In the face of mounting legal challenges, the corporate backers of a gold and antimony mine in Central Idaho hosted state and federal dignitaries Friday at the remote site to celebrate recent approvals that have advanced the multibillion-dollar venture — which is at least another three years from operations.

The occasion, labeled a “ribbon cutting” by Perpetua Resources, the mining company behind the large-scale project, was more than eight years in the making. The U.S. Forest Service took that length of time before giving its blessing for the open-pit mine in the Payette National Forest mountains east of McCall — a point of frustration about such permits for Idaho’s federal lawmakers, who have all fully endorsed the project. Perpetua earned federal approval in January to reopen the abandoned site near the community of Yellow Pine, which has been mined off and on dating to the late 19th century. The publicly-traded Canadian gold mining firm, now with its headquarters in Boise, spent handsomely to push what it called the Stibnite Gold Project through the demanding environmental review process. “After eight years of extensive permitting review and over $400 million invested, it is finally time for the Stibnite Gold Project to deliver for America,” Jon Cherry, Perpetua’s president and CEO, said in a news release. “A united vision to produce critical resources urgently needed for national security and to restore an abandoned site, along with the feedback from our communities, have guided us to this monumental milestone.”

At the ceremony Friday, Cherry and other speakers promoted the mine’s importance in delivering the most shovel-ready domestic reserve of antimony in the U.S., including for its use in national defense, the company said in a report of the event. The critical mineral is needed for munitions, including missiles, some nuclear weaponry and other military equipment like night-vision goggles. “This mine offers a secure, reliable, domestic resource for military-grade antimony sulfide and is aligned with the Army’s ongoing ‘Ground-to-Round’ assured munitions strategy for establishing a complete domestic supply chain — from raw material access to material processing to ammunition production — as we modernize and fortify the ‘Arsenal of Democracy,’ ” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Reim told attendees. Antimony also is used in clean-energy technologies, including liquid-metal batteries, and for purifying glass in solar panels.

Perpetua also announced Friday that it obtained the Forest Service’s permission to begin initial construction in the near future, contingent on securing project financing. That’s expected to be in place “in the coming weeks,” the news release said. But lawsuits cloud the current mining plan and timeline, which envisions about 15 years of operations. Years more would then be spent cleaning up the site, including restoration of historical habitat where salmon spawn along the Salmon River. Perpetua has reported spending more than $20 million already to improve water quality and clean up legacy waste from past mining at the site.

The Nez Perce Tribe holds exclusive treaty rights to fish, hunt and gather on the land where the mine is planned. The tribe’s original agreement is from 1855 — predating both the U.S. Mining Law of 1872 and Idaho statehood in 1890. Last month, the Nez Perce sued in federal court to overturn the Forest Service’s decision to grant final approval to Perpetua. The mine would restrict access to its tribal members, on top of creating heightened risks of mine runoff entering into the headwaters and decreasing dwindling fish populations, according to the lawsuit. “The Forest Service dismissed our requests to consider alternative approaches that would avoid and minimize harm to our treaty rights and life sources and instead adopted Perpetua’s goals and interests for the mine,” Shannon Wheeler, the Nez Perce’s tribal chair, said last month in a statement. “We are filing suit to force the Forest Service to address the mine’s enormous and long-term degradation and destruction to our treaty life sources, and to honor our reserved right to fully and freely exercise our treaty fishing, hunting, and gathering rights as the U.S. government promised over 170 years ago.” Earlier this year, several conservation groups sued in federal court over their own environmental worries from Perpetua’s proposal to mine the old site in a rugged part of Valley County. The lawsuit cited concerns that the project would use toxic chemicals to extract gold, which could harm sensitive ecosystems and salmon near the border of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

Perpetua has signed on as a defendant in both lawsuits, which are in their early stages. State permits pending The mine still requires two more state water quality permits in order to proceed, and also has a state air quality permit tied up in litigation. On Thursday, an Ada County judge sided with the environmental nonprofits the Idaho Conservation League and Save the South Fork Salmon in a lawsuit against the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality for its approval of that permit. The state agency sought to dismiss the legal claim on procedural grounds, but now the suit is scheduled to play out this fall. Anna Marron, spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Quality, declined to comment Friday, citing active litigation.

Perpetua anticipates the mine would create nearly 1,000 jobs during construction and more than half that total for operations. Idaho Gov. Brad Little, who attended Friday’s event, offered his support for the enterprise. “Idaho is proud to celebrate this milestone with Perpetua Resources and showcase the ways we are moving forward valuable projects that create hundreds of good-paying jobs that support Idaho’s rural economy,” Little said. “These jobs will allow Idaho’s young people to build rewarding careers right here in the communities of the west-central mountains.”

Preliminary construction, including road and power upgrades, is expected to get underway next month, Cherry told the Valley Lookout. Controlling shareholder: ‘A dream come true’ Friday’s ceremony drew skepticism from opponents of the mine, given that much remains to be resolved — including in the courts — for the project to move forward and begin digging. “There appears to be an element of theater involved,” Will Tiedemann with the Idaho Conservation League told the Idaho Statesman. “So as much as Perpetua does, this ribbon-cutting seems to be heavily influenced by marketing and appearance than the actual construction and permitting factors of starting construction — and when.” Perpetua said it intends for mining to get underway by 2029.

If that happens, the bulk of the 148 million pounds of antimony at the site would be prioritized during the initial years of operations, the company said. That amount is expected to supply only about a third of annual U.S. demand for six years, with the highest-grade material reserved for the military. The vast majority of profits from the mine, however, would come from its 4.8 million ounces of gold. A company-funded independent study from 2012 estimated about 93% of the project’s value derived from gold, while nearly 7% came from antimony and less than 1% from some silver at the site. Antimony would be produced as a byproduct from the excavation process, Cherry has acknowledged, in the company’s primary pursuit: building and operating a gold mine. In an investor call in June, the company’s controlling shareholder, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, talked about the project exclusively in terms of gold. “

This almost is like a dream come true for us,” he said of the mine’s approvals toward possible operations. “But beyond the current mine plan, we think there is a lot of exploration potential in this site.” Today, with gold prices soaring to all-time highs, the site’s deposit is projected at nearly $18 billion. Antimony also has hovered at record prices this year, with current values placing the mine’s reserve at about $3 billion. To build and operate the mine project was estimated in 2020 to cost $1.3 billion. More recently, Perpetua applied for $2 billion in debt financing from the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., an independent executive branch agency. Perpetua expects its loan application to receive final bank review by spring 2026.

Read more at: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/environment/article312145226.html#storylink=cpy

BOZEMAN, Montana — The first time I talked to Eric Dondero, I called his cell phone, and caught him on a sidewalk in the small town of Three Forks. He was asking people to sign a petition. He convinced one man to sign while I listened. Then he told me enthusiastically about his political work: “I’m full-time, all the time! I try to do a good 10 hours per day … I’m a very ideological person. I’m a proud libertarian.”

Dondero was operating as a point man for a campaign that stretches from Arizona to Washington state. I hoped he would allow me into the ground-level operations. “All right,” he said, “you want a really good story? Come on out. I’m standing in front of the Conoco store, you can’t miss me. I’m rockin’ here!”

I drove west from Bozeman, through suburban sprawl and 30 miles of farm country, to the confluence of rivers where Three Forks sits. The town only amounts to a few dozen blocks, and it has a random feel, trailer homes mingled with small houses, a looming talc plant, and a fringe of new, pricier subdivisions mysteriously growing on former wheat fields.

Dondero was hanging around a gas-station store on the not-too-busy main street. Stocky but not imposing, he was dressed to blend in with the Three Forks community (trimmed hair and mustache, jeans and work boots, American flag pin) as well as for a long day under the hot May sun (visor, sunglasses, long-sleeved shirt). Petitions were stacked on his clipboard, and even as I approached, he persuaded another passerby to sign. “You’re a great American! I appreciate it!” he told the guy.

We shook hands, and Dondero grinned, animated and immediately likable. I stepped back and watched him work. Locals wheeled their pickup trucks into the parking spaces around the Conoco, and as they walked into the store, Dondero asked them politely, “How are you doing (ma’am or sir)? Are you a registered voter?”

He seemed like an ordinary concerned citizen, not a part of an orchestrated, multistate campaign. But the libertarian movement he belongs to — broader and more powerful than the anemic Libertarian Party — has a growing reach in American politics. The movement’s mission is to maximize individual freedom by limiting government power in everything from taxes to judges’ rulings. One of its national leaders, Grover Norquist, has said that he wants to reduce government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

In this campaign, which is playing out in six Western states, the libertarians mostly want to “reform eminent domain” — or at least that’s what they say.

Governments at all levels invoke eminent domain on occasion to condemn property and force the owners to accept a buyout to make room for new roads, electricity lines, urban renewal and other projects that benefit the public. Recently, however, eminent domain has been the target of public outrage, thanks to a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as the Kelo case. The high court held that the city of New London, Conn., could exercise eminent domain to condemn the homes of Susette Kelo and six other holdouts, to make room for a global pharmaceutical company’s 100-acre manufacturing complex. Since then, more than 30 legislatures have either passed or considered laws limiting eminent domain, and ballot initiatives have sprung up from Alaska to South Carolina.

Dondero carried a knee-high posterboard that said simply: “Protect Private Property Rights … Citizens Fighting Eminent Domain Abuse.” Each time he made the pitch, he began, “This is a statewide petition to protect our property rights. To keep that new eminent domain law from coming to Montana and taking our homes away. … I know you saw this on Fox News, or CNN. …” He often referred to the Kelo case: “New London, Conn., they condemned this little old lady’s property to take it away.”

But the patriotic sales pitch hides something else entirely. National libertarian groups are not just funneling big bucks into this campaign to protect a few property owners from eminent domain. They have their sights set on something much bigger — laying waste to land-use regulations used by state and local governments to protect the landscape, the environment and neighborhoods. Their goal has received little attention, partly because of its stealth mode. But the fact that the libertarians just might pull it off makes the campaign the hottest political story in the West this year.

I began to see the pattern in April, during a conversation with John Echeverria, head of the Environmental Law and Policy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Echeverria called it “eminent domain hysteria.”

“The Kelo case is presented as a caricature in the news,” Echeverria said. “Most people don’t understand the valuable development (that eminent domain) can help generate, and how, if it’s fairly conducted, it can produce entirely fair, even highly favorable outcomes, for affected property owners — they’re paid market value or well above.” We talked about some of the horror stories, where governments use eminent domain in questionable ways. But those are few and far between. What’s really going on, Echeverria said, is that, “The property-rights advocates have exploited Kelo to advance a broader anti-government agenda.”

Libertarians and property-rights activists believe that a huge array of common government regulations on real estate, such as zoning or subdivision limits, “take” away property value. Therefore, they say, the government should compensate the owner, or back off. The extreme view of “regulatory takings” is really at the core of this campaign — not eminent domain.

The campaign to pass regulatory-takings laws began in the 1980s, when libertarians seized on the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” They’ve tried to use Congress, state legislatures and ballot initiatives to pass laws that would treat most regulations as takings. Their first big win came in November 2004, when they persuaded Oregon’s voters to pass Measure 37. That initiative blew holes in the strictest land-use system in the country, allowing longtime landowners to escape many state, county and city regulations (HCN, 11/22/04: In Oregon, a lesson learned the hard way).

The impacts of Measure 37 have been delayed by court battles, and the libertarians are determined to turn the delays to their advantage. Before the fallout in Oregon can be fully understood, they are rushing to pass similar ballot initiatives in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Nevada and California. While each initiative has its own sales pitch, they all deliberately tuck the notion inside the unrelated eminent domain controversy. The Los Angeles-based libertarian Reason Foundation mapped the strategy in a 64-page paper published in April, titled Statewide Regulatory Takings Reform: Exporting Oregon’s Measure 37 to Other States. It recommended pushing “Kelo-plus” initiatives, combining eminent domain reform with regulatory takings, to capitalize “on the tremendous public and political momentum generated in the aftermath of the Kelo ruling …”

The initiatives have titles like “Protect Our Homes,” “The Home Owners Protection Effort” and “People’s Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land” — as if the government is about to come in with bulldozers to sweep everyone off their property. But here’s how the initiatives would work: If you could fit 20 houses on your land, plus a junkyard, a gravel mine, and a lemonade stand, and the government limits you to six houses and lemonade, then the government would have to pay you whatever profit you would have made on the unbuilt 14 houses, junkyard and mine. Generally, if the government can’t or won’t pay you, then it would have to drop the regulations.

