Roadless hearing draws faithful
The prospect of wild forest helped lure Richard Rivers to the Inland Northwest 30 years ago.
Dave Graham of Rathdrum said forests are one of the main reasons he’s never left the area.
The two are passionate about North Idaho’s tracts of trees, as were more than 50 others attending a public hearing in Coeur d’Alene on Tuesday night focused on possible changes to the management of roadless federal land. But during their brief testimony at the hearing, Rivers and Graham offered dramatically different opinions on how this land should be governed.
Rivers, of Spokane, thinks forests without roads should be kept pristine. Graham said the land is public and ought to be open to all forms of recreation, including those who like to see the countryside on the back of an all-terrain vehicle. This summarizes the basic choices on the table for Idaho’s county commissioners, who have been asked by the governor to gather public comments on roadless forest management.
Idaho has 9.3 million acres of remote national forest that were deemed off-limits to new road building and logging by former President Bill Clinton. The Bush administration threw out the so-called roadless rule and has given states until the end of 2006 to develop their own proposals for roadless management. Kootenai County has 8,100 acres of designated roadless national forest.
The state’s preliminary plan calls for opening nearly two-thirds of previously protected roadless forest to some timer harvesting, mining, motorized recreation and energy production, according to figures cited by the Associated Press.
During public testimony Tuesday night, Kootenai County commissioners sat quietly, without offering commentary. After the hearing, commission chairman Gus Johnson said his own views are mixed – he’s sad to see the closure of local sawmills, but he added that it’s not clear if this can be blamed directly on boosted roadless forest protection.
In the end it might not matter anyway, Johnson said. Each new president seems to have a different take on the issue.
“You may go through this again in four years,” Johnson said.
But for those who ventured out on the cold, icy night to attend the public hearing, much seemed to be at stake.
“The decision you make we’ll have to live with for all time,” roadless forest advocate Mark Sprengel told the commissioners.
“The forest is my salvation. That’s my church,” said disabled Vietnam veteran Richard Good of Hayden. Good said his constitutional right to equal justice is violated when parts of the forest are kept off-limits to motorized vehicles.
Post Falls retiree John Bentley also has trouble getting around these days. He said he’s no longer able to backpack into the lakes and mountains of the Mallard-Larkin roadless area, which touches the southern boundary of Shoshone County. “Please don’t build a road for me to get in there,” Bentley told the county commissioners, adding that he wants the area to remain pristine for his grandchildren.
In the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District alone more than 6,500 miles of roads have been built on the national forest, Bentley said. Many of the roads are grown over or blocked from use, but Bentley said the few untouched places should be kept that way.
North Idaho’s forests are a crop just like corn in Iowa, suggested Leroy Gill, a plumber and pipefitter from Coeur d’Alene. Roadless protections are one of the reasons the harvest has been halted, he said. “Now they’re letting the crop die and rot and nobody’s getting any benefit out of that.”
Chic Burge of Coeur d’Alene said the region’s growth makes it all the more important to have untouched, wild places. “What happens when everything is used up?” he said. “We simply won’t have places for solitude anymore.”
Access to public land is helping to draw more residents to the area, according to some in the audience. Mike Mallory of Athol said he’s one of 94,000 licensed ATV riders in Idaho. “Those people need a place to ride,” he said.
The idea of county commissioners being asked to determine the fate of roadless national forest areas “seems rather bizarre to me,” said Buell Hollister, a retiree from Hauser, Idaho. Hollister said Forest Service managers have advanced training in forestry, biology and other sciences. “I wonder how many county commissioners can claim that distinction?” he asked.
Hollister and several others in the audience said they were angry the Bush administration reversed protections that were supported by 90 percent of more than 2 million people who submitted comments on the measure.
Citizens of Idaho should not be given greater power than residents of New York or Florida, Hollister said. “We’re talking about national forest,” he said.
John Walters of Avery couldn’t disagree more. “It never has been given to the federal government. It’s always been Idaho property,” he said. Walters urged the county commissioners to push for the state to take control of the land. He went on to blame the Forest Service and the “environmental cult” for making it difficult to access public land. “Everything that comes out of them is, ‘shut it down, close it up or quit doing it.’ “
World War II veteran Alden Walker said when he was a boy, he could spend weeks hunting North Idaho’s backcountry with little more than a shotgun, a horse and a blanket. “We lived off the land. We knew what freedom was,” Walker said.
This year Walker said, he was unable to get into some of his old haunts because of road closures. He vowed to fight for more access. “We’re going to get them roads opened up. The politicians had better take notice.”