Mountain Won’t Get Blm Protection

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s portion of Grandmother Mountain near Moscow will not be recommended for wilderness protection, an agency official says.

The remaining BLM area is too small to warrant that protection, said Keith Corrigall, chief of the agency’s wilderness branch.

He appeared at the University of Idaho on Tuesday with acting national BLM Director Michael Dombeck, who is addressing the College of Forestry, Wildlife and Range Science on the agency’s vision.

The wilderness study area is a combination of BLM and U.S. Forest Service land. A trade finalized in 1993 gave the best of the BLM acreage to Potlatch Timber Co. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in turn received a large wetland in Arkansas for waterfowl.

Local conservation groups want wilderness designation for Grandmother Mountain. The rest of the area has been heavily logged and the Forest Service is planning a sale of a minimum 5 million board feet.

It would log some of the remaining roadless area, said Larry McLaud of the Idaho Conservation League.

BLM officials say calling their part of the area unsuitable for wilderness puts protection into the Forest Service’s hands. The Clearwater Biodiversity Project is upset.

“I think it’s mean-spirited and cynical just because the area around there is so nuked, the BLM is giving up on one of the pristine places left,” Director Charles Pezeshki said. “Little areas are pretty important. When other areas are hammered the little animals have to have some place to hide.”

Corrigall added there would be no congressional action on 900,000 acres of proposed BLM wilderness areas in Idaho this year.