Despoilers Have The Upper Hand In Idaho

During a visit last week to Boise, my wife and I read the newspapers, walked the streets and spoke to lawyers and court clerks. We learned the Republican landslide in Congress is clogging the courts and pumping more power into the anti-environmental movement known as Wise Use.

The movement includes corporations such as Boise Cascade, Du Pont, Exxon, Georgia-Pacific and Louisiana-Pacific; trade associations such as Associated Logging Contractors of Idaho, the National Association of Wheat Growers, Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, Nevada Miners & Prospectors Association, the Western Forest Industries Association; and a range of right-wing “public interest” groups.

The rallying cries are property rights, free enterprise and economic growth - cries that disguise mercenary agendas for more nuclear power, fossil-fuel development, expanding landfills, mineral exploration in national parks, private and commercial development of wetlands and the repeal of key environmental legislation.

U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, is now charging that federal agents are using armed troops and helicopters to enforce the Endangered Species Act. Ranchers and farmers are watching the skies. Chenoweth has discovered the power of conspiracy theories to galvanize public sentiment. Her theory is designed to shape public opposition to the act, the fate of which Congress will decide this year.

Chenoweth is a champion of two Boise-based right-wing think tanks: Stewards of the Range and the Constitutional Law Center. Both seek to weaken environmental regulations and further empower extractive industries to squeeze even more proverbial fat from the land.

At the same time, the Idaho Senate is entertaining the passage of a conspicuously nameless bill that would grant ranchers preference in acquiring state land leases. In a nutshell, this bill will make it impossible for residents to bid on grazing allotments unless they intend to scour the land with sheep or cattle. Residents like Hailey architect Jon Marvel, who want to “Rest the West,” would stand no chance.

The rationale for this preposterous bill is that the livestock industry contributes so very much to the state economy. In fact, like other Western states, Idaho is rapidly moving toward an economy based on recreation and nonpolluting industries such as Micron Semiconductor, Boise’s largest employer. Only the historical momentum and political power of those that extract natural resources will push this bill through.

Thanks to the booming Wise Use movement, Idaho’s proud heritage as a global resource colony is apt to remain intact for a few more sad last years.

Also in the Gem State, where my wife grew up in Caldwell, we learned that Idaho House Speaker Mike Simpson has proposed an amendment to the state constitution. His Hunters’ Rights Amendment - or House Joint Resolution 10 - would ban the use of public initiatives to control wildlife and other natural resources on state lands. Simpson introduced the bill, at the behest of the few hunters who use dogs and baits to kill bears, when Idaho Coalition United for Bears of Moscow filed an initiative to ban these unsporting and unethical practices.

Bear baiting, a barbaric sport in Shakespeare’s time, has added lots of technology to the 20th-century chase. Timers and trip cameras record the hours of bears’ visits and the size of the animals feeding at bait stations. Paid guides conduct sportsmen to safe tree stands from which they fire. Bear hounds, too, are equipped with radio telemetry collars so they can be traced to the exact location of the treed and panting prey.

To have some say in the way state governments are run, Westerners have routinely used public initiatives. Idahoans used an initiative in 1938, for example, to create the five-member Fish and Game Commission to thwart special-interest interference in wildlife management. When Republican Gov. Phil Batt tried to tinker with the shape of that commission in January, he raised an instant public outcry.

Through the initiative process, bear baiting and hound hunting were rejected by the people of Colorado in 1992 and of Oregon in 1994. Washington State Senate Bill 5492 would do the same in that state.

A poll conducted by the University of Idaho showed voters favored an end to bear baiting and the hunting of bears with hounds. Yet the Moscow group may be stymied by the cynical Hunters’ Rights Amendment, which would negate the 42,000 signatures it gathered to file its Idaho Black Bear Initiative.

The Hunters’ Rights Amendment, like Chenoweth’s charges and the pro-grazing bill in Idaho, smacks of the work of the right-wing Wise Use movement. Special interests, rallying beneath the borrowed colors of the conservation movement, pretend to be protecting private property rights while in fact attacking essential safeguards on the public’s lands. Idaho state government, more than ever, is in the hands of anti-environmental forces.

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