Eventually, I traced the loose-knit libertarian command chain to the top. Dondero, who lives in Texas, told me he had come to Montana at the suggestion of Paul Jacob, a senior fellow at Americans for Limited Government, a Chicago-area libertarian activist group. Americans for Limited Government has provided loans and expertise to the Montana initiative, plus $827,000 to the Arizona initiative, $200,000 to Washington initiative, and $107,000 to the one in Nevada, according to the Nevada initiative’s leader. Americans for Limited Government has also given $2.5 million to another libertarian group, America at its Best, based in the Washington, D.C., area, which has in turn funneled $100,000 to the Idaho initiative.

One key figure is the chairman of the board of Americans for Limited Government, Howie Rich. A real estate mogul based in New York City, Rich is also on the board of the libertarian flagship Cato Institute in D.C., and heads his own Fund for Democracy. He and Jacob are famous in libertarian circles for funding initiatives in the 1990s that imposed term limits on the congressional delegations in 23 states — limits later struck down by the Supreme Court. This year, Rich says he has funneled nearly $200,000 through a group called Montanans in Action to back the Montana initiative, along with two related initiatives aimed at setting state tax limits and making it easier to recall liberal judges. The head of Montanans in Action, Trevis Butcher, says he doesn’t know Rich, but he declines to say whether he is getting money from the Fund for Democracy; he won’t reveal any of his backers. Records in other states show that Rich has put $1.5 million into the California regulatory-takings initiative, $230,000 into the Idaho one, and $25,000 into the Arizona version.

Rich was not easy to find. He has an unlisted phone number, and his Fund for Democracy has no Web site and is not listed as a business entity in the New York secretary of state’s database. When I found him and explained that I’d tracked all his donations to the campaign, he said, “You’ve done your homework.”

On the phone, Rich was confident of the rightness of his cause. “I believe in the American Dream. … I believe in free markets. I believe that … government has been growing at an excessive rate, at the federal level and in many states,” he said. “I’m happy to support local activists who are working to protect property rights in a whole bunch of states.”

Although the campaign has local allies in each state, the out-of-state money is the driving force: As this story goes to press, it ranges from about 40 percent of the local campaign budget to as high as 99 percent. The exact numbers can be hard to come by, because the libertarians have covered their tracks as much as possible. Montanans in Action has funneled another $600,000 to the California initiative, for example. Montana’s loose campaign finance laws don’t require the group to divulge where that money came from, but it’s unlikely that it originated in a poor rural state like Montana.

The money has frequently paid professional signature gatherers like Dondero, who has worked for libertarian causes for more than 15 years, from Florida to Alaska. (In the midst of the Montana petition drive, just before I met him, he’d been called to Missouri for eight days to collect signatures for another libertarian initiative, one backed by a $1.3 million contribution from Rich.) Dondero was paid $15,428 for his signature gathering and expenses on the Montana initiatives, according to campaign spending reports. The California campaign reportedly paid its petitioners $1 per signature; in Nevada the rate was $1.65; in Idaho $2; and in Arizona as much as $3 per signature. The signature gatherers have a strong incentive to be persuasive.

Dondero and I left the Conoco and walked through Three Forks, tall shade trees giving us relief from the sun. Dondero prefers small towns. He’d already worked Anaconda, Dillon, Montana City, Hamilton. “People are much friendlier in small towns,” he said. “They have time to listen to what you’re saying, and they tend to be more libertarian and anti-government.”

Dondero grew up in Delaware with adoptive parents, the Rittbergs. (He used the name Eric Rittberg until recently.) He spent four years in the Navy, then earned a political science degree from Florida State. He claims to speak at least smidgens of 15 to 20 languages, and has self-published several language and travel books. For six months recently he held a “normal job” at a Houston insurance company, just to build up money for his political travels. He flew into Montana in April, set up his base camp in a Butte apartment, and bought a low-key 1984 Nissan for $700 at a local pawnshop. Then he picked up Montana plates and a bumper sticker: “Proud to be an American.”

Dondero is a natural salesman, and he wielded his lines about eminent domain and the Kelo case to great effect. We came to a house where a woman was mowing her lawn. The machine was roaring and the woman intent on her task; I would not have approached her. But Dondero walked right up and began his rap about eminent domain. She shut off the mower, and shortly, she signed the petition. Walking on, he told me that people mowing lawns are good bets. They want to be interrupted; they’re grateful.

We paused in front of a mobile home, and Dondero observed that people in trailers are also good prospects: “They’re very congenial, amazed that someone is coming to their door to ask them about a political matter.” An elderly woman opened the door, and signed. Across the street, Dondero got a young mother wrestling with a baby in a stroller. Down the block, he got us invited into the porch room of a tidy little house, and it was a three-fer: A gray-haired farmer, just in from the fields, and his son and daughter-in-law all signed.

In fact, most people Dondero approached signed his petition. It only took them a minute or two. Few asked for an explanation; many seemed to sign out of politeness.

In Butte, a Democratic stronghold, and Bozeman, a college town, Dondero ran into liberals who refused to sign and even got in his face. Even in small towns, he sometimes hit fierce opposition.

“I hate liberals,” he told me. “They just don’t get it. … When you petition for the libertarian (causes), you get a thick skin. Nothing fazes you. I’m one of the few people who can do this. I have the guts.”

In my talk with Howie Rich, I told him that, despite the campaign’s sales pitch, I believed these initiatives are about a lot more than eminent domain. Nationwide, eminent domain is invoked on behalf of developers only a few thousand times a year. But the proposed regulatory-takings initiatives are likely to affect millions of property owners, day in and day out, year after year. “I agree with you,” Rich said, “the implications … on the regulatory extent are very far-reaching, very important.” In fact, he said, the originator of the regulatory takings idea, University of Chicago economist Richard Epstein, e-mailed him a while ago, saying that “trillions” of regulations can be cast as takings.

To get perspective, I doubled back to the father of these initiatives, Oregon’s Measure 37. I learned that despite the delays caused by court fights, Oregon property owners have already filed about 2,700 Measure 37 claims, aiming to develop about 143,000 acres. Most claims are designed to loosen up the zoning of farmland and forest land. Some would break small parcels into a few additional lots. Some are from billboard companies that want to put up bigger ads in Portland. Others are for developments of hundreds of new homes, resort hotels and mines. All told, the claimants demand that governments either waive land-use regulations or pay nearly $4 billion in compensation. Not surprisingly, in almost every one of the 700 claims settled to date, governments have waived the regulations.

And that’s likely just the start of an avalanche. Since the Oregon Supreme Court shot down a legal challenge to Measure 37 in February, there’s been a surge in claims. Within a few months, another key court case will decide whether developers can buy land from longtime owners and then file claims to make regulations disappear.

Oregon property-rights advocates say Measure 37 will work out fine, rolling back a heavy-handed, inflexible land-use system. “We’ve had a centralized planning system for so long, it created a lot of animosity in people,” said Dave Hunnicutt, president of the state’s leading property-rights group, Oregonians in Action (HCN, 11/25/02: Planning’s poster child grows up). In the TV ads that helped persuade 61 percent of the voters to approve Measure 37, Oregonians in Action highlighted a woman who’d been fined $15,000 by the city of Portland for cutting weedlike blackberry bushes in her backyard; the city had designated it an “environmental zone” and charged that she’d cut native plants intermingled with the blackberries, Hunnicutt says. Another ad featured a couple who wanted to build a house on rural acreage; they would have been allowed to occupy it only half the year, because it was designated winter habitat for elk, he says.

But now that Measure 37 is taking effect, many Oregonians — including thousands of neighbors who have written official comment letters on the claims — say the new law is a disaster. “It creates indecision and unpredictability for everybody in the state — whether you’re a homeowner, a business(person), a farmer, or an urban dweller, you no longer have a clue what’s going to happen next door, because now there is a free pass to violate laws,” said Elon Hasson, a lobbyist for the state’s leading pro-planning group, 1000 Friends of Oregon.

The most poignant stories come from people who voted for Measure 37, and now see negative impacts on their own neighborhoods and property values. “I voted for the measure because I believe in property rights,” Rose Straher, who lives in tiny Brookings on the southern Oregon coast, told me. The owner of a nearby 10-acre lily farm filed a Measure 37 claim to turn it into a 40-space mobile-home park, and got the Curry County government to waive its regulations. Straher and 46 other neighbors signed a petition opposing it. Measure 37 “has absolutely no protection for the neighborhood,” Straher told me. “You’re giving superior rights to one particular owner. That is a big flaw.”

The initiatives on state ballots this year vary in their specifics, but like Measure 37, they have no language explaining where governments would get money to pay property owners for the impacts of regulations. They are intended not to make regulations workable, but to prevent them entirely.

They would all be more sweeping than Measure 37 in this sense: The new initiatives would apply to all landowners facing new regulations passed by state and local governments. The one in Washington would be retroactive, covering regulations passed since 1995. They all exempt regulations that directly protect health and safety, such as limits on sewage discharges, but those regulations rarely stand in the way of development. Moreover, compared to Oregon, most of the targeted states have immature land-use regulations. All their land-use planning would essentially be frozen, with no chance of evolving in the future, even as the states are hit with population booms. Rapidly growing communities from Boise to Tucson, now inching toward meaningful land-use regulations, would be stopped in their tracks.

A look around Gallatin County, home of Three Forks and Bozeman, made it clear how the Montana initiative would derail land-use planning. It’s Montana’s fastest-growing county, with a population shooting above 75,000. The county commissioners (one Democrat and two Republicans, including a rancher) have launched an effort to begin countywide zoning to address chaotic sprawl, increased traffic congestion, strain on all government services, worsening air pollution, and disappearing open space. If the takings initiative succeeds, it will kill that effort; the county would not be able to pass or enforce any new regulations. Also, there would be no more grassroots efforts to create small zoning districts, as the residents of Bozeman Pass just did, to hold off coalbed methane drillers — not unless the residents could get every property owner within each district to agree to every regulation.

In four nearby rural counties, longtime ranching families have created regulations that make it difficult to subdivide lots smaller than 160 acres. Montanans have also passed ballot initiatives banning game farms and cyanide process gold mining. The takings initiative on this year’s ballot would derail all future efforts like these.

If you live in any of the six states targeted this year and someday you might want a new regulation to put conditions on a Super Wal-Mart, or to protect streambanks from new construction, or to require developers to do anything for open space and affordable housing, you would be wise to vote “no” in November.

Dondero kept on the move after Three Forks. When I called him a week or two later, he was collecting signatures in Milltown, a working-class settlement almost 200 miles to the west, on the fringe of super-liberal Missoula. A week after that, he was working small towns east of Billings, about 150 miles east of Bozeman. He told me he had personally collected at least 10,000 signatures on Montana’s libertarian initiatives. After leaving Montana, he worked on libertarian initiatives in Oregon and Colorado.

From now until November, unless lawsuits jam up the works, libertarians will likely continue to make headway. As in Oregon in 2004, they’ll push their message in statewide TV and radio ads that feature victims of regulations — or, even more compelling, victims of eminent domain. Also as in Oregon, some local financial backing will emerge; developers and timber companies provided most of the money for the Measure 37 campaign.

But there’s a key difference. In Oregon, a huge coalition opposed Measure 37, including environmentalists, governments, planners, architects, nurses, labor, neighborhood associations, the Oregon PTA and the American Cancer Society. They won endorsements from every daily newspaper in the state. They spent twice as much money as the property-rights side. And they still lost. Now, in many of the other states, the opposition is disorganized and poorly funded.

Those who understand what is at stake realize that it’s an emergency. Rodger Schlickeisen, head of Defenders of Wildlife, a national environmental group, hired a consultant to evaluate what happened in Oregon in ’04. He told me that opponents ultimately lost on “the fairness issue.” The Measure 37 campaign used a few compelling examples to portray government as an enemy of property owners.

To beat that kind of campaign, opponents have to take a leaf out of its book: They need to find compelling examples of people who’ve been helped by land-use regulations. “There’s no reason that their side should have the fairness frame. There are huge fairness issues with regard to your neighbors and your community,” Schlickeisen said. One person’s rights can be another person’s ruin, and strong regulations often raise property values, rather than lower them.

“We have to learn how to express that in a compelling way,” Schlickeisen said. “We have a tendency to talk in policy-wonkish terms. We have to learn how to get to people, so they understand what this is all about.”

“It’s all sound bites in a statewide ballot initiative (election),” warned Janet Ellis, head of Montana’s Audubon Society chapter, which is beginning to organize the opposition here. “That’s going to be the challenge, to wrap it up in a few words.” She hopes to assemble a coalition that includes senior citizen groups and churches.

It will be difficult to get voters to see all the ramifications, however. Even Eric Dondero seems oblivious to how the Big Campaign often disguises regulatory takings inside “eminent domain reform.” In my last talk with him, I asked him about it, and he didn’t seem to understand the issue of regulatory takings.

