Congress to hear Owyhee wilderness protection bill

BOISE – Another bill designating a rugged swath of pristine Idaho backcountry as federally protected wilderness will be introduced this week in Congress, sponsor U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo said.

The Idaho Republican’s proposal would preserve more than a half-million acres of high desert plateaus, yawning river gorges and rocky hill country in the remote Owyhee region of Idaho’s southwestern corner, one of the most biologically rich and sparsely populated regions left in the western United States.

It would also close off about 100 miles of old roads, protect nearly 400 miles of the Owyhee, Jarbidge and Bruneau waterways as wild and scenic rivers and open up some 200,000 acres of public lands previously off-limits to all-terrain-vehicles and ranchers.

“This is a comprehensive land management bill that we have vetted and vetted among all the parties for nearly five years now,” Crapo said Wednesday. “These groups have worked together in good faith and ironed out every issue right down to the legislative language, so we now have a bill that’s ready to be dropped.”

Crapo acknowledged that it was late in this session of Congress to introduce legislation, but he was optimistic that the broad coalition of support for the Owyhee plan would help it get a prompt hearing and votes in both chambers before the end of the year.

After more than two decades of stalemate over wilderness designation in Idaho, Crapo’s Owyhee bill will be the second measure before this Congress to protect public lands in the state from future development. On July 24, a bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, cleared the House and was sent to the Senate. It would create 315,000 acres of new federal wilderness in central Idaho’s Boulder and White Clouds mountains.

Some conservation groups say both Idaho proposals open up too much potential wilderness to development and protect too little of some of the last remnants of the American frontier. But John Robison of the Idaho Conservation League said the compromises environmentalists made with ranchers, off-roaders and other interest groups are worth the protection of some of the most spectacular scenery in the state.

“Just like the Boulder-White Clouds, there are elements in the Owyhee bill we wouldn’t have included on our own, but we can live with those because of the larger package,” he said. “This has been a long, hard process with a fantastic result that everyone can be proud of.”

The bill grew out of a coalition called the Owyhee Initiative, which included ranchers, government leaders, Indian tribes, environmentalists, off-road enthusiasts and other groups normally at odds over public lands management. In 2004, the coalition announced that its members had reached an agreement on land use in the 5 million acres of Owyhee County, which is more than three-fourths owned by the federal government. Crapo’s bill is the legislative manifestation of that 2004 agreement.