1st District candidates differ on public lands

First of three parts about candidates and issues in North Idaho’s congressional race. Today: public lands/ wilderness. Monday: immigration. Tuesday: effectiveness/leadership skills.

BOISE – Nearly two-thirds of Idaho consists of federal land, including 20 million acres of federal forests. How that land is managed – what’s wilderness, what’s logged, and who gets to use the land for what purposes – is up to Congress.

It’s an issue that affects people and communities throughout the 1st Congressional District, and it’s one on which candidates vying to be the next congressman sharply disagree.

“There’s a choice there,” said John Freemuth, a Boise State University political scientist and public lands expert. “They’re not Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

Republican Bill Sali said, “I am not convinced that we need additional wilderness in the state of Idaho.”

Two members of Idaho’s congressional delegation – 2nd District Rep. Mike Simpson and Sen. Mike Crapo, both Republicans – have spent years working on wilderness bills for the Boulder-White Clouds mountains and the Owyhees, respectively. The two bills designate some new wilderness, release other land for development, and include extensive trade-offs and incentives to help local communities and residents in the areas. But Sali said he’s not ready to sign on to either proposal.

“I’m going to confess to you: I haven’t read either one of them,” he said. “I’m not opposed to them – I don’t have the work done. I think it’s irresponsible to be knee-jerking and say I do support or I don’t really support any bill.”

Sali said he has two overriding principles for public lands: Being “good stewards of the resources that we have,” and providing public access, which he said is his top aim. “I include in that a wide group of some commercial interests, and certainly people who want to recreate,” he said. “If people can’t use public lands, then how can we call them such? That’s the primary driver.”

By contrast, Democrat Larry Grant supports both Simpson’s and Crapo’s bills. “It’s a very complicated issue with a lot of different stakeholders that have legitimate interests,” Grant said.

He noted that both Simpson and Crapo have spent years bringing disparate interests, from ranchers to conservationists to county commissioners, to the table to agree on how to proceed. “When groups like that can get together and say, ‘This is what we think works,’ I think a congressman ought to get behind those kinds of efforts,” Grant said.

“It really is a matter of common sense. There are places that ought to be wild forever, but there are also places that ought to be developed. I don’t think it’s that hard to tell which is which.”

Freemuth said that’s true in some parts of the state, but there’s less obvious agreement in others. “The White Clouds have always been talked about as wilderness,” he said. “You’d hardly find anybody that doesn’t think so.” And the Owyhee push was jump-started by a federal proposal for a national monument there – which locals preferred to head off by coming up with their own agreed-upon proposal.

But people disagree about other areas, Freemuth said. “That’s why we don’t have a statewide wilderness bill in Idaho – because we haven’t gotten to the point of knowing it when we see it.”

For decades, high-profile Idahoans have worked on wilderness bills, including former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus and former Republican Sen. Jim McClure. But agreement has been elusive.

United Party candidate Andy Hedden-Nicely said he supports both the Simpson and Crapo wilderness bills. “That’s what politics is all about is working out solutions,” he said. Hedden-Nicely said, “Logging and timber is incredibly important to this district, and we need to support it, but we’ve got to do it in a responsible way.”

Independent candidate Dave Olson said he’s not familiar with the two wilderness bills, but he’d oppose any large-scale sell-off of public lands. “If we need the area as wild and we need it for game or whatever, then let’s keep it as that for future generations,” he said.

Constitution Party candidate Paul Smith opposes wilderness and public lands entirely. “That’s not the proper role of government to manage lands – that should be in private hands,” he said.

Grant takes the opposite view, adamantly opposing selling off the public lands. “Once you sell it, it’s gone,” he said. “The no-trespassing signs go up and you won’t be able to hunt and fish on it anymore.

“I think most people know how important it is to preserve the things we have here in Idaho. Whether you hike or whether you ride a snowmobile, there should be enough acres for everyone – just not all in the same place.”

Grant doesn’t oppose logging – in fact, he favors increasing logging in Idaho’s national forests, in part to help provide revenue to rural counties that are largely federally owned. “I think we’re going to have to look at opening up some areas to logging and go back to payments for those,” he said.

Sali said, “The answer clearly is that we’ve got to get the value off of the land if we’re going to have a sustainable system, and what that means, most people would say that means we’ve got to engage in logging. I don’t think it necessarily stops there.”

Sali favors tapping into forest timber for biofuel. “Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil,” he said. Going after that, he said, “could put Idaho in the oil business for the first time.”

“One of the things we know about federal lands in general is that they are not managed as well as state lands,” Sali said. But Freemuth said that’s a much-repeated cliché that’s clearly not true. Idaho’s constitution requires state lands to be managed for maximum financial return. Federal forests are managed for an array of aims, including consumptive uses, recreation, and ecological purposes like maintaining clean water and wildlife.

“It’s really complicated,” Freemuth said. “That’s why it’s so hard for the Forest Service to please everybody. They’re trying to deal with things that can be contradictory.”

Sali said he was incensed that wildlife officials initially were turned down by the federal government when they wanted to fly helicopters into a wilderness area to help manage wolves, because motorized travel is prohibited in wilderness areas. “I don’t have the answer where I would draw the line, but I think this is a clear example of an area where we’ve lost our way here,” he said. “The answer for public lands is access to the public. If you say, well, government can go use motorized vehicles but the public can’t, that’s going to start a whole new debate.”

Sali said he’s not sure if all wilderness should be opened to motorized travel. “I don’t think I’ve got the answer,” he said. “I just recognize that we need to have the discussion, I guess.”

Freemuth said the legal definition of wilderness rests on the lack of motorized access. “So the logic of his position is we ought not to have wilderness,” he said. “I don’t think you’d find a lot of Americans for getting rid of wilderness.”