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Dondero said. “I guess it means that if a government were to build a big ugly building next to your property, and lowered the value of your property, they’d have to compensate you.” When I explained that it means something else altogether, something much bigger, he said, “To me, that’s a secondary part of this. To me, the main deal is Kelo. That’s what this is all about. Admittedly, I’m not really up on that part of the issue.”

It occurred to me that Dondero is just a foot soldier — courageous in his way and sincere in his beliefs, but not fully aware of how he fits into the overall mission, how his idealism is being used by those above him on the command chain. No doubt many of the people who signed his petition, thinking they were standing up for the principle of private property rights, didn’t understand the ramifications either.

The question for Westerners is this: How much will we choose to understand, when we go to the voting booths this November?

Ray Ring is High Country News Northern Rockies editor.

https://idahocapitalsun.com/2025/09/18/volunteers-sought-for-public-lands-cleanup-in-idahos-sawtooth-national-recreation-area/

Volunteers have collected garbage, broken up illegal fire rings and removed human waste

By:September 18, 20254:05 am

Environmental organizations in Idaho are looking for volunteers who want to help protect America’s public lands by cleaning up the Sawtooth National Recreation Area this month.

Organizations including the Idaho Conservation League, the Idaho Trails Association, the Sawtooth Society, Idaho Rivers United, the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association, the Wood River Trails Coalition and the Environmental Resource Center have partnered with the U.S. Forest Service for the annual cleanup event.

The cleanup campaign began Monday and runs through Sept. 29.

For the event, interested volunteers can sign up online and pick the date they would like to clean up the Sawtooths.

Volunteers can select a cleanup mission in the front country (which organizers define as areas that can be reached by car, such as a developed campground) or in the backcountry (which organizers define as an area that can only be reached by foot, such as a trail in the Sawtooth Wilderness where motorized travel is not allowed).

“While this is a volunteer opportunity and there is a service aspect to it, this is also a great opportunity to go out and enjoy yourself on our public lands and appreciate those lands for yourself and reconnect with why public lands are so special and so important,” said Lexi Black, a Ketchum community engagement associate with the Idaho Conservation League.

Black said the cleanup campaign is a self-directed effort where volunteers select the date and areas they would like to volunteer on within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Central Idaho. The online sign up page lists potential sites for volunteers to choose to protect, such as Pettit Lake or campgrounds at Stanley Lake. But volunteers can also select their own spot to clean up even if it is not listed.

Once they sign up online, volunteers will receive an email with instructions and an opportunity to pick up any materials they will need.

Last year, 51 volunteers signed up for the cleanup.

This year’s public lands cleanup campaign could be especially significant because of federal cuts that reduced the U.S. Forest Service staff, and resulted in reduced hours and cutbacks at local offices in Idaho, including Sawtooth field offices.

One of Idaho’s crown jewels, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area includes jagged mountain peaks, crystal clear alpine lakes, wild rivers, miles of hiking trails and a diverse fish and wildlife habitat. Congress protected the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in 1972 to preserve it.

During the cleanup, volunteers may collect garbage, remove human waste and dismantle illegal fire rings and other artificial manmade structures.

Once they are in the field for the cleanup project, Black encourages volunteers to think about what their area would look like if the previous users practiced Leave No Trace principles. Leave No Trace principles for outdoor recreation include properly disposing of or packing out all waste, minimizing campfire impacts, respecting wildlife and camping and traveling on durable surfaces.

Essentially, Leave No Trace users seek to preserve the outdoors in its natural state and never remove anything natural from the environment.

“When they go through an area, we always encourage them to look for areas where other folks might have left a trace and then going through the effort of undoing that for them,” Black said.

The annual Sawtooth public lands cleanup campaign got its start in 2020. Since the beginning, volunteers have removed a total of 240 industrial size garbage bags full of waste from the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, organizers said.

The House voted to nullify three Bureau of Land Management plans, and critics fear many more could follow.

On the sagebrush plains of eastern Montana, cattle graze alongside mule deer, and pumpjacks rise from coal seams. For nearly a decade, the future of this landscape was hammered out in the Miles City Resource Management Plan, a compromise shaped by ranchers, tribes, hunters, energy companies and conservationists. Now, with one vote in Washington, Congress has thrown that bargain into doubt, and with it, decades of public-lands decisions across the West.

Finalized in November 2024 after years of debate and litigation, the Miles City plan is one of the nation’s largest, governing 12 million acres of BLM land and 55 million acres of federal mineral estate across eastern Montana.

But on Sept. 3, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to overturn three Bureau of Land Management plans, including Miles City, under the Congressional Review Act, the first time the law has ever been applied to land-use planning. Legal experts and conservation groups warn that the consequences could be far-reaching, enabling Congress to unravel decades of environmental protections and management decisions on public lands.

Resource management plans serve as guidelines for how the BLM manages the public lands it oversees. The plans are developed through a lengthy process that combines local and tribal input with environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The goal is to create a blueprint for “multiple use” management, balancing economic activities such as grazing and oil and gas development with other concerns, including wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation and conservation.

In Montana, the disappearance of that blueprint will have immediate consequences. Ranchers face uncertainty on how many cattle they can run, when their permits will be renewed, and what will happen during a serious drought. Tribal cultural sites are likely to be left unprotected and years of tribal consultation overridden. Conservation groups warn that congressional vetoes could sideline science-based safeguards for vulnerable habitats. In Miles City, the resource management plan would have reformed coal seam leases near the Powder River Basin; without those reforms, habitat for elk, mule deer, sharp-tailed grouse and pheasants could be fragmented by new energy development.

The Miles City plan drew input from ranchers, tribes, energy companies, hunters, outdoor recreation groups and conservation groups, and its supporters argue that undoing it sets a dangerous precedent.

“It’s disregarding all the conversations that have happened on the ground,” said Land Tawney of American Hunters and Anglers. “That balance sometimes isn’t perfect for anybody, but it’s a path forward for all.”

Jeanine Alderson, a rancher based near Birney, Montana, said that local ranchers are deeply concerned.

“The biggest reality is the uncertainty, because we’re doing this for the long haul,” Alderson said. She fears it will “just create an endless cycle of litigation that could grind grazing permits to a halt.”

Alderson said the resolution prioritizes the concerns of faraway bureaucrats over local ranchers’ input. “Those of us who live with this don’t have any say in what happens to the land we own and have leased for generations,” she said. “It was a collaborative process, and to have that overturned in one fell swoop is stunning.”

The 1996 Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn agency rules within a 60-day window using only a simple majority, bypassing the filibuster. This is the first time resource management plans have ever been treated as “rules.”

“That’s why we’re at an inflection point,” said Chris Winter, director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School. (Disclosure: Winter serves on High Country News’ board of directors.) Resource management plans, he said, have never been submitted to Congress for review. “Applying it now could unravel decades of land-use planning practice,” he said.

The CRA was employed only once before 2017, but the first Trump administration dramatically expanded its use. If this resolution stands, it would subject all RMPs to possible congressional approval, throwing every element of the planning process into doubt. According to Michael Blumm, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, this reinterpretation “calls into question the legitimacy” of the more than 100 plans finalized since the Congressional Review Act became law.

Conservationists and legal experts worry about the act’s “substantially similar” clause, which bars agencies from issuing a new rule that resembles one Congress has rejected. Because the law doesn’t define what counts as “too similar,” an agency could be left in limbo, without guidance on revision, and unable to try again if its replacement is judged to mirror the disapproved version.

“​​In the absence of guidance, agencies are going to be scratching their heads without a lot of concrete direction,” Winter said. “That will create a lot of confusion and litigation risk.”

Some see this as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to hollow out public-lands protection by stripping authority from land-management agencies and giving it to Congress instead. Montana Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke, Republicans who have long styled themselves as advocates for small government and local control, both supported the resolution  — even after Zinke opposed public-land sell-offs earlier this year. (Neither responded to a request for comment.) Now, the resolution heads to the Senate for a vote within 60 days.

“I fear that this strategy is going to lead to arguments that the system isn’t working, that the agencies aren’t being effective,” said Winter. “And that all of it becomes justification for dismantling the public-lands system over time.”

~~

Zoë Rom is a writer and journalist based in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Her work has appeared on NPR and in Outside, and she is the author of Becoming a Sustainable Runner, about how outdoor athletes can become environmental stewards.

01. September 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Nez Perce files lawsuit challenging USFS approval of Stibnite Gold Project · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

LAPWAI – Today, the Nez Perce Tribe filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s final Record of Decision approving Perpetua Resources Corp.’s (“Perpetua”) Stibnite Gold Project (“Mine”), a massive open pit gold mine in the headwaters of Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River in Idaho. The Mine sits within the Nez Perce Tribe’s homeland, where the Tribe reserved in treaties with the United States its sovereign rights to fish, hunt, gather, pasture, and travel.

The Forest Service’s decision authorizes Perpetua to mine three open pits, establish ore processing facilities, build roads and transmission lines, and impound over 400 acres of the Meadow Creek valley with 120 million tons of mine tailings, inundating spawning and rearing habitat for native fish. The Mine will clear thousands of acres of vegetation, destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands, generate billions of pounds of waste, destroy fish and wildlife habitat, and impair surface water and groundwater regimes well past the life of the mine.

According to the Forest Service’s own final environmental analysis, the Mine will cause significant and long-term impacts to the Tribe’s treaty rights and resources. Operations will require diverting the East Fork South Fork Salmon River, a Nez Perce usual and accustomed fishing place, into a tunnel for over a decade, as well as restricting Tribal members from accessing the area for fishing, hunting, and gathering.

Before Perpetua’s predecessor companies began acquiring interests in the Mine in 2008, the Tribe had secured funding to restore legacy mining impacts on fish passage at the site. The Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management still currently spends approximately $2.8 million annually to restore Chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout populations and habitat in the South Fork Salmon River watershed.

“Our treaty-reserved rights are the supreme law of the land and fundamental to the culture, identity, economy, and sovereignty of the Nez Perce people,” said Shannon F. Wheeler, Chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. “For nearly a decade, the Tribe has consistently and exhaustively voiced our deep concerns to the Forest Service about the Mine’s threats to our Treaty rights upon which our culture and way of life depend and which jeopardize our ability to transfer our knowledge and customs unique to this area to our children.”

“The Forest Service dismissed our requests to consider alternative approaches that would avoid and minimize harm to our Treaty rights and life sources and instead adopted Perpetua’s goals and interests for the Mine,” Chairman Wheeler said. “We are filing suit to force the Forest Service to address the Mine’s enormous and long-term degradation and destruction to our Treaty life sources, and to honor our reserved right to fully and freely exercise our Treaty fishing, hunting, and gathering rights as the U.S. Government promised over 170 years ago.”

18. August 2025 · Comments Off on New R4 Regional Crosscut Coordinator-Giovanni Lopez · Categories: Current Events, Education, Public Lands

Please welcome Giovanni Lopez from the Dixie National Forest as our new USFS R4 Crosscut Coordinator.  Gio has a strong wilderness background working with both the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) and the US Forest Service.  His previous work history with the MCC had him stationed on the Flathead National Forest working within the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.  After MCC, Gio has worked in a variety of locations with the USFS such as the Swan Lake Ranger District on the Flathead NF, the Lolo NF, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie in R-6, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF, and now in his current position on the Dixie National Forest in southern Utah.

Gio has a passion for wilderness skills and developing the skillsets of others as a crosscut instructor and C-Sawyer Evaluator.  He is excited for the opportunity to continue building the Regional Crosscut program and working with our Forest Service sawyers and partners in the use of primitive skills/tools.

Gio will be replacing Patrick Brown from the Payette National Forest.  Huge “Thank You” to Patrick as he was in this role for approximately 15 years.  Patrick will still stay involved in the saw program when he is able, and we sure appreciate his dedication and passion building this program.

If you want to reach out to Giovanni, his email is Giovanni.lopez@usda.gov. Thank you Gio for taking on this collateral role within the R4 Saw Program!

 

16. August 2025 · Comments Off on Public lands – Rock Fire Update · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

The Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team has taken command of the Rock Fire as of Saturday morning.

Firefighters are making significant progress by utilizing natural terrain, dozer lines, and hose lays to directly attack the fire where conditions permit. Crews near Tamarack Resort are aggressively targeting and extinguishing hot spots while reinforcing control lines along Forest Road 346 and the Tamarack Ski Run “Bliss Run.”

