Forces work to preserve St. Joe River

Fishermen will be asked next week to ponder the future of the St. Joe River, perhaps not a day too soon.

In case you haven’t noticed, people are spilling out of cities by the millions looking for their little piece of heaven and the nature they’ve lost.

This quest often becomes an invasion into somebody else’s favorite place, especially when those natural areas, like the St. Joe River, have been taken for granted.

Idaho is fetching plenty of attention among people who are relocating. The state population increased by 287,000 between 1990 and 2002.

“Rural Idaho has become one of the most coveted areas in the nation for second homes,” said Nelson Mathews, regional representative for The Trust for Public Lands.

I’m not certain that’s true, but who’s to say the trophy homes and condos, which have sprouted like mushrooms in an autumn rain along Lake Coeur d’Alene, won’t eventually spread up the St. Joe River?

Much of the fabled trout stream is bordered by national forest and fairly well protected from stream-side development. But some of the land in the upper river drainage and much of the acreage on the lower river is privately owned by timber companies.

Nationwide, corporate landowners are under increasing pressure to subdivide and sell lands with high recreational value. Timber companies can make more money by selling some of their property in prized watersheds rather than gambling with fire, disease and regulations in order to harvest the timber.

There’s no shortage of people who would like to develop land on great, wild trout streams even if it would render them a little less great and a lot less wild.

Cash is tempting to timber companies and their shareholders.

However, one of those companies – Potlatch – has made its first offer to the spirit of conservation rather than to developers.

Mathews and the TPL say it’s an offer the public shouldn’t refuse. That’s why he’ll be in Spokane next week making a pitch for donations at several meetings with area angling and recreation groups.

The TPL has already started working with Potlatch to buy conservation easements on up to 80,000 acres of the land the company has owned in the St. Joe basin for more than a century. Other partners in the project include the Forest Service Legacy Program, established to promote conservation on “working” forests, and the Idaho Department of Lands.

Potlatch would continue to log portions of the lands on both sides of the river under the conservation easements, but the cut would be limited and the work would be governed by strict restrictions to protect not only the water quality but also the view.

A 106-acre section of 300-year-old cedars, for example, would be off limits to logging, Mathews said.

The company would give up forever the right to sell the land for private development, and public access would be guaranteed forever.

In the first phase that’s wrapping up this month, TLP is protecting 2,700 acres of the Potlatch land in the Mica Creek watershed by securing $120,000 in public funding, $150,000 from private sources and a donation of about $330,000 from Potlatch itself.

Phase two of the deal is in the works for easements on another 23,300 acres, but $1.2 million must be raised privately in order to get $3.5 million already appropriated from public funds.

Easements on an additional 54,000 acres would be purchased in two more phases under the TPL plan by the end of 2006.

“We’re making sure the St. Joe stays like it is, both the way it looks and the purity of the water that flows into it,” Mathews said. “This should be of great importance to the people with an interest in Lake Coeur d’Alene, which has water issues of its own.”

Farther up the St. Joe River, Forest Capitol, which controls thousands of acres of timberland formerly managed by Crown Pacific and Plum Creek timber companies, has recently approached the Forest Service about trading some of its lands that are intermingled with St. Joe National Forest land.

All this action could spell a watershed period of conservation for one of the nation’s best trout streams.

Potlatch already has sold much of its St. Joe bottomland holdings decades ago, but maintained a large ownership block to feed its mills, Mathews said. “As Coeur d’Alene and Spokane continue to grow, there’ll be more interest in putting homes and cabins up the St. Joe for recreation,” he said. “That’s the threat.”

Anglers looking for a good cause should give this some attention. More development on the lower river would translate into more pressure on the upper river.

“We’re trying to pull together a steering committee and private fund-raising effort to find folks that love and enjoy the area and want to see it preserved by contributing their time and money,” he said.

Spokane public relations specialist Chris Carlson of The Gallatin Group, 624-7655, is helping coordinate the effort between the various agencies and the public.

“I’m an avid fly fisherman,” Mathews said after acknowledging that the conservation effort is downstream from the wild and scenic portion of the St. Joe. “I know that other fishermen understand the importance of keeping rivers beautiful and intact.”

Heads up: Chukar partridge appear to have had the best hatch since 1987 in the lower Salmon River, according to recently completed aerial surveys conducted by the Idaho Fish and Game Department. The hunting season opens Sept. 18.

Going to Missoula: Top films from the first International Cultural Film Festival and Symposium, including a range of topics such as hunting and conservation and other relationships between people and the natural world, gets underway in Missoula today through Sunday.

Check out the schedule at www.wildlifefilms.org