By PAUL HILL
Greg Moore’s recent story on efforts by proponents of a Boulder-White Clouds National Monument to articulate their rationale for overlapping a monument on the already permanently protected Sawtooth NRA provides some important and helpful insights. It also deserves comment on certain facts proponents neglected to cover in their rationale.
Proponents’ arguments for overlapping a national monument listed in Greg’s story are three: It could further restrict mining activities, prohibit motorized recreation on certain trails, and specify greater measures to protect fish and wildlife habitat. In fact, a national monument cannot restrict mining any further in the Sawtooth NRA (new mining claims are already prohibited), and any needed measures to prohibit or restrict motorized recreation or further protect fish and wildlife can be accomplished by modifying existing NRA management and travel plans. And this can be all be done without the years of uncertainty, delays and diversion of resources that would inevitably accompany the creation of an overlapping national monument.
The article correctly notes there are 78 valid mining claims left in the NRA, most of them very small. Under existing Sawtooth NRA restrictions, no new claims can be created. Moreover, existing claims cannot be exercised if such activity would “substantially impair” the scenic, wildlife or recreational values for which the NRA was created. The result is that in over 40 years since the NRA was created, no meaningful mining development has occurred. The suggestion by some that a national monument declaration could prioritize elimination of remaining claims has no basis in fact, since the only way to remove valid existing claims is through purchase or exchange. This cannot be accomplished through a national monument proclamation. Only Congress can authorize this.
Regarding motorized recreation, four-wheel ATVs are already restricted to roads within the NRA and proponents have repeatedly stated their national monument proposal would not close any existing NRA roads. This leaves the question of restricting two-wheel “dirt bikes” on some trails, an issue easily and effectively addressed by simply modifying existing NRA management and travel plans. Proponents claim “multiple attempts” to persuade the Forest Service to prohibit use of motorized recreation in selected areas have been fruitless. However, NRA officials report that during the past four years or more none of the primary proponents has had a single discussion requesting additional restrictions on motorized recreation in the NRA with appropriate Forest Service staff. So such alleged “attempts” seem long outdated and with little current value in today’s debate.
Finally, as to fish and wildlife protection, there is no reason an effective plan for the East Fork of the Salmon River cannot be cooperatively developed by the agencies currently managing the area without a national monument. Such an approach has major advantages, such as promptness, efficiency and avoidance of the confusion brought on by the division of oversight over three other important fisheries (the Big Wood, Big Lost and Upper Salmon), which a national monument declaration would cause.
So we must ask, what unique benefits a national monument overlap on the NRA would bring to offset the years of resource diversion, delayed decisions and conflict and confusion an overlap would bring? Based on the substance of the proponents’ case to date, the true answer appears to be none.
If meaningful additional protection of wilderness qualities in the Boulder-White Clouds is the goal, proponents should stop pursuing a needless and problematic national monument overlap and focus on achieving designation of these peaks as true wilderness through enactment of the CIEDRA legislation. While CIEDRA has been pending for a number of years, it is important to remember that it took decades of patient hard work to craft and pass the law that created, and for over forty-years has protected, the Sawtooth NRA. And contrary to proponents’ lament that Congress currently won’t enact wilderness legislation, this April Congress created the Sleeping Bear Wilderness in Michigan and more recently the appropriate House Committee passed two bills that would create additional wilderness areas in Nevada and Washington. In short, the path to additional protection for the Boulder-White Clouds is clear; it just takes more patience and hard work to achieve it.
Paul Hill lives in Stanley. Hill is president of the nonprofit Sawtooth Society but submitted this opinion on his own.
