Risch, Otter differ on Owyhee Initiative

BOISE – Gov. Jim Risch on Friday threw his support behind a bill to designate more than a half-million acres of Idaho canyonlands as federally protected wilderness, but the Republican who hopes to succeed him in the governor’s office remained cool to the idea.

The so-called Owyhee Initiative, a compromise package sponsored by U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, would preserve 517,000 acres – more than 800 square miles – of yawning river gorges and desert buttes. In return, the plan would release some 200,000 acres previously off limits to all-terrain vehicles and ranchers.

Before a governor’s office gathering of American Indian leaders, conservationists, ranchers and ATV enthusiasts, Crapo joined the GOP governor in championing what they called a cooperative model of land management.

They said this compromise method was also instrumental in ushering a similar bill, protecting the Sawtooth Mountains, through the U.S. House last month.

“The conflict mode of resolving these kinds of issues that we’ve had in the last couple of decades has resulted in a stalemate that has been, frankly, worse from everybody’s point of view than the kinds of solutions we can build through collaborative processes,” Crapo said.

But U.S. Rep. C.L. “Butch” Otter, the Republican nominee for governor, has joined a splinter group of environmentalists in chiding the bills, though for markedly different reasons.

Jerry Brady, Otter’s Democratic opponent in the November governor’s race, supports both bills.

The Sawtooth bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, would establish three new wilderness areas in the needle-peaked mountains of central Idaho, while releasing thousands of acres for real estate development and motorized recreation.

Both bills err in not achieving an “acre-for-acre balance” between wilderness and lands freed from federal protection, Otter said.

“I don’t see any sense in not trying to get every acre that we possibly can,” he said. “So we can graze it or so that we can manage it, so we can get any kind of economic activity, recreation. Something where somebody will come into the state, buy a candy bar and a gallon of gas and go ATVing.”

Those environmentalists who oppose the bills feel they release too much land from federal protection.

Otter said he doubted that the Owyhee bill would reach the House floor in the remaining four months of his congressional term.

But whatever his role, Otter said, he would not support any wilderness bill that gives away state water rights. The Owyhee bill establishes six so-called Wild and Scenic Rivers, but the accompanying federal water right is subordinate to all existing users, said Lindsay Nothern, a Crapo spokesman.

The Owyhee bill will face a committee hearing in the Senate as early as next month, Crapo said.

If it passes the full Senate, Crapo said he would be open to sponsoring the Sawtooth bill in the Senate in exchange for Simpson’s sponsorship of the Owyhee Initiative in the House.

“That could be,” he said, “But I don’t want to say that because we haven’t discussed it yet.”

He acknowledged Otter has been cool to the bill, but said the maverick gubernatorial candidate would not torpedo such a broad compromise.

“Obviously if any of the major political members of the state oppose this measure actively, that will be a hurdle, though not an insurmountable hurdle,” Crapo said. “But I want to be very clear, that hasn’t happened here.”