Southern Oregon Now Boasts World's Largest Dark Sky Sanctuary

Sheraz Sadiq reports via Oregon Public Broadcasting: An area that's nearly half the size of New Jersey in southern Oregon was recently named the world's largest dark sky sanctuary by DarkSky International. The nonprofit works to combat light pollution through advocacy and conservation, including a program that has certified more than 200 places around the world to protect the night sky. The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary spans 2.5 million acres of mostly public land in eastern Lake County, and could eventually grow to more than four times that size to include parts of Harney and Malheur Counties. To win certification as a Dark Sky Sanctuary, the applicants had to work with numerous stakeholders to draw the site's boundaries, monitor night sky quality, inventory outdoor lights and replace more than 60 lights on public and private lands. With the inclusion of parts of Harney and Malheur Counties, the sanctuary would surpass 11 million acres, notes KLCC. More than half of the area is under the control of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

"We have dark sky at home."

[Arnonyrnous Covvard]

The dark sky at home: <div style="color:#111111">sky</div>

Re:"We have dark sky at home."

[syn3rg]

Second largest: 2.5M acres is only 3900 square miles.
I'm pretty sure North Korea has the largest "dark sky" area at over 46,500 square miles,. They just don't officially call it a sanctuary.

World's largest?

[Luckyo]

A bit self-aggrandizing maybe, considering the massive swathes of uninhabited land in Canada just a bit to the north that make Oregon in its entirety look tiny?

Re:World's largest?

[quonset]

This is specifically about Dark Sky sanctuaries [darksky.org]:

is typically situated in a very remote location with few (if any) nearby threats to the quality of its dark night skies and does not otherwise meet the requirements for designation as a park or reserve. The typical geographic isolation of Dark Sky Sanctuaries significantly limits opportunities for public outreach, so a Sanctuary designation is specifically designed to increase awareness of these fragile sites and promote their long-term conservation.

This is different than those uninhabited areas no normal person would want to go to, or could reasonably be expected to go to.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Did you read your own quote? It stands in stark contrast to your claim, specifically noting that they're typically geographically isolated.

Which is exactly what most of the Canada is. Just to the north.

Re:

[mistergrumpy]

SKA doesn't care about light pollution, it needs radio silence (50 MHz - 14 GHz).

Definitely Not the World's Largest!

[Roger W Moore]

The world's largest dark sky preserve is actually the Jasper Dark Sky Preserve [www.jasper.travel], an area of 11,000 km^2 in Jasper National Park in Canada. This is larger than the preserve mentioned and was designated as such by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, not some random website on the internet which seems to be ignorant of the Jasper preserve.

Re:Definitely Not the World's Largest!

[Ubi_NL]

Jasper calls itself the second-largest on their own website, and wikipedia calls it the 4th largest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

It gets worse...

[Roger W Moore]

Correct - sorry that must have changed in the last few years! However, Jasper is still larger than this new site in Oregon making the claim even less accurate and, what is much worse, when I looked for what is now the largest dark sky preserve it turns out that the same website claiming that the 10,000 km^2 Oregon site is the largest also claims the 36,000 km^2 Greater Big Bend Preserve [darksky.org] is the world's largest.

What is very clear is that the claims of the darksky.org website should not be trusted at all si

Re:

[Dayze!Confused]

To be fair that page is a blog post of the announcement of Greater Big Bend earning their endorsement and has a date published of April 2nd, 2022. The new site received certification on March 11th, 2024.

As an advocacy group they can't force places to apply, and in fact they state that they work on nominations to decide which places to work on. The idea being that if a community cares enough about preserving the night sky that they will be more committed to make any necessary changes to receive the designati

Re:

[Roger W Moore]

To be fair that page is a blog post of the announcement of Greater Big Bend earning their endorsement and has a date published of April 2nd, 2022. The new site received certification on March 11th, 2024.

...and what is your point? This means that they had endorsed Big Bend, entered it into their site as a reserve and are now two years later saying that a smaller reserve is the biggest in the world despite the fact that their own website has listed a larger reserve for almost two years! Yes, they can't force people to apply but Big Bend did and it got their endorsement and it is bigger than the new reserve that they are claiming is the largest in the world.

Every stakeholder needs to be committed.

Well it's rather hard to think that the people run

We gettin there

[Provocateur]

Soon New Jersey will become a standard of measurement. First with journalists, followed by astronomers, and scientists, and eventually the rest of the world. English? Metric? But we know a couple guys might be able to convince you

To win

[byronivs]

You gotta play. There are rules. They'll need to be bent. Favor must be given. Local yokel recognition imminent. Also, BLM is trash. Rah rah for local yokels. I'm sure they'll love the blowback about artificial light being freedom.
I'm all for doing what they're doing. I'm not for the continuing American habit of patting idiots on the head for every baby step to draw attention to their soul-sucking desperation for attention.

half of NJ

[groobly]

It's half of NJ. How many olympic swimming pools is that, to repeat an old saw. NJ is the 4th smallest state, but this area is only half its size. Why not just say the size of Rhode Island, the smallest state.

Re:

[istartedi]

Because New Jersey is approx. 5.8 times the size or Rhode Island. Kids these days. Probably doesn't even know how much a boatload is.

Starlink?

[fluffernutter]

How do they stop starlink satellites along with the thousands of other satellites that will go up and reflect light down?