On the west side, the fire has reached ponderosa pine stands, where crews are working directly on the fire’s edge. On the south side, dozers and engines are strengthening containment lines and bringing water into the area to extinguish remaining hot spots. Along the southwest flank, crews are connecting dozer lines to increase containment. On the east side, firefighters are constructing indirect lines to build containment away from the active edge using dozer lines and Forest Road 346 to get ahead of the fire in steep, challenging terrain dominated by subalpine fir and mixed conifer.

Aircraft, including single-engine airtankers (SEATs), scoopers, and helicopters, are supporting ground crews with water and retardant drops. A Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) remains in place to ensure safe operations for suppression aircraft flying at low altitudes. Flying non-firefighting aircraft, such as drones, is illegal within the TFR and poses a serious hazard to firefighting aircraft.

The National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Watch for the fire area. Recently burned landscapes are highly vulnerable to flash flooding due to the loss of vegetation and heat-sealed soils, which prevent rain from soaking in and cause water, ash, and debris to run off rapidly. Weather conditions today include minimum humidity of 30–35%, temperatures in the low-to-mid 70s, and southwest winds of 3–8 mph with gusts up to 15 mph, reaching 20 mph on ridge tops. There is a 20% chance of thunderstorms, with some storms potentially producing heavy rain and gusty, erratic winds. Winds are expected to shift to north-northwest at 4 mph Saturday night, with gusts up to 13 mph. Thunderstorm chances continue at 20%, increasing to 30% on Sunday. A drying trend is anticipated after the weekend, which could lead to increased fire activity.

Three Valley County evacuation zones remain at “Ready” status as set by the Valley County Sheriff on August 13. Residents and visitors are urged to stay alert to changing conditions and adhere to all local authority guidance.

10. August 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – USFS Wants to Hear from You (I doubt it) · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands

Since February, the USDA has shed more than 16,000 employees (source). Now it is offering the public a chance to comment on its ongoing reorganization and staffing plans before the end of the month.

On August 1, 2025, Secretary Rollins announced a reorganization plan for the Department of Agriculture and initiated a 30‑day public comment period for stakeholders to weigh in.

This plan comes on the heels of mass terminations and resignations starting in February that have fundamentally reshaped the agency. The USDA has lost critical staff at the Forest Service who do recreation planning, trail restoration, wildfire mitigation, and conservation planning, among other work.

 Outdoor Alliance has been working to mitigate how these significant layoffs will jeopardize vital conservation and public lands work, including things like implementing the bipartisan EXPLORE Act. The proposed reorganization risks further erosion of mission‑critical capabilities at the Forest Service.

 The agency is accepting public comments until August 26, and this is a key opportunity for the outdoor community to weigh in about the future of the Forest Service. Everyone who cares about forests, trails, wildlife habitat, and resilient public lands can speak up during this public comment window to strengthen how the USDA stewards our public lands.

<< CLICK HERE >>



Been working with Ben on this and fully support the draft legislation.

Public lands are a hot topic!

Respectfully,

Dan Waugh
Public Lands
501 E. Baybrook Ct
Boise Id, 83706
Dwaugh@alscott.com
Office: 208-424-3873
Cell: 360-791-1591

Public Lands – Idaho Legislator to unveil proposed constitutional amendment      (Published in the Idaho Capital Sun)

Senator Ben Adams to Propose Constitutional Amendment Protecting Idaho’s Public Lands

PINE – Senator Ben Adams, (R-Nampa) will unveil a proposed Constitutional Amendment next week aimed at permanently protecting Idaho’s public lands from sale and ensuring they remain open and accessible for future generations.

The amendment, which Adams will introduce in the 2026 legislative session, would prevent the State from selling future lands granted or acquired from the federal government. It also establishes guiding principles—with a focus on conservation, public access, and responsible use.

“Public lands are a precious inheritance for Idahoans who’ve hunted, fished, and explored them for generations,” Adams said. “This amendment makes it clear: these lands are not for sale to the highest bidder. They belong to the people of Idaho—now and always.

The proposal includes the creation of a “Public Lands of the State” trust. Revenues generated from responsible land use, like timber harvesting, grazing, and recreation—would be used to maintain the land and support Idahoans directly, especially in rural communities.

“Our rural schools are often surrounded by public land, but they lack the resources to maintain even basic facilities,” Adams said. “We should be using the abundant natural resources in those areas to benefit the people who live there.”

Adams emphasized that preserving land is not just about conservation but about resisting short-sighted deals and protecting Idaho’s identity.

“Selling off public land for a quick payday is a betrayal of our state motto: Esto Perpetua—let it be perpetual,” Adams said. “This land isn’t a developer’s project or a billionaire’s private hunting retreat. It’s our children’s birthright.

The official unveiling will take place at 12:00 pm on August 15 at the Pine Café in Pine, Idaho. Members of the public and press are encouraged to attend.

Senator Ben Adams is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran and third-term legislator representing District 12. He has been a vocal advocate for veterans, constitutional principles, and protecting Idaho’s land, people, and way of life.
Media Availability: Senator Adams is available for interviews before and after the event. To schedule a time, contact his office at 208-546-9393

01. August 2025 · Comments Off on Forest Service Faces Identity Crisis in USDA Overhaul Plan. Again. · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands


The U.S. Forest Service has been searching for an identity almost since the federal government began managing trees in the 19th century.

It started in 1876 inventorying public lands to prevent over-logging. Then it became the lumber provider to the nation. Now, just shy of its 150th birthday, the Forest Service faces another fundamental reorganization announced by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last week.

Or not. A week after Rollins’ announcement, the Senate Agriculture Committee ordered Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden to present a “Review of the USDA Reorganization Proposal.” Many public lands watchdogs hoped the Wednesday hearing would clarify where the idea came from and how the Forest Service’s tree focus fit in the farm-and-ranch world of the Department of Agriculture.

During the hearing on July 30, Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Arkansas, offered his appreciation that Vaden, who took the job just two weeks before Rollins announced the reorganization on July 24, was working on his third week when he was summoned to explain the plan.

Ranking member Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, was less welcoming.

“The reason for the short notice is because the administration put out a half-baked plan with no notice,” Klobuchar said. Rearranging a major department that had already lost 15,000 staff members at a time when tariffs and pests such as the screwworm are roiling farm markets is “nothing short of a disaster,” she said.

Sharon Friedman, former Forest Service regional planning director, called the Rollins memo “way out of the normal range of ‘things to do.’” In particular, she pointed to the proposal to phase out Forest Service regional offices, instead of shrink them from the current nine to some smaller number. Earlier this year, draft maps showing a two- or three-region compression were in circulation.

“I think Congress is going to say this is a really stupid, bad idea,” Friedman told Mountain Journal on July 29 ahead of the hearing. “Go back to the drawing board.”

The National Association of Forest Service Retirees was equally aghast. “We do not see anything in the proposal that would improve services or efficiency,” they wrote in a July 29 letter to Senate committee leaders Boozeman and Klobuchar. “Rather, it appears to simply cut staffing and funding without describing how the work will continue to get done. It provides the classic direction to do more with less.”

NAFSR Chairman Steve Ellis told Mountain Journal the proposed reorganization of the Forest Service is nothing new. “I’ve been through a lot of these in my career, going back to when Jimmy Carter was in the White House,” he said. “The political ones are easy to smell, and this has the political smell to it. I doubt that it came from the Forest Service. It came from higher up. They were told ‘Eliminate regional offices and station offices — figure it out.’”

Where to call home?

While the impact that Rollins’ reorganization plan might have on the Forest Service has drawn particular attention, it affects all 29 agencies within the Agriculture Department. Rollins told Politico on Friday that “perhaps 50 to 70 percent of our Washington, D.C. staff will want to move” to five new hubs the agency is creating and the rest should seek jobs in the private sector.

That amounts to about 2,600 of the 4,600 USDA staff now in Washington, D.C. offices. The department has about 100,000 employees nationwide, 90 percent of whom work outside the national headquarters area.

The regional hubs would be in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. The memo did not say if the Forest Service regional offices would be redistributed among those five cities or eliminated altogether.

Vaden told senators that the plan removed some layers of middle management. “But that does not automatically mean everyone located in a former regional office of an agency will be moved,” he said. Vaden also pledged that USDA would help with moving costs for current employees, while “building the next generation of USDA leadership” in the regional hubs.

Most of Wednesday’s Senate hearing focused on two issues: Why there was so little advance notice of the plan and what senators’ districts were being considered for receiving the USDA jobs Rollins was moving out of Washington, D.C.

Senator John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, praised the reorganization’s goals, but warned he needed to see more collaboration with Congress.

“There’s a difference between you selecting hubs on your own and if we work together and come up with a plan,” Hoeven said. “Is this an outcome that we’re going to talk about, or a fait accompli?”

But Vaden did reveal a few expectations for the Forest Service.

Senator Ben Jay Luján, D-New Mexico, asked about the impact of “eliminating a regional office” of the Forest Service. Vaden replied that the Forest Service’s national human resources office in Albuquerque would not be affected in the reorganization, but that “the regional office will no longer be there.” Its building is already on a federal list to be closed and sold, and its employees would “be absorbed to other areas or asked to move.”

In his testimony, Vaden said one of the biggest reasons for the organization was to get the USDA workforce out of the National Capitol Region, which has “one of the highest costs of living in the country.” Federal salaries include a “locality rate,” or pay boost, to help employees afford expensive areas. The Washington, D.C. locality rate is 33.94 percent above a federal job’s base pay. Federal workers with new families couldn’t afford to buy homes in the Capitol area, where prices are averaging more than $800,000, he said.

What saves money?

“If you’re really looking for savings and belt tightening, focusing on the higher level of the organization doesn’t bother me,” said Mary Erickson, the recently retired supervisor of the Custer-Gallatin National Forest. “It’s not like you couldn’t downsize the regional offices, but the transitional costs of that are daunting. As you eliminate regional offices, where does that work go? And how do you do that in a year’s time? That’s a lot of work. And they say they don’t want to do this in fire season. Those are pretty long these days.”

Erickson pointed out that Fort Collins’ locality rate is 30.52 percent, resulting in almost no payroll savings. And although Salt Lake City’s locality rate is 17.06 percent, Utah’s public land is predominantly managed by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, not the Forest Service.

“There’s been no explanation for those locations,” Erickson said. “No one seems to know who’s the mastermind behind this design.”

Nor does there appear to be any acknowledgement of previous federal reorganization attempts. Congress created a Special Agent in the Agriculture Department to survey the nation’s public forests in 1876, and opened a Division of Forestry in 1881. A decade later, Congress passed oversight of “forest reserves” to the Interior Department. President Theodore Roosevelt moved it back to Agriculture in 1905, naming Gifford Pinchot the first chief of the Forest Service.

An official history of the Forest Service’s first century labels eight more evolutions, including “The War Years,” “Environmentalism/Public Participation Era” and “Ecosystem Management and the Future Era.”

Ellis recalled the attempt at slimming down the BLM during the Clinton administration.

“They decided to take the district office layer out, which is like removing the forest supervisor layer in the National Forest System,” Ellis said. “It ended up costing a lot of money to move people around and get out of office leases. It ended up being a total flop. When the second Bush administration came on, they quietly put that layer back in.”

The first Trump administration took a similar track in 2019 when it moved the BLM headquarters out of Washington, D.C. Staff were dispersed to new offices in Colorado, Nevada, Utah and several other bases.

A 2021 survey of BLM workers by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reported that 87 percent of reassigned employees either retired or quit rather than move. The field offices were staffed largely by new hires who lacked the scientific or experiential backgrounds of the former staff. “This lack of expertise in new hires has resulted in a shunning of science at the agency, and even a demonization of intellectual culture in some cases,” the PEER report stated.

It also resulted in a paucity of workers handling public business. At the time, the Utah area reported an average of one BLM employee for every 37,277 acres of public land. Arches National Park, which is surrounded by BLM lands, had one employee for every 1,530 acres.

Biden administration Interior Secretary Tracy Stone-Manning moved much of the BLM headquarters staff back to Washington in 2022. But she also reinforced the Colorado office, expanding its contingent from 27 positions under Trump to 56.

Friedman now runs the forestry policy blog Smokey Wire. She was a planning director in 2007 when a “Transformation Team” explored ways of performing Forest Service duties better. It did not appear to consider moving to another part of the federal org chart, such as Interior. But Friedman noted her own inability to find out what it actually accomplished: “I couldn’t find any documentation for the effort. It wasn’t even clear whom I would ask at the Forest Service. Historian? Archivist? I got some phone numbers and emails, but no one returned the messages.”

Some of that effort looked into moving the Forest Service from Agriculture to Interior. A 2009 Government Accountability Office report concluded “a move would provide few efficiencies in the short term and could diminish the role the Forest Service plays in state and private land management … [If] the objective of a move is to improve land management and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the agencies’ diverse programs, other options might achieve better results.”

