Owyhee bill has degree of support

BOISE – Some environmental groups weren’t happy with a provision of a proposed new 807-square-mile wilderness in the Owyhee Mountains that gives ranchers $15 million in cash and federal land, but they say the deal is worth the sacrifice.

“We felt the appraisal process deviates too much from standard procedure,” Craig Gehrke, of the Wilderness Society in Boise, told the Idaho Statesman. “However, from our perspective, the benefits of this package are enormous and we cannot afford to miss this opportunity.” The bill being sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is the second federal land-use measure in Idaho to be put before this session of Congress. It joins a House-passed measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, that would create a separate 492-square-mile wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds Mountains in central Idaho.

Under the Owyhee deal in southwest Idaho, for $7 million in cash or land exchanges, 15 ranchers would sell four square miles of land outright, sell scenic easements on 2.5 square miles, and sell eight miles of right of way to preserve or open up access to the Owyhee canyon lands. They’d also get $8 million in exchange for reducing or eliminate grazing on protected land.

Rancher Mike Hanley of Jordan Valley, Ore., who would get $1.45 million, believes the Idaho Cattle Association will join the Owyhee County Cattlemen’s Association and support the bill. Without the ranchers’ support, the bill, which also protects 384 miles of waterways as Wild and Scenic Rivers, would have struggled, Gehrke said. Some ranchers didn’t care whether Crapo’s effort succeeded until the bill’s supporters asked what they wanted in compensation, he added.

Both Crapo’s and Simpson’s measures trade wilderness designation – “an area of undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence,” according to the 1964 Wilderness Act – for concessions that allow for public lands to be transferred to local governments or open previously closed areas to such uses as motorized access and grazing.