Mike Simpson is once again leading the fight to designate Boulder-White Clouds as wilderness.
Rep. Mike Simpson has spent the past six years wrangling with environmentalists, all terrain vehicle enthusiasts, ranchers, county commissioners and fellow D.C. politicians to fashion a compromise and pass Idaho's first wilderness bill in nearly three decades.
So, is Boulder-White Clouds fatigue setting in?
Simpson, with a tip of the hat to the power of positive thinking, says no.
"I'm just as optimistic today as I was (last year)," he said.
In what is becoming a recurrent theme, Simpson reintroduced the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act on Jan. 4.
On Feb. 7, it was routed to the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, where it's been gathering dust since.
New House Resources Committee Chairman Nick Jo Rahall of West Virginia came in with his own set of priorities, including a rewrite of the national energy policy and passage of a Washington state wilderness bill.
Simpson said he hopes to see some action on CEIDRA soon.
Late last year, Simpson thought he had the deal done, only to be double-crossed by his own party's outgoing House Speaker, Dennis Hastert.
Simpson had attached CEIDRA to another piece of legislation. Members of House and Senate leadership had agreed on details. But at the last moment, Hastert, with the help of outgoing Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, replaced CEIDRA with a tax break for Hastert's home state of Illinois.
"It should have passed last year," Simpson said.
The bill remains the same as the one that died last year.
It would protect 312,000 acres in the Boulder-White Cloud Mountains from development, becoming Idaho's third-largest wilderness tract.
In an effort to placate interested parties from across the political spectrum, CEIDRA sets aside roughly 1,000 acres near Boise for a motorized park and awards federal land to the cities of Stanley and Challis, and to Custer County, which is more than 95 percent federally owned and struggles to maintain a tax base for basic services.
But some of that is sure to change.
Simpson in past years has played the hand he was dealt, crafting a bill intended to placate a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president.
But the game has changed, and Simpson said he is meeting with key staffers on the Resources Committee. He's discussed CIEDRA with Rahall and Don Young, the ranking Republican on the committee. Simpson has received no promise of a hearing on his bill but hasn't asked for one, either.
It's a fine line that Simpson walks these days. He must attempt to appease Democrats in Congress while holding together a coalition of conservative Idahoans.
Democrats aren't likely to embrace the federal land giveaway to Custer County, something both Simpson and Rick Johnson, the executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, say is key to holding this together.
"We can't lose Custer County," Johnson said in December.
"(Democrats) understand that in the end, we've got to help Custer County create a tax base," Simpson said.
The debate over Boulder-White Clouds has been around for decades.
In the late 1960s, some, including Republican Gov. Don Samuelson, proposed an open pit mine at Castle Peak. That led to the election of Democrat Cecil Andrus and the passage, in 1972, of the Sawtooth National Recreation Act, which made the White Clouds a wilderness study area.
Various efforts to designate the White Clouds as wilderness have fallen short over the years. Simpson, however, isn't giving up and is doing everything he can to make sure his Idaho coalition maintains its energy and enthusiasm.
"I keep telling them, 'this year,'" Simpson said. "They keep going, 'right.'"
Senior reporter Corey Taule can be reached at 542-6754.
Did you know?
More than 4 million acres are designated as wilderness in Idaho. Only four states -- Alaska (58 million acres), California (14 million acres), Arizona (4.5 million acres) and Washington (4.3 million acres) -- have more wilderness than Idaho.
Idaho has six designated wilderness areas. They are the Selway/Bitterroot (1.9 million acres); Craters of the Moon (43,000 acres); Sawtooth Wilderness (217,000 acres); Hells Canyon (84,000); Gospel Hump (206,000 acres); and Frank Church River of No Return (2.3 million acres).
Former Idaho Sen. Frank Church sponsored the law that created the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964.
The National Forest Labor Management Act of 1976 specifies wilderness as one of six allowable uses of national forest lands. The others are recreation, range, fish and wildlife, watershed and timber harvest.
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