The 2009 GAO report also cataloged other past consolidation initiatives. One was the colocation of wildland firefighting experts from the Forest Service, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs to create the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. That took place in 1965.

Where’s the Fire?

One particular problem drags public lands management off balance: wildfire.

While logging trees and grazing cows and digging trail occur far from the average American’s attention, forest fires are literally front-page news. The Forest Service routinely spends nearly half its annual budget fighting fire. It handles between 70 and 80 percent of the public land ignitions, with Interior agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management chasing most of the rest.

Federal firefighters have long chaffed at being just a tool in a larger agency’s land management toolbox, according to Freidman.

“There’s a tension between wildfire people and everybody else,” she said. “They got pay raises and nobody else did. They want to work for other wildfire people, because they feel they’re a national asset. They think they shouldn’t have others holding them back when they could be making money.”

But wildfire and public land management are woven together in a tight braid. Fire-dependent ecosystems cover most of the western United States. Local ranger districts not only map and monitor their surrounding forest for fire potential, their staffs often donate their time to the community volunteer fire department and ambulance service.

Removing fire duties from the Forest Service would “hollow out” the agency, according to Ellis.

“Fire is integrated in every program the Forest Service does,” he said. “Anything you do on public lands affects the fuel. It isn’t just burning slash piles. It’s how you graze range land. It’s timber harvest. That’s all fuels management. The fuel in Los Angeles fires [last January] was homes.”

During the hearing, Senator Klobuchar asked if there was a bigger plan to move the Forest Service, or parts of it, to some other cabinet agency. She particularly wanted to know about the fate of wildland firefighting.

Vaden replied that the president’s budget, not the reorganization plan, called for the centralization of wildfire services. In other responses, Vaden said the Missoula-based Fire Lab would not be moving, and that the Salt Lake City regional hub was chosen in part because it offered “aviation assets” that would help the Forest Service in the “administration’s plan regarding centralizing wildfire efforts.”

Congress had already shown resistance to other Trump administration moves. Last week, both the House and Senate Appropriations committees rejected a plan to wrap the Forest Service’s firefighting duties into a new wildland fire management service housed in the Interior Department. Despite a Trump executive order creating the consolidated wildfire service and Forest Service and Interior budget reports detailing how it would work, congressional budgeters put the 2026 wildfire allocations back in their traditional multiagency bankbooks.

The committee is disappointed with the utter lack of regard for complying with Congressional intent on spending funds as appropriated,” the Senate Appropriations Committee bill report stated. On other pages, the Senate committee overruled Trump’s order changing the name of North America’s highest mountain from Denali to McKinley. And it blocked an Interior Department plan to hand over some unnamed small national park facilities to state management.

“Over my whole career, the president’s budget, if you took it as reality, was completely drastic,” Erickson said. “We always expected it was going to be moderated by the Congressional process. Up to this point with Trump, you hadn’t seen that. Maybe we’re seeing some good signs there.”

24. July 2025 · Comments Off on USDA Announces Major Reorganization, Forest Service Restructuring · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands


This morning, USDA Secretary Rollins announced a major reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service.

The Press Release can be found here

.The Secretarial Memorandum can be found here.    Secretary Memorandum: SM 1078-015 sm-1078-015

Here are some key takeaways (USDA-wide, not just the Forest Service):

  • USDA currently has about 4,600 employees in the Washington, D.C. area.  That will be reduced to 2,000.  Employees will be relocated to new Hubs or the field.
  • USDA’s five Hubs will be: Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah
  • USDA will vacate certain office spaces in Washington, D.C. and will revisit (but retain) “the utilization and functions in the USDA…Yates Building…” which has been the permanent home of the Forest Service since the 1990s.
  • This is the first step in a multi-step, multi-month process of reorganization and restructuring to reduce the size and costs of the USDA workforce.  As of today, 15,364 individuals voluntarily elected deferred resignation Department-wide.

 

What does this mean for the Forest Service?

There will be more information and announcements in the coming weeks and months.  Here’s what we know from the Secretarial Memo:

  • The Forest Service will phase out the nine Regional Offices over the next year.  Implementation of the Regional Office phase out will consider the current fire season.
  • While not stated in the Memo, we expect current Regional staff to be reassigned or relocated to the Hubs or individual forests.
  • It’s our intel that Regional Foresters will also take on larger geographic and administrative responsibilities.
  • Note: None of the Hubs are in AFRC’s service area and have little correlation to the National Forest System land base.
  • The Forest Service will maintain a reduced state office in Juneau, Alaska and an eastern service center in Athens, Georgia.
  • The current stand-alone Research Stations will be consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • The Forest Service will retain the Fire Sciences Lab and Forest Products Lab.

 

We’ll continue to gather and share more information about these significant structural changes to USDA and the Forest Service.  We are already in touch with key agency leaders to better understand implications for the Forest Service, our industry, and our work.  Change is disruptive.  AFRC will continue to strategize and adapt accordingly to maximize our advocacy and effectiveness for our members under this new structure.  One thing is clear: the restructuring underscores the power and importance of AFRC’s model of having a presence, relationships, and involvement at the local and national forest level.

 

Sincerely,

 

Travis Joseph

President/CEO

American Forest Resource Council

(Washington, D.C., July 24, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins today announced the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), refocusing its core operations to better align with its founding mission of supporting American farming, ranching, and forestry.

Over the last four years, USDA’s workforce grew by 8%, and employees’ salaries increased by 14.5% – including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them. This all occurred without any tangible increase in service to USDA’s core constituencies across the agricultural sector. USDA’s footprint in the National Capital Region (NCR) is underutilized and redundant, plagued by rampant overspending and decades of mismanagement and costly deferred maintenance. President Trump has made it clear government needs to be scrutinized, and after this thorough review of USDA, the results show a bloated, expensive, and unsustainable organization.

To be clear, all critical functions of the Department will continue uninterrupted. For example, we are at the height of fire season, and to date, have not only exceeded hiring goals, but have preserved the ability to continue to hire. Earlier this year, Secretary Rollins issued a Secretarial Memorandum exempting National Security and Public Safety positions from the federal hiring freeze. These 52 position classifications carry out functions that are critical to the safety and security of the American people, our national forests, and the inspection and safety of the Nation’s agriculture and food supply system. These positions will not be eliminated. However, employees may be subject to relocation.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support. President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” said Secretary Rollins. “We will do so through a transparent and common-sense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services the American public relies on. We will do right by the great American people who we serve and with respect to the thousands of hardworking USDA employees who so nobly serve their country.”

The reorganization consists of four pillars:

  • Ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with available financial resources and agricultural priorities
  • Bring USDA closer to its customers
  • Eliminate management layers and bureaucracy
  • Consolidate redundant support functions

To bring USDA closer to the people it serves while also providing a more affordable cost of living for USDA employees, USDA has developed a phased plan to relocate much of its Agency headquarters and NCR staff out of the Washington, D.C. area to five hub locations. The Department currently has approximately 4,600 employees within the National Capital Region (NCR). This Region has one of the highest costs of living in the country, with a federal salary locality rate of 33.94%. In selecting its hub locations, USDA considered where existing concentrations of USDA employees are located and factored in the cost of living. Washington, D.C. will still hold functions for every mission area of USDA at the conclusion of this reorganization, but USDA expects no more than 2,000 employees will remain in the NCR.

USDA will vacate and return to the General Services Administration the South Building, Braddock Place, and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, and revisit utilization and functions in the USDA Whitten Building, Yates Building, and the National Agricultural Library. The George Washington Carver Center will also be utilized until space optimization activities are completed. These buildings have a backlog of costly deferred maintenance and currently are occupied below the minimum set by law. For example, the South Building has approximately $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance and has an average daily occupancy of less than 1,900 individuals for a building that can house over 6,000 employees.

USDA’s five hub locations and current Federal locality rates are:

  1. Raleigh, North Carolina (22.24%)
  2. Kansas City, Missouri (18.97%)
  3. Indianapolis, Indiana (18.15%)
  4. Fort Collins, Colorado (30.52%)
  5. Salt Lake City, Utah (17.06%)

View the Secretary Memorandum (PDF, 2.6 MB)

This is only the first phase of a multi-month process. Over the next month and where applicable, USDA senior leadership will notify offices with more information on relocation to one of the regional hubs.

To make certain USDA can afford its workforce, this reorganization is another step of the Department’s process of reducing its workforce. Much of this reduction was through voluntary retirements and the Deferred Retirement Program (DRP), a completely voluntary tool. As of today, 15,364 individuals voluntarily elected deferred resignation.

Dan Waugh – Public Lands

501 E. Baybrook Ct

Boise Id, 83706

Dwaugh@alscott.com

Office: 208-424-3873

Cell: 360-791-1591

 

02. July 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – SNRA Trails Reporting · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

LINK TO FORM

01. July 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Fee Changes · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Author: Tracy Bringhurst
Published: 12:30 PM MDT June 30, 2025

MCCALL, Idaho — The Payette National Forest announced on Monday that it is proposing changes to recreation fees at various sites throughout the forest, with public comments open through September 15.

Forest Supervisor Matthew Davis stated that the fees are crucial for maintaining high-quality recreation experiences.

“We recognize how important our recreation areas are to local communities and visitors of the Payette National Forest,” Davis said. “Recreation fees are a critical funding source that helps us provide clean, safe, and accessible recreation opportunities.”

Even with the proposed changes, more than 52% of forest recreation sites would remain free to use, according to the Forest Service.

The 2004 Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act allows the Forest Service to retain at least 80% of collected recreation fees for local use in operating, maintaining and improving sites. Revenue would help fund infrastructure improvements and additional seasonal recreation staff.

The Forest Service said recreation fees help provide quality opportunities that meet modern visitor expectations while creating a more financially sustainable program for future generations.

The public can submit comments through Sept. 15 by mail to Payette National Forest, Attention: Emily Simpson, 500 North Mission Street, McCall, Idaho 83638. Comments are also accepted online.

Oral comments can be provided in person to Simpson during business hours, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by calling 208-634-0700.

After public comment closes, the proposed fee changes will be reviewed by a citizens’ advisory committee representing various recreation interest groups. The committee will submit recommendations to the Regional Forester for a final decision.

More information is available here.    Payette National Forest | Proposed Changes to Recreation Fees on the Payette National Forest | Forest Service

Public Commentary Period

The public is invited to provide comments on these proposed changes until September 15, 2025This public comment period allows you to ask questions and share feedback with agency decision-makers. Your comments regarding the proposed fee change will be considered.

How to Provide Comments

To ensure that your comments are considered, please share your comments no later than September 15, 2025 using one of the methods listed below.

Online

Comments can be provided online at https://arcg.is/1eKXDW0.

Postal Mail

Utilizing the downloadable Recreation Fee Proposal Comment Form, send postal mail comments to:

Payette National Forest

Attn: Emily Simpson

500 N Mission Street, McCall, ID 83638

Oral Comments

Oral comments must be made in person at the Payette National Forest Supervisor’s Office during normal business hours (Monday- Friday 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.), or by calling 208-634-0700 and indicating you would like to provide comments on the proposed recreation fee changes.

Email

Comments will be accepted by email at this email address:

emily.simpson@usda.gov

Please ensure to list Recreation Fee Changes in the subject line.

 

24. June 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Secretary Rollins Rescinds Roadless Rule · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands

(Santa Fe, N.M., June 23, 2025) – Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced during a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in New Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. This outdated administrative rule contradicts the will of Congress and goes against the mandate of the USDA Forest Service to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands. Rescinding this rule will remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System, allowing for fire prevention and responsible timber production.

This rule is overly restrictive and poses real harm to millions of acres of our national forests. In total, 30% of National Forest System lands are impacted by this rule. For example, nearly 60% of forest service land in Utah is restricted from road development and is unable to be properly managed for fire risk. In Montana, it is 58%, and in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country, 92% is impacted. This also hurts jobs and economic development across rural America. Utah alone estimates the roadless rule alone creates a 25% decrease in economic development in the forestry sector.

“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” said Secretary Brooke Rollins. “This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests. It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.”

This action aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation to get rid of overcomplicated, burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation. It will also allow more decisions to be made at the local level, helping land managers make the best decisions to protect people, communities and resources based on their unique local conditions.

Of the 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas covered under the 2001 Roadless Rule, 28 million acres are in areas at high or very high risk of wildfire. Rescinding this rule will allow this land to be managed at the local forest level, with more flexibility to take swift action to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure.

