BOISE, Idaho--A report issued in July by a bipartisan Idaho task force is prompting hope among some and skepticism among others with its recommendations for widening the state's role in the management of federal lands, primarily those managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
The 16-member task force recommended three options for widening state control over the 64 percent of Idaho territory that is owned and managed by federal officials. All three of the task force's options fall short of the most controversial path they could have taken: directly transferring federal lands to the state.
Among the task force's recommendations, the least radical option would be cooperative agreements to jointly manage combined blocks of state and federal land. The intermediate option, known as collaboration, would vest authority for managing forest units within a 15-member board comprised of various representatives of local interest groups.
The most radical of the three recommended alternatives would be to turn federal lands into trusts whose timber-sale or use-permit revenues would be earmarked for schools, local governments, wildlife, recreation or some other agreed-upon purpose. Under this option, the governor would name three trustees to oversee the project and be allowed to veto the four appointees chosen by the Agriculture Department.
"The guiding principles we decided on were, one, that the ownership of federally administered lands would not be transferred to the state; two, that a variety of uses would continue on the lands; and three, that there would be public involvement in the decision-making process," task force co-chair Judi Danielson, a Republican state senator, said in an interview in Boise. "We've only recommended a pilot project, so if it doesn't work, so be it."
In a statehouse interview, Idaho Gov. Phil Batt (R)--who was not a member of the task force--said he was encouraged by the panel's work. "The report is far from a completed game plan," he said, "but it probably has gone further than any national effort to try to find a better way of managing federal resources. We think our management of state lands is better than the federal government's, and we think can work in partnership to improve things."
Critics, however, pounced on the plan, noting that the panel's two most conservation-minded members--Scott Brown, state issues director of the Idaho Conservation League, and Boise State University political scientist John Freemuth--both resigned, citing a pro-resource-industry slant to the task force. The task force had been appointed by the state land board, which is comprised of Idaho's five elected statewide officials, including four Republicans and one Democrat.
In a scathing commentary, Lewiston Morning Tribune columnist Jim Fisher wrote that the board was "comprised of three representatives from the timber industry, one from the mining industry, two ranchers, one motorized vehicle activist, two legislators friendly to all the above and an emissary each from the Fish and Game Commission and Parks and Recreation Board." He added that there was little chance "that the document would permit any goal other than resource extraction to interfere with state-managed tree farms."
In an interview, Freemuth, who considers himself more of a neutral academic than an environmental partisan, said that "the problem we were having is that there's not a fundamental agreement on what national forests are for. It used to be that the dominant position was that forests were there for the extraction of natural resources. That is still a legitimate purpose, but more and more people now see national forests as wilderness parks and reserves. When you have that kind of fundamental disagreement, there's no room to move, so gridlock kicks in."
The board, which met 33 times over a year and a half, was created against a backdrop of long-simmering frustration with federal land stewardship in the state. In some Idaho counties, only 20 percent of the land is private, and thus taxable--so local officials complain that they find it difficult to provide sufficient services for their sprawling jurisdictions. In addition, 60 percent of the northern Idaho economy involves forest products, so when federal officials tighten logging rules, many Idahoans suffer.
Democratic state senator and task force co-chair Chuck Cuddy added that elk habitat in his northern Idaho region has deteriorated because it has not been kept sufficiently airy and uncrowded for the elk's needs. And some Idaho officials charge that an extensive bout of forest fires in 1994 was worsened by wrongheaded forest-management dictates from Washington.
Batt said his state has managed its resources on a "sustained yield basis--we harvest the same amount we grow. We do not allow insects and other enemies of timber growth to take over, and we don't allow underbrush to accumulate to the point where forests can be ravaged by fire or disease. One fire a few years back damaged very little state land, but at same time harmed many tracts of federal land."
In addition, Joe Hinson, a task force member who was formerly executive vice president of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association, argued that states not only benefit from streamlined bureaucracies and clearer goals, they also earn $5-6 dollars of revenue for every dollar they spend on land management.
"If a citizen has a problem with an Idaho lands department decision, they can go immediately to the source, state their case, and get a decision, fast and assured," Hinson said. "The other important aspect of state lands is that they have a particular mission--to provide returns to public schools or other institutions. The purpose of national forests are increasingly unclear--it's all things to all people. We would maintain a multiple-use system but return decision-making authority to a more local level."
Critics contest many of these assertions, noting that there is widespread disagreement even on such seemingly transparent issues as how to measure forest health, let alone figuring out which system of management provides more of it. "I can't find any definitive conclusion that the resources are better under either the state or the federal government," Freemuth said.
Freemuth added that while states may have smoother appeals processes and clearer mandates, those attributes come at the cost of narrowing the universe of parties that can influence management policies. "I polled Idahoans two years in a row, and they do support the transfer of lands to the states, but only if federal laws continue to apply," he said. "But I suspect state officials would be nervous about taking over lands with that many restrictions."
"Local control is an increasingly hot buzzword out here," added Brown of the Idaho Conservation League. "The problem is that when that ideal gets implemented on the ground in a place like Idaho, where the extraction industry is so dominant, local control essentially means control by the timber companies."
U.S. Forest Service officials in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
In Idaho, task force members are throwing environmentalist criticism right back at the critics, contending that environmental advocates sought to stay away from the task force so they would have an easier time labeling its recommendations as biased. "It's clear that the [environmental groups] are big businesses and would suffer a loss of jobs if the state didn't have conflict" over the environment, Danielson said.
The task force's report is now in the hands of the Idaho land board, which is expected to pass it along favorably to the state legislature this winter. Because action by Congress would be required to enact any change in land-management status, the proposal's advocates acknowledge that change will take place only over the long term.
In the Senate, Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has introduced a bill that would allow states or non-profit organizations to manage national forests. The bill has attracted Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., as a cosponsor, but the legislation is not currently thought to be on the Senate's front burner.
Even sometime adversaries like Hinson and Freemuth agree that the debate is likely to go on for a long time. "These are real issues," Hinson says, "and they have to be resolved by answering a basic question: What are public lands going to be for? We went through this at the turn of the century, and we're now revisiting them. I quite honestly don't know how it will turn out."
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