Natural Foes Seeking Cooperation Resource Industries Reach Out To North Idaho Tourism Interests
Cooperation between resource-based industries and tourism interests may not come naturally, but it ought to since using nature is in both groups best interest.
Mining, forestry and grass seed leaders told tourism operators Friday that preserving their mutual resource - Idaho’s pristine forests and waterways - occurs in ways that most people don’t see.
For example, Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. improved access and habitat around its Thunder Mountain mine site.
The site near the Frank Church/ River of No Return Wilderness area in central Idaho was reclaimed, or returned back to a natural state. Improved habitat for big game and new access for sportsmen became the byproduct of that award-winning reclamation effort, said Rick Richins, vice president for Coeur d’Alene Mines.
The company plans to take that positive experience to its other mines in remote and environmentally sensitive areas. The company’s Kensington gold mine in Alaska is another environmentally sensitive site the company will tread lightly upon, he said.
By far the biggest target of North Idaho tourism officials’ wrath has been the grass growers, who send plumes of smoke into the late summer skies.
Don Jacklin of Jacklin Seed Co. laid out the facts on grass burning for the group of about 100 tourism delegates to the Governor’s Conference on Recreation and Tourism.
The grass sprouts require sunlight in the fall to adequately seed the next spring. Grass farmers like Jacklin try to get as many daylight hours on the new grass sprouts in the fall as they can, and that mandates the burning season be between August and September, he said.
“We’ve had some negative publicity lately,” Jacklin said. “Tourism people are worried that this smoke is going to blow their tourists away.”
Few realize that grass fields, even when burnt, emit on average a small fraction of the air pollutants that traditional agriculture fields do, Jacklin said.
What grass burners need to do is burn responsibly during the season - not on Fridays or on weekends with large festivals in Sandpoint or Coeur d’Alene, he said.
“We need to get together and understand what both sides need,” he said. “The boycott by some of us of certain tourism organizations was wrong in the past. We need to negotiate together.”
Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forestry Products Association faces a different type of problem involving smoke and tourists. Last summer’s wildfires chased away many potential tourist dollars. Better forest management practices could have helped control those fires, he said.
Careful forest management maintains the scenic vistas and fish habitat so essential to cultivating Idaho’s image regionally and nationally, Kohli said.
Forestry practices have improved substantially in recent years so that clearcuts and other unaesthetic practices are used less often, he said.
Modern forestry has in part led to record numbers of elk and deer in Idaho’s forests, which helps keep hunters coming back to Idaho, he said. “We and tourism people really do share a mutual goal, and that’s for continued good forest health.”
John Kozma of the Coeur d’Alene Convention & Visitors Bureau called on the panelists to create a video of how their industries interact with the environment. “It would be great to show people who come to our visitors center what really goes on out there.”