24. June 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Senate Removes Public Lands Sales Package – for now! · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands

Breaking news: Senator Mike Lee’s proposal to sell off up to 3.3 million acres of public lands appears to have been removed from the Senate’s budget reconciliation bill.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts—alongside hunters, anglers, motorized users, and conservationists—spoke up to defend public lands. Late yesterday evening, the land sales were removed on a technicality by the Senate parliamentarian, meaning that this dangerous proposal is out of the budget bill for now.

Lawmakers heard you, and the proposal to sell off millions of acres was already facing strong headwinds and was on the cusp of being scaled back or removed prior to this ruling.

This is a big win—for a few important reasons:
• Those 3.3 million acres will remain public, for now, accessible to the 175 million Americans who recreate each year.
• The outdoor community showed up in force. In just days, more than half a million letters poured into Congress—a volume we’ve never seen before.
• Lawmakers responded. In the past week, multiple Senators publicly opposed the sell-off proposal, sending a clear signal that these ideas aren’t welcome.

Thank you for raising your voice. This community continues to show that when public lands are under threat, we are ready to fight for them.

That said, we’re not out of the woods yet. Senator Mike Lee has already indicated he plans to revise his proposal and push again for public land sell-offs—this time with narrower language that he hopes will pass.

We’ll keep fighting—and we hope you will too.

20. June 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Stibnite expansion planned · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands

Perpetua eyes possible Stibnite mine expansion – Valley Lookout

A gold and antimony mine approved in eastern Valley County is well-positioned for future expansion, according to executives for the mining company.

On Wednesday, Perpetua Resources outlined preliminary plans for a possible expansion of its Stibnite mine, which was approved earlier this year following an eight-year review by the Payette National Forest.

Marcelo Kim, who chairs the company’s corporate board, told shareholders that the company will explore additional zones that could add as much as 2.4 million ounces of gold to the mine’s current reserve of 4.8 million ounces.

“We believe there are ample high-grade extensions to our existing reserves that we plan to drill out,” Kim said. “Should we be able to bring this material into reserves, we could see a substantial benefit to our gold production from higher grades as well as antimony production.”
A shareholder presentation included a map showing more than two dozen new exploration zones and nine “priority targets.” Many of the areas are adjacent to the two existing pit mines the company is already permitted to develop.

Kim said the exploration zones are based on mineralization the company has observed and “not blue sky prospects.”

However, any expansion of the company’s planned mining operations would require further regulatory approval from the Payette and other agencies.

Marty Boughton, a Perpetua spokesperson, told Valley Lookout the acreage for the exploration zones is not currently available.

“We haven’t finalized a detailed plan yet, just some forward-looking targets,” Boughton said. “Our primary focus is bringing the Stibnite Gold Project as permitted online.”
Latest stock offering
Wednesday’s investor presentation came on the heels of Perpetua securing another $425 million in financing following a stock offering that opened last week.

The offering initially was for $300 million, but the company increased it to $325 million to fund the additional exploration work, Kim said.

At the same time, Paulson & Co., a New York City investment firm led by billionaire John Paulson, agreed to purchase another $100 million in stock.

The purchase raised Paulson’s total investment in Perpetua to $185 million since 2016. The firm owns about 32.3 million shares of Perpetua stock, giving it a 31% ownership stake in the company as its largest investor, Boughton said.

Kim, a Paulson partner since 2011, was appointed to his role as board chairman in 2020 when five longtime board members resigned amid Paulson’s demands for leadership changes.

$2B loan application
Most of the $425 million Perpetua raised through the stock offering will be used to meet equity requirements for a $2 billion loan the company applied for through the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

If approved, the loan would fund the $2.2 billion cost to build the mine, a process that Perpetua estimates would take two to three years.

Construction cannot begin, however, until Perpetua receives approval from the Payette on a financial assurance package that guarantees funding for clean-up of the site.

The company is actively seeking financial assurances totaling about $155 million to cover the construction phase of the project. It currently expects to begin mining operations in 2029.

Project background
Perpetua plans to extract more than $6 billion in gold, silver, and antimony from Stibnite, the site of historic mining operations during World War II and as far back as 1899.

The mine could produce an estimated 148 million pounds of antimony and 4.8 million ounces of gold, which would account for nearly all of the mine’s projected revenue.

The metals would be extracted from three open pit mines totaling about 473 acres within the 1,740-acre project zone, which is about three miles from the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness.

Opponents of the mine fear it could pollute the East Fork South Fork Salmon River, which flows through the project site, and cause other environmental damage.

Water quality in the East Fork and other streams at the proposed mine site does not currently meet federal drinking water standards due to high concentrations of arsenic and antimony from pollutants left by previous mining companies.

Perpetua’s mining proposal is authorized by the General Mining Act of 1872, a federal law that allows anyone to patent mining claims on public land.

A review of the project began in 2016 under the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires all projects that could affect natural resources to be studied for environmental harm.

19. June 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands Eligible for sale interactive map – June 2025 · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Public Lands Eligible for Sale interactive Map


LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS BILL AND MASSIVE PUBLIC LANDS SELL-OFF

13. June 2025 · Comments Off on GOP Senate Plan to Sell of Public Lands · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands

LINK TO SEND MESSAGE

13. June 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – $$ Cut to National Parks · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands

Read full article

 

08. May 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Sawtooth National Forest 2024 Roundup · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

End of Season 2024   (PDF)

29. April 2025 · Comments Off on PUBLIC LAND – Draft Plan Leaked · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

As the Department of the Interior develops a plan to “restore American prosperity” by exploiting Western natural resources, a Wyoming attorney who has steeled rural communities against federal policies is atop the hierarchy that will marshal the effort.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum last month appointed Karen Budd-Falen as temporary deputy secretary and his senior advisor. As the department fleshes out a four-year strategic plan to use natural resources across 19.9 million acres of national parks and Bureau of Land Management property in Wyoming, Budd-Falen will be in the Interior’s second-highest position.

A draft of the four-year Interior plan leaked to Public Domain outlines department objectives for prosperity, security and recreation. Conservationists have decried elements they say would dismantle environmental safeguards, turn over federal property, promote energy development and favor rural communities over nationwide interests.
The Interior Department last week blasted the leak and called its publication “irresponsible.”

“It is beyond unacceptable that an internal document in the draft/deliberative process is being shared with the media before a decision point has been made,” Interior’s press office wrote WyoFile on Thursday. “Not only is this unacceptable behavior, it is irresponsible for a media outlet to publish a draft document.

“We will take this leak of an internal, pre-decisional document very seriously and find out who is responsible,” the statement reads.

The draft plan, which the agency said is “not final nor ready for release,” sets four goals and several objectives to accomplish them. Interior’s drafted goals are to restore American prosperity, ensure national security through infrastructure and innovation, and allow sustainable enjoyment of natural resources. It would do all that through the fourth goal — collaboration with states, tribes and local governments.
The draft plan to restore American prosperity would use American energy to “lower… costs and increases affordability.” But it includes elements that worry conservationists who fear damage to Interior agencies including the National Park Service, BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The plan would “deregulate” to increase “clean coal” production and oil and gas drilling. It would streamline the National Environmental Policy Act, a law designed to safeguard the environment. And it would reduce the cost of grazing, which critics say is already too low.

The draft would “release federal holdings” — divest Americans of their public property — to allow states and communities to reduce housing costs. Interior would support agriculture and increase revenues from logging, non-energy mining, and grazing. The draft treats natural resources as assets, viewing federal holdings for the economic value that can be derived from them.

The leaked document “reads like an industry wish list,” the Center for Western Priorities said in a statement. It includes “a thinly veiled reference to the seizure and sale of public lands,” according to the conservation group.

The draft treats the West’s natural resources “as nothing more than numbers on a balance sheet,” Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala said in a statement. In the plan, those resources are “products to be sold off and exploited to help pay for tax cuts for Elon Musk and Trump’s fellow billionaires,” she said.

“It resembles a business plan from a desperate CEO, not a framework to steward public lands for the benefit of all Americans,” Rokala’s statement reads.

To her post, Budd-Falen brings years of experience fighting for ranchers and other public land users and developers. The federal government has been a frequent adversary, but so has Western Watersheds Project, another conservation group that focuses on public land grazing.

She represented a group of ranchers who sued Western Watersheds for trespassing when a field worker collected water to test for pollution caused by grazing. She advised rural counties to adopt land use plans they could leverage when contesting federal programs on public land in their areas. She also represented stock growers who sided against four Missouri hunters who corner crossed to hunt public land on Elk Mountain in Carbon County. She represented the Cliven Bundy family and others as they fought grazing reductions imposed after Las Vegas developers were permitted to occupy desert tortoise habitat. That family later became infamous for armed standoffs with federal officials over use of public land.

Interior_Department_Draft_Strategic_Plan_Via_Public_Domain

26. April 2025 · Comments Off on Pulaski Users Group – Spring 2025 · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

PDF: _PUG+2024+ANNUAL+REPORT+(16)-compressed

26. April 2025 · Comments Off on Idaho House Bill 487 – April 25, 2025 · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands, Public Meetings


PDF: HB487 1 Pager

21. April 2025 · Comments Off on April 2025 Chat with Chief of the USFS · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Watch Video

I invite you to watch my second video (or read the transcript below), where I talk about our agency priorities and my focus areas as Chief. I continue to believe that safety must be our highest priority, no matter where you work. We must be safe in the course of our duties, and we must look out for one another.

I also share a bit more about what I mean when I say we need to get back to basics. Everyone, including the public, knows that we fight fires, but we do so much more, from forest management to outdoor recreation to mineral and energy management. By focusing on the fundamentals of our work, we can do more to support the health and vitality of our forests and grasslands and neighboring communities.

Overall, our work is built upon relationships and communication, from those with one another to our partners, and I look forward to communicating with all of you through these videos and as we meet in person.

TRANSCRIPT

When I came in, people were asking, “What are the priorities? What are we focused on?” I looked at a couple different things. One, first and foremost, was safety.

And as we prepare for fire season or when, regardless of whether you’re a firefighter, but just doing your job day to day can be hard. And so to me, first and foremost, as we do our jobs, it’s got to be safe, how we perform them and looking out for each other. Another big focus for me is trying to get back to basics. To me, like, really focusing on what our primary responsibilities and duties are that we do.

We’re fighting fire. We have a forest management program. We have a recreation, outdoor recreation program, the minerals program, oil and gas.

But the recreation program, for me, is an area that I’ve learned a lot about that. We have over two hundred million users on an annual basis that recreate on national forest lands.

I mean, so that the interest in the use and how we’re viewed is so positive, I think when I’ve looked at some of the customer survey results, we have like seventy percent positivity in terms of like how people view us and how we interact with the public. So it’s significant, the work that we do, it’s critical, and how we deliver that to the public.

And, you know, one thing that I didn’t mention was the role of relationships, right, and partnerships. But whether it’s in fire, whether it’s in archaeology, whether it’s recreation, we have so many partners. I really think we are in the relationship business, and you all see that in how you do your jobs. Maintaining those relationships and spending the time to to get to know people, in and out of work, is critical, for us to do our jobs effectively.

09. April 2025 · Comments Off on ITA – Trail season is here – See schedule · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


ITA PROJECT CALENDAR

07. April 2025 · Comments Off on Boise National Forest Spring All-Partner Coordination Meeting · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands, Public Meetings

Hello,

I am a recreation specialist with the Boise National Forest (BNF) based on the Cascade Ranger District. The BNF is hosting a virtual meeting April 30th from 4:00-5:30 PM to coordinate with partners on trail work planning for 2025. U.S. Forest Service staff will share what we are planning and what other planned projects trail partners have planned. You should be able to click on the highlighted text above and RSVP. I will also add your contact info to a teams meeting and you should receive a separate email with an invite.

There is an included survey here for any partners planning or wanting to do trail projects on the BNF, if each group could fill one out, I will compile all the projects with a brief description into a schedule that can be shared before the meeting. If you have multiple projects you can add forms or would rather email me a description, feel free to do so. https://forms.office.com/g/vMhW5RXsD4

If you have any questions before the meeting, please feel free to reach out to me at Jonathan.floyd@usda.gov for general meeting information, or specific trails information regarding the North Zone (Cascade, Emmett and Lowman Ranger Districts). For South Zone (Mountain Home and Idaho City Ranger Districts) please reach out to JW Cleveland, South Zone recreation specialist at joseph.cleveland@usda.gov.

