The wilderness legislation that Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., helped push through a Senate committee is likely to be a future agenda item for the Where We Went Wrong Club.

There are many wonderful things about wilderness legislation and this wilderness legislation. But why would a U.S. Senator be fighting so hard to propose a piece of wilderness legislation that gets public access wrong?

Sens. Wyden and Jeff Merkley, also an Oregon Democrat, have been working on passage of the Oregon Treasures Act. It combines several wilderness proposals and is packed with goodies.

There are 60,000 new acres of wilderness to the existing Wild Rogue Wilderness area. There’s more protection for 21.3 miles of the Molalla River. It creates more than 17,000 acres of new wilderness along the John Day in areas called Cathedral Rock and Horse Heaven. It also proposes land exchanges to make more sense of a splintered patchwork of private and public land in those areas.

The Cathedral Rock Wilderness would be northeast of Madras near the Jefferson-Wasco county line. It’s easy to add up a list of benefits. It consolidates public land and private land and creates wilderness along a beautiful stretch of the John Day.

But when the federal government creates new wilderness areas, there needs to be more than just loyalty to creating more wilderness. There should also be loyalty to public access to that wilderness.

Access by water is not an issue. Access by road is. When the lines on the map for the land exchanges were drawn, they were gerry- mandered so there could be no public road access from Muddy Creek Road. Access is “authorized” for the public. It is not guaranteed.

This wasn’t done arbitrarily. Landowners in the area have complained that they have trouble with trespassing. So the map was drawn so there is a moat of private land between the road and the public wilderness area. Residents in Jefferson County complained. The Jefferson County Commission voiced its displeasure. Wyden and Merkley responded with a letter urging community collaboration. And to the landowners’ credit, they did make an improved proposal. Area residents, law enforcement and federal officials would get year-round access to Muddy Creek Road and a trailhead to access the wilderness area.

What about other members of the public? They would get access only eight months out of the year. One reason given is that Muddy Creek Road lives up to its name. As Jefferson County Commissioner Mike Ahern, said: “I think they are missing the point. The public wants to access that road.”

There is no substitute for year-round public road access.