Youths Urge Planners To Protect Nw Ecosystems Kids Turn In 16,000 Postcards They’ve Been Collecting All Year

A federal team working on plans for managing the 72 million acres in the interior Columbia Basin of the Pacific Northwest got a lot of advice Thursday.

About 50 young people turned in 16,000 postcards to federal planners, urging stronger protection for wilderness and other natural areas.

Some of them carried signs such as “Protect, Save the Big Wild,” “Protect Trees,” and “Save the Last, Best Places for Us.”

Boise High School student Joe Florco, 16, said the goal was to convince federal planners that important areas need protection.

“Nothing has been done in my lifetime to permanently protect the few remaining healthy forests in Idaho,” he said. “We fish, we backpack, we mountain bike and hike - the wilderness is our sanctuary, too.”

Florco said his particular concern was protecting wilderness areas.

“Once they are touched, they no longer can qualify as a wilderness area. They will be gone,” he said.

Florco and others said that since late last year they have been collecting postcards to be sent to federal planners. Most were gathered in Boise but some were from Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park, he said.

The postcards were addressed to Martha Hahn, Idaho Bureau of Land Management director. The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project is working on options for an area of public land that covers 24 percent of the national forest land in the nation and 10 percent of all BLM land.

The public has until Feb. 6 to comment on preliminary proposals.

“I ask that you protect the unprotected, un-roaded wildlife-rich lands in the region, especially those of Greater Glacier Park-Bob Marshall Ecosystem, the Greater Salmon Ecosystem of Central Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” the postcards to Hahn said.

“We need to recognize these and other Northern Rockies wild places for their magnificence and value as natural and national treasures. They need your strongest protective action.”

Susan Giannettino, project manager, thanked Florco and the others for taking part in the planning process.

She said the best way they could influence decisions would be to understand “what is on the table” in the way of recommendations.

She passed out a few copies of preliminary environmental impact statements that were several inches thick but most of the young people didn’t take them.

Other environmental groups said the event was the start of an intensive campaign to get people involved in the planning process.