Proposal To Curtail Raft Trips Criticized Church’s Widow Doesn’t Want People Banished From Salmon

When Sen. Frank Church fought to preserve 2.7 million acres in central Idaho as wilderness, outfitters were at his side.

Now, as they fight against a plan for managing the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, his widow, Bethine Church, is at their side.

“The outfitters and guides really helped get the Frank protected,” Church said. “They really put their hearts and soul in it.”

The Forest Service has proposed cutting the size of rafting parties by 50 percent on the Middle Fork and 30 percent on the main Salmon, which both run through the wilderness. It also would reduce the number of days floaters could stay on the two wild and scenic rivers.

The proposed restrictions are based on the highest number of people who could be permitted on the rivers under current policy. Currently, 10,000 people float the Middle Fork annually, 2,500 more than when the wilderness was created in 1980.

“I care deeply about the wilderness, and I don’t want it to be as crowded as the Colorado River,” Bethine Church said.

“But to take a worst-case scenario and use it to guide management is wrong. If they go forward, only the Bill Gateses of the world will be able to hire a trip on the Middle Fork.”

The cost of a typical five-day trip today is $1,500. Outfitters say that price would double if the restrictions are imposed.

Protecting the solitude of wilderness and allowing people to use it have competed as Idaho values since Frank Church pushed the 1964 Wilderness Act through the Senate. Since then, the Forest Service has worked to meet the law’s definition of wilderness as an area “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

The Forest Service said the reductions are necessary to preserve solitude along the 100-mile river, not to protect its resources. But controlling crowding once the use is established is extremely hard, said Tom Heberlein, co-author of the book, “Carrying Capacity in Recreation Settings.”

“It is very, very hard to reduce numbers, even if it is justifiable for scientific reasons,” he said. As the population increases, he said, managers will have to find more imaginative ways to allow more wilderness use while protecting the unique experience.

Church is using her husband’s words to challenge a U.S. Forest Service proposal to reduce the number of boaters on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. She has sent audiotapes to policy makers of a speech Frank Church gave at the University of Idaho in 1977 challenging “purist” management of wilderness areas.

The founder of the Sawtooth Society and a member of the Wilderness Society Board, Church has lobbied everyone from local foresters to the chief of the Forest Service to reverse the agency’s Middle Fork plan. The plan addresses use throughout the wilderness area, which stretches from the region near McCall to Salmon.

But the floating issue has attracted most of the comments, Salmon-Challis National Forest spokesman Kent Fuellenbach said. “I don’t see the preferred alternative as set in stone in any way,” Fuellenbach said. “We’re trying to get people’s comments so we can come up with a workable solution.”