manage where users launch or land drones. Once in the sky, drones are managed by the Federal Aviation Administration. That means users could hypothetically launch in an open area and fly over a prohibited area.
However, the FAA typically requires drone users to maintain a line of sight with the drone, limiting how far away it can be flown.
Niehaus said users launching from open areas and flying into sensitive areas was a concern, but at the same time, current users can simply launch from outside a state park boundary and fly over.
“Our goal is to help everyone recreate safely,” she said. “That’s why our focus now is outreach. This is unchartered territory for all of us.”
Drones have become a problem in a growing number of cases, parks officials said in the past, primarily because of its impact on wildlife, such as nesting birds, and on other users of the park.
Nesting seabirds, including imperiled species, have been scared off their nests by drones, which leaves their chicks and eggs vulnerable to predators.
As for impacts with users, on the more extreme end, drones crashed into rock walls where people were climbing at Smith Rock multiple times in the past. A drone even showed up, carrying a camera, at the nude beach at Rooster Rock State Park. More generally, many users don’t like drones buzzing overhead while they’re hiking or boating.
Niehaus said OPRD doesn’t track the number of drones flying in parks, but that rangers have seen a consistent increase in incidents as drones get cheaper and become more mainstream.
What next?
The public comment period lasts through 5 p.m. Dec. 29. Anyone can comment by emailing oprd.publiccomment@oprd.oregon.gov or filling out this form online at bit.ly/49kIsGX.
The comments will be reviewed by agency staff and the work group as part of a final report to agency director Lisa Sumption, who would then decide whether to direct staff to create official rules or not. Any proposed rules would go through another round of public comments.
Virtual meeting
OPRD is livestreaming a virtual meeting about the possible drone rules at 6 p.m. Wednesday Nov. 8 where people can ask questions about the policy.
The meeting will be livestreamed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@oprddirectorsoffice5783/streams.
Attendees who want to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the meeting must register beforehand at: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IbQe3Wx0QXCzXTcPDvcq0A.
Drones should be banned from most natural areas for the following reasons:
1). They pose a danger to wildlife especially, but not limited to nesting birds. They are inherently disruptive and can interrupt and alter normal behaviors such as feeding, nurturing, predation, and breeding.
2). They are antithetical to the concept of wilderness.
3). They pose a danger to people hiking and/or rock climbing- especially on exposed trails. A hiker might be startled or distracted and end up taking a nasty spill, resulting in injury or worse.
4). They are an invasion of privacy. You don’t have to be a nudist for this to be the case. Hikers and backpackers must answer natures call. And while stripping down and taking a dip in a mountain lake may seem quasi-exhibitionist, it’s certainly not an invitation for public viewing.