Wednesday, August 22, 2007

?I took a hike?


After returning tuckered out but happy Aug. 11 from a quality three-day backpacking trip in the White Clouds, I was amused to read Rep. Mike Simpson's Idaho Mountain Express editorial admonishing me to "take a hike." Perfect.

I somehow intuitively sensed all along I had been "on track" the previous three walking days. (I have taken three other multiple-day backpacks in the White Clouds in recent years.)

The congressman's inexplicable assertion that the 162 prime SNRA giveaway acres in three parcels contiguous with Stanley "don't compare" is convoluted thinking. The eight-acre Benner Street parcel was purchased in 1989 with $341,502 taxpayer dollars specifically to stop development of a trailer park. Turning around and giving it away for commercial development is beyond absurd. The other two SNRA parcels of 68 and 86 acres have absolutely crucial wildlife (elk winter range), riparian, wetlands, fisheries and world class scenic view values. They are vitally important open space.

Mike's defensiveness comes through in his recent writings. Perhaps he suspects the elaborate CIEDRA house of cards with a plethora of unworkable moving parts is near collapse. Increasingly well-informed public opinion opposing this fatally flawed bill appropriately indicates this might be the case.

Privatization of our precious public lands (5,693 acres in CIEDRA) is dead wrong. CIEDRA would be a new unfunded mandate and a fiscal nightmare.

The land management agencies are trying—and failing—to cope with existing mandates.

I am a life-long advocate for real Wilderness. CIEDRA is anything but. The bulldozers and chain saws are not revved up at the edge of the White Clouds. The Sawtooth National Forest Land Management Plan has solid land and water protections in place.

CIEDRA is hopefully approaching well-deserved dead duck status. As an advocate for public lands values and as a sorely frustrated taxpayer I respectfully suggest that if Rep. Simpson wants to do something truly productive for his constituents he should drop CIEDRA like the failed experiment it is and then concentrate with his colleagues in the House of Representatives on meaningful reform of the antiquated and destructive 1872 Mining law. Now there is something we could all get behind.

Scott Phillips

Hailey




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