Meeting Agenda

  • Quick Introduction (Adam Floyd)
  • Boise NF trail project plans
    • How to best find a project to join (Adam Floyd)
    • North Zone (Adam Floyd)
    • South Zone (JW Cleveland)
  • Round table with partners who would like to present their projects
  • Questions or additional discussion (Adam Floyd)
  • We look forward to seeing you there,
05. April 2025 · Comments Off on Public Land – IHB-0487 Outdoor Recreation Funding · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands, Public Meetings

Zoom Meeting
Topic: Non-Motorized Trails Legislation Update
Time: Apr 24, 2025 10:00 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89109943525?pwd=bzKeHF50wbJvdUDvbER0pra3SeUkRi.1

Meeting ID: 891 0994 3525
Passcode: 512561

Full Text of Bill  PDF – IHB – 0487

04. April 2025 · Comments Off on (Washington, D.C., April 4, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins Memo · Categories: Around The Campfire, Current Events, Public Lands

(Washington, D.C., April 4, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued a Secretarial Memo (PDF, 2.9 MB) to establish an “Emergency Situation Determination” on 112,646,000 acres of National Forestry System (NFS) land (PDF, 19.8 MB). This Memo comes on the heels of President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order to expand American timber production by 25%, and it will empower the U.S. Forest Service to expedite work on the ground and carry out authorized emergency actions to reduce wildfire risk and save American lives and communities.

“Healthy forests require work, and right now, we’re facing a national forest emergency. We have an abundance of timber at high risk of wildfires in our National Forests,” said Secretary Rollins. “I am proud to follow the bold leadership of President Trump by empowering forest managers to reduce constraints and minimize the risks of fire, insects, and disease so that we can strengthen American timber industry and further enrich our forests with the resources they need to thrive.”

The Memo issued by Secretary Rollins is part of a larger effort to ensure American resources are properly managed for generations to come. This work will support rural economies, reduce wildfire risk, and build capacity through workforce alignment and expanded partnerships.

This Memo will also spur immediate action (PDF, 285 KB) from the U.S. Forest Service directing field leadership to increase timber outputs, simplify permitting, remove National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) processes, reduce implementation and contracting burdens, and to work directly with states, local government, and forest product producers to ensure that the Forest Service delivers a reliable and consistent supply of timber.

This action builds on Secretary Rollins’ announcement last month to unleash American energy by directing the USDA Forest Service to take action to remove burdensome Biden-era regulations that have stifled energy and mineral development on Forest Service land. As part of these decisive actions, the agency also canceled two mineral leasing withdrawals on Forest Service land that will help boost production of critical minerals.

USDA Secretarial Memo April 3, 2025   (PDF)

24. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Whitebark Pine · Categories: Around The Campfire, Education, Public Lands

The Whitebark Pine survives harsh weather conditions and can live over 1,000 years and grow over 90 feet tall. The oldest is over 1,200 years old and is living in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest.

“The Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a marvelous tree – what ecologists call a keystone, or foundation, species,” the Bureau of Land Management notes on its website. “Its roots stabilize rocky soils at the snowy, windswept 6,000- to 12,000-foot elevations where it grows, and its large, high-protein seeds feed several bird and mammal species – nuthatches, squirrels, black bears, grizzly bears, and red foxes.”

In addition to feeding several birds and mammals, the tree provides shelter and nest sites for many animals including deer and elk. It is also key to helping with Idaho’s water supply.

“Tolerant of the harshest conditions, whitebark pine grows at the highest treeline elevations; its canopies shade snowpack and protract snowmelt, thus regulating downstream flows; its roots stabilize soil, which reduces erosion, particularly on steep, rocky slopes,” the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation notes. “Thus, whitebark pine protects watersheds, which is important for both agricultural and drinking water.”

Another interesting fact about the Whitebark Pine is that it relies solely on the bird – the Clark’s nutcracker – to reproduce.

“Carrying the seeds in a pouch under its tongue, the bird buries them in shallow soil caches, sometimes up to 10 km away,” the National Park Service notes on its website. “Nutcrackers are known to cache up to 90,000+ seeds in a good seed crop year!”

These trees are very slow-growing. For example, once the seeds start to sprout, it can take the whitebark pine 25 to 30 years to begin producing cones. At 60 to 80 years, the tree’s peak cone production begins.

While the Whitebark Pine is crucial to Idaho’s ecosystem, its survival has been threatened by several different factors.

“Today, their survival as a species is jeopardized by mountain pine beetle outbreaks, altered fire regimes, climate change, and a fungal infection called white pine blister rust,” BLM notes.

In 2022, the Whitebark Pine was officially listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. To learn more about the efforts to save the Whitebark Pine, head to BLM’s website here.

21. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Wilks Brothers Skirt Rules · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

A company owned by Texas billionaires Dan and Faris Wilks is selling 73 ranch sites carved from about 2,000 acres south of Cascade.

Plans for Legacy Creek Ranch, as dubbed by DF Development, look like subdivisions across Valley County, but are not subject to the same rules and review process because the ranch sites were created by a series of lot line adjustments and original parcel splits.

That, Valley County Planning and Zoning Administrator Cynda Herrick said, is the difference between selling raw land and being required to follow the county’s subdivision laws.

“I’ve been talking with (DF) and they understand that this isn’t the preferred method,” Herrick told Valley Lookout. “But it’s what they’re entitled to by law.”

The method used by DF enables Legacy Creek Ranch to avoid the county’s subdivision requirements, which include plans for drainage, irrigation, drinking water, septic systems, utilities, and streets. It also means that the company is not required to create a fire protection plan covering things like water supply, emergency access, and vegetation management.

The plan also avoids review by the Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission, as well as several state agencies, including the Idaho Transportation Department, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

How were the ranch sites created?
Most of the ranch sites have been created by lot line adjustments, which require administrative approval. County law allows landowners to adjust the boundaries of existing parcels into different shapes and sizes if no new parcels are created.

For Legacy Creek Ranch, that has enabled DF to reconfigure existing parcels to include road access along Clear Creek Road, also known as Forest Service Road 409.

The company was also able to create 18 new parcels by splitting parcels that have not been subdivided since Valley County’s subdivision regulations were adopted in 1970. Those parcels, known as “original parcels,” may be split one time without triggering a review.
“We allow original parcels to be split one time without going through a platting process,” Herrick said. “So they took their parcels and did their free splits.”

The result of the splits and reconfiguring is 73 parcels, which Herrick emphasized do not qualify as “lots” because they were not created through the subdivision process.

Marketing
Advertisements for Legacy Creek Ranch have shown up on billboards on State Street in Boise, in The Star-News, and on social media.

In The Star-News, McCall’s weekly newspaper, the ranch sites are advertised as “lots,” despite not coming with any of the certainties or amenities associated with true subdivision lots.

“This is not a subdivision, these are not lots,” Herrick said. “This is a marketing tactic.”

Unlike typical subdivision lots, the parcels DF advertised by DF do not include any utilities and are not guaranteed to be able to meet standards for septic systems and water wells.

Any buyer of the lots would be required to seek a building permit from the county and receive approval for construction plans. It is unclear if any of the lots have been sold so far.

Advertising paints Legacy Creek Ranch as “the perfect place to connect with the wilderness and start building your legacy.”

“Our early Phase-1 release at Legacy Creek Ranch ensures plenty of open space,” according to DF’s website. “Our lifestyle plan for the community is simple: build green, clean, and sustainable spaces filled with the natural wonders of mountain wildlife.”

DF Development representatives did not respond to requests for comment by Valley Lookout.

Other DF Developments     Horsethief Ridge        Red Ridge Village

18. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – USFS Has new Chief · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands



12. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – National Parks Record Visitations · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

The country’s national parks have never been more popular. Though visitation to the U.S. National Park System has been steadily increasing for many years, 2024 set a new record for annual visitors. A whopping 331.9 million visits were recorded in 2024 — the most people since record-keeping began in 1904, the National Park Service reported.

That marks a 2% increase over 2023, which saw 6.36 million fewer visits, and beats the previous record set in 2016. The National Park Service (NPS) celebrated its centennial that year, racking up 330 million visits.

In past years, the news would likely be greeted with celebration. This year, however, the visitation statistics arrive at a critical moment for the nation’s public lands. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have fired thousands of parks workers at both the NPS and the U.S. Forest Service. They’ve also delayed seasonal hires and instituted a spending freeze for both the NPS and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Those actions have led to widespread protests, and former parks officials have warned of serious consequences for an understaffed park system about to enter the busy summer.

“The National Park Service just reported the highest visitation in its history, as the administration conducts massive firings and threatens to close visitor centers and public safety facilities,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “It’s a slap in the face to the hundreds of millions of people who explored our parks last year and want to keep going back.”

Closures, Reduced Services
Usage of the parks in 2024 trended upward by several different metrics. Overnight stays, both in NPS facilities and privately owned lodging, increased compared to 2023. Also, 28 individual parks set new records for visitation, and another 38 experienced visitation above the 10-year average in every month of the year.

And while national parks may receive the lion’s share of attention, they only represent 28% of park visits in 2024. The rest are spread among national recreation areas (16%), national memorials (12%), and other categories like national monuments and national seashores.

All of those are managed by the NPS, and every category has been impacted by Trump laying off 9% of the total workforce, according to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Several parks have already announced closed facilities, as well as reduced hours and services.

As the summer approaches — when visitation to the country’s parks is at its highest — former parks officials like Don Neubacher worry how parks will fare when a skeleton crew of workers must manage millions of visitors.

“Overall, between the funding and staff cuts and this freeze it makes it almost catastrophic for parks,” Neubacher, a former superintendent at Yosemite National Park, told Gear Junkie last week. “A lot of these people want to do good for the American public, and it’s almost impossible for that to be accomplished in this context.”

‘Dismantling of the NPS’
The moves by the Trump administration have affected the entire federal government, but the moves against the agencies in charge of public lands represent the “dismantling of the National Park Service as we know it,” said the NPCA’s Brengel.

After the firings, spending freezes, and hiring delays, the NPS got even more bad news last week from the Trump administration, according to the NPCA. The White House is now calling for the cancellation of 34 building leases that house visitor centers, law enforcement offices, museums, and hubs for critical programs.

The 34 locations were part of a larger list of hundreds of federal properties the Trump administration is looking to give up or sell, The Washington Post reported.

That includes nine visitor centers and visitor contact stations. Examples include the Klondike Gold Rush Historical Site in downtown Seattle and the San Antonio Missions law enforcement facility.

“They’re attacking from every side,” Chandra Rosenthal, the director of the Rocky Mountain division of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told GearJunkie. “It’s just a crisis moment right now.”

12. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – RTP Full Funding Act of 2025 · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


06. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Greater Boise NF Recreationists March Meeting · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands, Public Meetings

 GBR Presentation 030625 FINAL (PPTX)

GBR Presentation 030625 FINAL  (PDF)

05. March 2025 · Comments Off on Wilderness – Frank Church – Bighorn Crags (Video) · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


Bighorn Crags (WMV)

05. March 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – BLM Idaho Recreation Guide · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands

BLM IDAHO State Recreation Guide (PDF)

01. March 2025 · Comments Off on March 22, 2025 – Public Lands Day of Action: · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands, Public Meetings

 

From: John Bengtson <john@cvidaho.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2025 11:08:14 AM
To: Daniel Waugh <Dan.p.waugh@gmail.com>
Subject: Public Lands Day of Action

Good to chat with you, as always. Here’s the quick version of the Public Lands Day of Action:

  • Goal is to get motorized, non-motorized, hunt/fish, and conservation groups together as one.
  • Policy priorities include keeping public lands in public hands (including Zinke/Vasquez “Public Lands in Public Hands” act) and encouraging investment in public lands
  • Event will be March 22 on the Capitol Steps, featuring speakers from a broad range of perspectives and political persuasions. We’re going to be very clear that this is not an “anti-DOGE” rally, for what it’s worth.

So far, we have commitments from ITA, Selway Bitterroot Foundation, IBO, ICL, and others, and we’re in conversations with several MTB groups, environmental education organizations, and more.

TU, IWF, TRCP, IOGA, the Wilderness Society, BHA, and others are a part of the larger coalition, though there is some hesitation about the timeline for this event. Candidly, I think that if we can get a commitment from IRC, that will go a long way toward convincing them to jump in fully.

John Bengtson

Civic Engagement Coordinator
Conservation Voters for Idaho &
Conservation Voters for Idaho Education Fund
Cell: 208.342.1264 ext.707
Mail: PO Box 2802, Boise, ID 83701
Website: cvidaho.org
Email: john@cvidaho.org

FROM DAN:

Forwarding this along. The list of groups forming a coalition to preserve public lands. This is tying into our push for NM trial funding. I was asked to see about Representation from Horseman as well as groups looking to keep public lands open.

