Owyhee wilds act may become part of national bill

BOISE – Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo and other sponsors of legislation seeking to create new federally protected natural areas are considering combining their various states’ wilderness bills into one omnibus measure that may have broad-based support and easier chances of passing Congress before it adjourns.

“The potential for that is being discussed among the players,” said Crapo, R-Idaho.

On Thursday, he introduced his Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act, a sweeping land-use package that would create a new half-million-acre wilderness in Idaho’s Owyhee canyonlands while opening other previously off-limits areas to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities.

Crapo’s bill is the second Idaho land-use measure to be put before this session of Congress, joining a House-passed measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, that would create 315,000 acres of new federal wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds Mountains in central Idaho.

Both measures grew from yearslong negotiations and collaboration among ranchers, environmentalists, county commissioners, backpackers, off-roaders, outfitters, sportsmen, Indian tribes and other user groups. Both trade off wilderness designation for some lands with a variety of consolations, including some that allow for public lands to be transferred to local governments or open previously closed areas to uses such as motorized access and grazing.

Besides the two Idaho bills, Congress is currently considering similar collaborative land-use agreements in California, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada. Crapo said depending on how all those measures progress as Congress heads toward year-end adjournment, some or all could be consolidated into a single, comprehensive land-use bill.

“The likelihood of something like that developing depends on the timing with regard to each of those bills,” he said. “But the dynamic may be there.”

Because many of the bills were forged through consensus, groups opposed to individual provisions say they will have a tough time persuading members of Congress to reject the entire package, should the bills be turned into an omnibus.

“Some members of Congress have picked up on the fact you can create divisions in the environmental community by selective involvement in the legislative process,” said Quinn McKew, wild rivers program manager for American Rivers in Washington, D.C., a group that opposes Crapo’s Owyhee bill. “I don’t slight anyone in Idaho for doing what they thought was best for the resource, but when you look beyond the Owyhee, the precedent this would set if approved would seriously undermine the fundamental protections of wild and scenic rivers.”

On Thursday, conservation groups such as The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, Idaho Rivers United and the Idaho Conservation League joined with unlikely allies the Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association and the Owyhee County Commission in endorsing Crapo’s bill. The Shoshone-Paiute Indian Tribe has also backed the bill.

“This is truly a grassroots effort,” said Fred Grant, a leader of the Owyhee Initiative, the diverse group formed in 2001 to come up with a compromise agreement for land use in the region. “These are Idaho issues, Idaho wildlands, Idaho rivers and Idaho ranch families and we’ve developed an Idaho solution that we now need Congress to help us enact.”

Crapo’s bill would designate 517,000 acres – more than 800 square miles – of wilderness in the southwestern corner of Idaho’s high desert. It would also create 384 miles of wild and scenic river corridors, release for multiple use 199,000 acres of public land that had been under study as potential wilderness, allow Mountain Home Air Force Base to continue to use the airspace over the region for military training and create a special citizens “board of directors” to oversee administration of the bill’s provisions by federal agencies.

Crapo said he believes the broad support for the Owyhee bill could help speed it through the legislative process.

“This is indeed a revolutionary land management structure and one that looks ahead to the future,” he said on the Senate floor Thursday. “I’ll do everything in my power to turn this effort into law.”