Agencies issue Craters preserve management plan

ARCO, Idaho – The Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service have issued a final management plan for Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve nearly five years after a 15-fold expansion.

“It’s nice to see this process coming to an end,” said Duane Reynolds of the Sierra Club, one of the groups participating in the plan’s development. “Craters, while not well-known, is certainly unique and well-deserving of any protection it can get.”

The plan designates more than 518,000 acres of lava flows and wilderness areas as pristine, prohibiting motorized access and facilities, and 218,000 acres as primitive or undeveloped, allowing motorized access on some designated roads.

The visitor center would be expanded, and some new trails and interpretive signs along existing roads would be added.

Annual operating costs are pegged at more than $3.3 million.

The plan comes nearly five years after former President Clinton expanded the monument from 54,000 acres to more than 750,000 acres across five counties in southern Idaho.

Rick Vandervoet, BLM monument manager, said the plan is designed to allow managers to suppress fires and preserve more than 340,000 acres of sage grouse habitat within the monument.

“Sage grouse habitat has been a big issue in this part of the country for a long time,” he said.

The agencies also hope to restore roughly 80,000 acres of sagebrush steppe habitat and increase noxious weed control.

The plan includes some general grazing guidelines, and managers will consider grazing on “an allotment-by-allotment basis,” Vandervoet said.

BLM now allows grazing on more than 285,000 acres in the monument by 79 permit holders. That could continue under the plan.

Katie Fite of the Western Watersheds Project said her group would seek stronger grazing restrictions.

“Our major concern is that it doesn’t take any steps to protect existing sagebrush steppe habitat,” Fite said. “It basically doesn’t address livestock grazing.”

Grazing can increase the spread of noxious weeds, so failing to reduce grazing will likely doom the campaign against noxious weeds, she said.

“That’s just going to be taxpayer money poured down a rat hole,” Fite said.

The plan includes some overall guidelines for roads, but no improvements to roads will be made until an agreement is reached with officials in Minidoka, Blaine and Butte counties, Vandervoet said.