There is a rally at the Capital on March 22nd. I have been chatting with the groups involved with this and it isnt anti DOGE or one side of the aisle or the other. This group is being formed to be a bipartisan public land group dedicated to keeping our lands preserved and open for future generations.

I will likely be here. They are looking for support with name recognition as well. If your groups want to support this publicly they would like to know asap as this is happening quick and they want to promote this.

Dan

28. February 2025 · Comments Off on Education – 2025 Northern Rockies Wilderness Skills Institute · Categories: Education, Public Lands, Safety, Training Events


https://wildernessskillsinstitute.org/nrwsi/sessions/

The 2025 Northern Rockies Wilderness Skills Institute will be held from May 19 – 23, 2025. Sessions will start at 11 AM PT on Monday and conclude at 12 PM PT on Friday. To allow for flexibility in sessions this year you are allowed to register for one session on Monday and Tuesday, and one session on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. You must register for two sessions and stay for the entire week. The exception to this is the Crosscut Saw C- Recertification and Host A/B Course and Advanced Trail Maintenance courses which are week-long.

COST: There is no cost to attend.

FOOD: On your own – no food provided. Participants will handle their own meals. Cooking facilities may be provided – more information will be provided ahead of the event.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY- Registration will close April 1st

ATTENDANCE PREREQUISITE:

  • Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training class “Wilderness Act of 1964” online class – The Wilderness Act of 1964 – Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center (iu.edu)
    This online course is recommended to be taken before attending the Northern Rockies Wilderness Skills Institute but is optional. This is a free class, which includes reading short narratives, listening to audio, interactive graphics, and quizzes. The purpose of The Wilderness Act of 1964 course is to acquaint you with the contents of this law and equip you to consider its impact in managing a wilderness area; this is foundational material relevant to everyone working in wilderness stewardship. We have designed the sessions at the Wilderness Skills Institute assuming you have already taken this class and have learned this foundational material. Feedback from past students has shown that most people prefer to take this class on their own before the full session, so that they can go at their own pace and have time to reflect on what they learned. The average time it takes students is 2.5 hours. You can stop and start the class anytime you want – you don’t have to take it all at once. Once at the Wilderness Skills Institute, please be prepared to discuss what you learned from the class, what surprised you, and what was the most important thing you got from the curriculum.
  • NRWSI_25_Flyer  (PDF)
14. February 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Pick to lead BLM · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Kathleen Sgamma is a longtime oil and gas industry advocate, often critical of the agency’s policies.

Longtime oil and gas industry advocate and vocal critic of federal oversight Kathleen Sgamma is President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that oversees some 18.4 million surface acres and 42.9 million acres of mineral estate in Wyoming.

With management authorities that affect agriculture, wildlife habitat, recreation, oil and gas development, commercial-scale renewable energy and the world’s largest coal producing region in the Powder River Basin, the federal agency plays a pivotal role in Wyoming’s economy.

Sgamma is president of the Denver, Colorado-based Western Energy Alliance, a powerful oil and gas trade group that advocates for the industry’s access to public lands — like those managed by the agency she’s now slated to run. The group is often at odds with federal agencies, particularly the BLM, over federal rules and regulations. Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance are well known throughout the West, and her nomination has garnered cheers from fossil fuel industry leaders and jeers from many in conservation.

Gov. Mark Gordon described Trump’s nomination of Sgamma as “an excellent choice…to lead the Bureau of Land Management.

“As someone who has worked with Ms. Sgamma,” Gordon continued in a prepared statement, “I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands.”

Public lands advocacy group Center for Western Priorities, however, regards the nomination as “inappropriate” and “a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.”

Sgamma “has consistently misrepresented the industry’s impact on public lands, always putting oil and gas companies’ interests above those of all Americans,” Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby said in a prepared statement. “This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies.”

07. February 2025 · Comments Off on Volunteer Groups – Wallowa Mountains Hells Canyon Trails Association · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

February Update

And now to update you all on the latest news on funding our trail work.  At this time, all of our cost share agreements with the US Forest Service have been put on pause while the new federal administration evaluates the federal budget.  We have been working using funding from several Challenge Cost Share Agreements that allow us to be paid by the US Forest Service to perform the trail work on their lands.  We have one ongoing agreement to replace about 130 trail signs that were damaged in the wild fires of 2022, and close to signing 2 more agreements to continue our volunteer trail work and to hire a hosted crew of 3 to replace 2 trail bridges in the Eagle Cap Wilderness this year.  All of that is on hold for now and we do not know if any of it will be approved.  Meanwhile, our Plan B is to apply for grants from non-federal organizations to tide us over until we have a better idea about how much support we will get from our federal partners.  Please cross your fingers for us that something in Washington, DC settles out soon!

 

Now about trainings!

  • We will again offer  both a Crosscut Saw (May 16-18th) and a Chainsaw Training (May 30-June 1).  I will be sending out another email next week to our sawyers that need to recertify, but in the meantime if you know that you want to take one or both of these classes send me an email and I will get you on the list.  If you cannot attend these classes, our sister organization (Idaho Trails Association) will be presenting their saw training on May 9-11th in McCall.  Contact me if you want to attend that one.
  • We will be offering the Basic First Aid/CPR training again locally in Enterprise with Joyce Himes, and I would like to sponsor a Backcountry First Aid class, as well.  This is a class that is intermediate between Basic and Wilderness First Aid.  There is an online component (2-6 hours) and an in person component (6 hours).  It is supported by the Oregon Trails Coalition.  Please let me know if you would like to attend either type of First Aid Training.
  • I will be presenting our own training in Communication and Navigation, and also a training in Rope Rigging for Trail Work.  Again let me know if either of these is of interest.  Once I have a list of participants, I will find a date that works for the most people.
  • Our stock handlers will be presenting a class in how to operate safely around pack animals and how to help the handlers prepare and load packs on the horses or mules.  This training will be in early May, possibly the 10th.  Stay tuned for a firm date, and let me know if you are interested in attending this training.

And lastly, our partners at the US Forest Service have asked us to help get the word out about their Volunteer Wilderness Ranger positions in the Lakes Basin of the Eagle Cap Wilderness.  If you or someone you know is interested in being a Volunteer Wilderness Ranger this summer here is the link to the application:

https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a09SJ000005bDEjYAM/volunteer-wilderness-ranger-eagle-cap-wilderness

Phew!  Guess I wasn’t so brief after all, but I hope this was at least interesting if not actually useful!  I look forward to seeing you all at the Annual Meeting and out on a trail this next summer!

Mike Hansen

Executive Director

Wallowa Mountains Hells Canyon Trails Association

541-398-8225

https://www.wmhcta.org/

05. February 2025 · Comments Off on State Parks & Trails Passport Legislation IHB-0057 · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands, Public Meetings

February 5, 2025 – House Resource Committee Passed the Bill and recommends the Full House Pass it!

Parks and Trails Passport One-Pager – Oct 2024

01. February 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Taking State Ownership and Management of Public Lands with Nick Fasciano · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands

Watch Video

Nick Fasciano is the executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, Idaho’s oldest and largest statewide conservation organization promoting the conservation of Idaho’s wildlife heritage and legacy of sporting opportunities. There has been much discussion about the mismanagement of Idaho’s public lands by the BLM, and some, including the Idaho GOP, feel we should limit and reduce the amount of land owned or administered by the federal government. Nick was able to shed light on the major problems with taking over management and ownership of our incredible public lands. If we want to preserve this incredible resource for future generations, these are key considerations. Enjoy!

31. January 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands: Meet the Heroes of the Forest Pack String · Categories: Public Lands, Tips, Tricks and Tid Bits

Watch Video

Follow our horses and mules, Rory, Duke and Carla from the Shoshone Specialty Pack String as they complete work in wilderness areas throughout the Shoshone National Forest. U.S. Forest Service pack strings consist of horses and mules, lead packer and assistant packer and accomplish vital projects throughout the Rocky Mountain Region and beyond. They are critical for compliance with the Wilderness Act.

“On all these national forests that have wilderness areas, you can get some work done bringing material in on your back,” said Crosby Davidson, Natural Resource Specialist – Trails, “but there’s some management that would be very difficult for us to do unless we used helicopters or other things that are prohibited by the Wilderness Act. That is why a pack string is generally the best bet.”

(USDA Forest Service video by Travis Weger)

24. January 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Idaho House Bill 0057-2025 · Categories: BCHI /BCHA, Current Events, Public Lands

H0057SOP

H0057 (text)

16. January 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands – Pick for Secretary of the Interior · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Who: Doug Burgum

Nominated for: Secretary of the Interior

You might know him from: The 2024 Republican presidential primary. The former governor of North Dakota ran on his experience as a successful businessman before dropping out of the primary and becoming a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, then the front-runner, landing on the VP shortlist.

More about Burgum:

  • He sold his software company to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion.
  • He is a big booster of oil and gas drilling.
  • He pledged for North Dakota to be carbon neutral by 2030, largely through carbon capture and storage.
  • Position: The Department of the Interior oversees public and federal lands and their natural resources, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

    If confirmed as secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum would become a key player in implementing one of the Trump administration’s overarching goals: “Drill, baby, drill.”

    The Department of the Interior manages roughly one-fifth of the lands and waters of the United States, giving Burgum — the former governor of an oil-rich state — significant leverage to increase domestic oil and gas production, which is already at an all-time high. But the massive department also oversees national parks and monuments, endangered species protections and relations with federally recognized Native American tribes.

    During the first Trump administration, the Department of the Interior cut regulations to make it easier to drill on federal land, significantly weakened the power and scope of the Endangered Species Act and shrunk two national monuments. Deb Haaland, secretary of the Interior during the Biden administration, reversed many of these actions and focused on boosting conservation and renewable energy.

    Burgum is expected to reverse course again. Burgum’s pro-drilling stance is fairly well established, and as Trump’s proposed head of the newly proposed National Energy Council — a body that will oversee regulatory processes across government agencies — he’d have considerable power to push fossil fuel extraction.

  • READ MORE
04. January 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands (MT) – Montana sues Park Service · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

Montana state officials have already made a New Year’s resolution: Sue the federal government. In a lawsuit filed on Dec. 31, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte accused the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) of violating established agreements for managing bison.

Federal wildlife officials have ignored Montana’s concerns about increased numbers of bison, the lawsuit said, and also avoided vaccinating the animals against brucellosis, a disease that worries the state’s cattle-ranching industry.

It’s the latest escalation in a decades-long conflict between state and federal officials over management of bison herds in Yellowstone National Park. The core issue is about how to manage the animals when they leave park borders and roam into Montana. According to the lawsuit, the NPS changed the rules regarding bison numbers and vaccination in a 2024 environmental impact statement without consulting state officials.

The lawsuit was filed in district court by Gianforte’s office, the Montana Department of Livestock, and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. The NPS didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

“The new Bison Management Plan is another example of Yellowstone National Park’s tendency to do what it wants, leaving Montana to collect the pieces,” the lawsuit said.
READ FULL STORY

04. January 2025 · Comments Off on Public Lands (WY) – Essential Connectivity · Categories: Current Events, Public Lands

READ FULL STORY

Uncle Sam has a belated Christmas gift for anyone who loves visiting national parks.

After years of political wrangling between state and federal officials, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced Monday the purchase of 640 acres of additional land within Grand Teton National Park. Known as the Kelly Parcel, the “picturesque landscape” has mountain views and “world-class wildlife habitat,” federal officials said in a news release.

The parcel was the largest remaining piece of unprotected land within the national park’s boundaries. By adding the area to the park, wildlife managers can maintain “essential connectivity for wildlife in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” officials said. They called the zone one of the last remaining temperate ecosystems on the planet that’s mostly intact.

The $100 million sale to preserve the parcel was made possible through a partnership between the Interior Department and the National Park Service. They pooled money from the Grand Teton National Park Foundation ($37.6 million), the Land and Water Conservation Fund ($62.4 million), and the National Park Foundation. But private donations were a big part of the conservation victory as well. Nearly 400 donors from 46 states made gifts ranging from $10 million to $15 million.

“We are in awe of the incredible generosity of hundreds of people who stepped forward to protect this essential parcel,” Grand Teton National Park Foundation President Leslie Mattson said.

27. December 2024 · Comments Off on SBFC – Selway Bitterroot Frank Foundation · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


Link To Web Site

Watch on Youtube


Watch on Youtube

Marble Creek Hike September

27. December 2024 · Comments Off on PUG – Pulaski Users Group · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


Watch on Youtube

Visit PUG Website

27. December 2024 · Comments Off on ITA – End of year wrap-up · Categories: Around The Campfire, Public Lands


Watch Video on Youtube

ITA Membership Drive