Field reports: Region’s wilderness high on Obama’s list

PUBLIC LANDS – The Obama administration is calling for 18 new wilderness and conservation area declarations in Idaho, Washington and seven other Western states.

The administration suggests that significant local support already demonstrated for these areas might prompt Congress to approve legislation establishing new land protections.

The proposals include creating San Juan Islands National Conservation Area in Washington and protections for the Jerry Peak Wilderness Study Areas in the Boulder-White Clouds region of central Idaho.

The areas have often been under consideration for advanced protection status for years, such as 406,000 acres of wilderness and conservation area proposed for the Sleeping Giant study area along Holter Lake in Montana.

Bureau of Land Management director Bob Abbey said there is room for more wilderness even as the BLM pushes for more oil, gas and other energy development on its land.

The agency pointed out that since 1964, only about 3.5 percent of the land it manages has been declared wilderness.

The proposal is the latest plank in what the administration is calling the America’s Great Outdoors initiative (americasgreatoutdoors.gov).

Associated Press

Bill would open Rattlesnake Mountain

PUBLIC LANDS – The summit of Rattlesnake Mountain near the Tri-Cities would be open to the public under a bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee last week.

The 3,600-foot summit is the highest point in the Mid-Columbia, but it has been closed to the public since the federal government took it over through eminent domain in 1943 as part of the Hanford nuclear reservation for weapons plutonium production.

The mountain, which was not contaminated by Hanford production, was made part of the Hanford Reach National Monument in 2000 but remains closed to the public.

The bill, which passed on a unanimous vote, is sponsored by Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Pasco, the committee’s chairman.

The bill directs the Department of Interior to provide the public with motorized, non-motorized and pedestrian access to the mountain’s summit.

Last month, Hastings said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could not be trusted to ensure access to the summit.

The agency is working on public access to the mountain, but it has taken longer than planned, as discussions continue with tribes that consider the mountain sacred, James Kurth, chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System, told a House subcommittee.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that limited access is appropriate, Kurth said during the hearing.

Hastings’ bill would ensure public access to the land but still allow Fish and Wildlife to determine how that would be done, but it must include motorized access, he said. A steep and narrow road leads to the top of the mountain.

Tri-City Herald

Down Under poachers not welcome in Idaho

HUNTING – Three Australians on a North American hunting trip have been sent packing, but not before Idaho officials fined them thousands of dollars for elk poaching and told the bad apples they could never return to hunt in Idaho and nearly anywhere else in the United States.

All three paid thousands of dollars in fines and restitution in an Elmore County court while forfeiting two hunting rifles before the long plane trip home.

Rich Landers