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Idaho lawmakers moving ahead with wilderness bills in Congress 3/12/2007 BOISE (AP) Two Idaho wilderness bills that failed to make it through the last Congress are back on track, but will they have a better chance of passage now that Democrats control both chambers? Not necessarily, say the Republican sponsors from Idaho. The bills would create four new wilderness areas in central and southwest Idaho, increasing the number of wilderness areas in the state to 10. If passed, they would also increase the amount of designated wilderness in the state by about 20 percent, adding 1,295 square miles to the 6,250 square miles that already exist. Idaho’s total land area is about 83,000 square miles. House leaders killed one bill in the final hours of the session last year. The other received a hearing but the session ended before it advanced any further. “We’ve reintroduced the bill,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, whose Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act came close to passing last session. “It was the same bill as at the end of last session. We’re working hard on it and we’re continuing to work hard on it until we get it passed.” Sen. Mike Crapo also plans to reintroduce his Owyhee Canyonlands bill with few changes. “We haven’t got an exact time nailed down yet,” said Crapo’s press secretary, Lindsay Nothern. “With the change in the leadership of the Senate and House, we are basically (talking) to those offices and those members to get their take on the bill we introduced last session.” Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., now the chairman of the influential Natural Resources Committee, opposed Simpson’s bill last session because of provisions that would give public land to Custer County and other local governments in exchange for 487.5 square miles of new wilderness in the surrounding Boulder-White Cloud Mountains. The bill has again been referred to the committee Rahall chairs. “The chairman is willing to work with Rep. Simpson on the matter,” Allyson Ivins Groff, Rahall’s communications director, wrote in an e-mail. Simpson said he is contacting members of the committee, including Rahall, to try to get their support. “Most members, when we are able to sit down and talk to them and go through the bill and explain to them why the provisions are in there, most people will then look at the bill in total and say, ‘Yeah, I understand why you’re doing some of this stuff,”’ said Simpson. “It isn’t a perfect bill, but it’s a perfect compromise.” The bill designates three new federally protected wilderness areas in the Sawtooth and Salmon-Challis national forests: the Ernest Hemingway-Boulder Wilderness, the White Clouds Wilderness and the Jerry Peak Wilderness. It would also add another 600 acres to the existing Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho. In return, local governments in Stanley, Clayton, Mackay, and Challis would get almost 4,000 acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property to sell, manage or develop into affordable housing or public facilities. Another 960-acre parcel of BLM land near Boise would be given to the state for a new off-road vehicle state park. Also, the Department of Interior would release from study 203 square miles of public land that had been earmarked as potential wilderness, allowing federal land managers to issue permits for mining, logging or other commercial uses. Simpson has put together a fragile coalition of support from environmental groups, ranchers and local politicians, and he said minimizing changes to the bill will be critical to maintaining support. “I suspect that there are going to be some modifications to it,” Simpson said. “But they need to understand that we have a coalition in Idaho that has worked on this bill and that I have to keep together.” Crapo’s bill proposes an 807-square-mile wilderness in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee Mountains that would provide ranchers $15 million in cash and federal land in exchange for giving up 2,619 acres of private land and grazing rights on 54,000 acres of public land. The bill would offer 75,000 acres of federal land for ranchers to select in trade. “We do not plan major changes,” said Nothern. “We’ve worked very hard the last five years to get this bill put together.” The Idaho Conservation League and The Wilderness Society support both bills, though a coalition of 80 other environmental organizations asked those two groups to withdraw their support after the Democrats won control of both the Senate and House. |
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