This is tough for members of the community who are looking to find information on the Idaho County, Idaho County Airport, Ida-Lew Economic Development Council, Grangeville Golf Club, and even some businesses and political websites.

Certainly cyber terrorism is at an all time high these days and every server in America is under attack daily.   But it is disconcerting to see that an important website representing the county, when some citizens might need to catch up on a non-work day, is down on any day, much less all of these community sites down for hours on a Saturday.

When choosing a web host or even a webmaster, its important to ask friends and other community leaders about the candidates in the field.  Very quickly you will learn the issues and problems that will likely be faced.   Server uptime is EXTREMELY important for any site owner and if a web server professional cannot with some level of integrity and confidence – ensure at the very minimum – a 98% uptime  then you simply need to make the decision that is best for your own priorities.

Panelists for the KBSX community conversation included:

Scott Bedke is the Speaker of the Idaho House and he represents House District 27. He’s a long time rancher who calls Oakley, Idaho home.

Dr. John Freemuth teaches in Boise State University’s Master of Public Administration Program and Political Science Department. He’s an expert on natural resources and public land policy and administration.

David Groeschl is Idaho’s state forester. He joined the Idaho Department of Lands in 2008. He’s also the Deputy Director of the Forestry and Fire Division at the department. He has 28 years of forestry experience.

Jonathan Oppenheimer is a Senior Conservation Associate with the Idaho Conservation League. His work focuses on forest, fire, roadless, wildlife and other public lands-related issues.

We recorded our conversation before an audience. Here you can watch our guests talk about the future of Idaho’s public lands and hear questions from the crowd.

For Idahoans, Sine Die might as well mean, “The clown car is out of gas.”

Last week the state legislature wrapped up its work for the year, four days late and $120,000 over budget.

Regardless, the session is generally being hailed as a success.  After all, it went 86 days without one major discussion about forcing anything into a woman’s birth canal. That might sound like a low standard, but for the Idaho Legislature, it shooting for the stars.

Plaudits for this year’s legislature include: the formation of a state health exchange, or as Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll calls it, “The Holocaust,” convening a hearing on gays rights, or as Sen. Nuxoll calls it, “The Holocaust,”  and passing a 2-percent increase in education funding, or as Sen. Nuxoll calls it, “The Holocaust.”

It also left the education budget $100 million short of 2009 funding levels; it passed up billions of dollars in Medicaid expansion and it unleashed over sized trucks in northern Idaho without bothering to study the dangers. But hey, who’s counting?

At least legislators didn’t punish voters for Props 1, 2, and 3 by making it harder to certify ballot measures. Oh wait, they did.

And that’s what makes all this backslapping so unpalatable. When the voters spoke last November, the legislature was listening. And instead of responding with, “Oh sorry, we’ll pay more attention to our constituents next time,” they answered with, “How dare you!” Which is a level of conceit that would even make George Will blush – maybe.

But seriously, look at the bright side. The legislature could have punished the voters and wasted a time on nullification, secession, abortion and gay marriage. But it didn’t.

And for the Gem State, that’s about as good as it’s going to get.

After all, this is Idaho – we can always do worse.

Lieutenant Levity

South Fork Station, Idaho

By ERIC BARKER of the The Lewiston Morning Tribune, posted: Sunday, March 17, 2013

A timber company is floating a draft conservation easement designed to protect public access and prevent development if the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange moves forward.

The easement, written by Western Pacific Timber Co. and shared recently with some Idaho County recreation groups, covers about 20,000 acres of land in the Fish Creek, Cove and Blacktail Butte areas south and east of Grangeville on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest.

SEE MAP AND DRAFT EASEMENT HERE

“We are very engaged in looking at ways, in perpetuity, we can preserve these lands, as far as public access, in terms of a conservation easement or deed restriction,” said Andy Hawes, an attorney for Western Pacific.

The company owns about 40,000 acres of land at the headwaters of the Lochsa River near Lolo Pass. The U.S. Forest Service has proposed giving the company as much as 18,000 acres of federal land strewn across several northern Idaho counties in exchange for the Lochsa property. The proposal has met strong public resistance in both Idaho County and on the Palouse, where citizens stand to lose access to Forest Service land where they hunt, fish, hike and practice other forms of recreation.

Idaho County also opposed the trade [Alternative F], but commissioners there said they could endorse it if it was an acre-for-acre exchange solely within the county. That scenario, which would protect the county’s private property tax base, was analyzed by the Forest Service but dismissed as beyond its authority. By law, the agency can only exchange land on a value-for-value basis.

Even so, appraisers, who are currently comparing the values of the private and federal land that could be included in a trade, are also looking at land outlined in the county’s proposal. Hawes said members of the Idaho congressional delegation asked for those lands to be appraised.

“They were very clear in making that request, they have not taken a stance. They are not saying, ‘We are going to do a legislative process,’ ” he said.

If Congress were to consider a bill approving the exchange it would go through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee where Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, is a member.

Brad Hoaglund, a spokesman for Risch, said the senator is aware of the proposal but is not working on enabling legislation. He is willing to consider a bill if people in favor of the trade and those opposed can come to an agreement.

“He is committed to help them when they reach that point in time they need his help in Congress,” Hoaglund said. “Until then it’s up to them to get that work done. There is no bill. There is no plan. He hears from people on the issue, of where they are. Beyond that, it’s wait and see.”

Hawes termed the easement a discussion point and said the company welcomes feedback. Although it is designed to address the fears of people against the trade, in some cases it is doing the opposite. Ray Anderson of Grangeville said many people were convinced the acre-for-acre scenario was dead when Idaho County Commissioner Skip Brandt said [September 4, 2012 - Idaho County Commissioner Meeting] old-growth trees and endangered species habitat on parts of the land would prevent the trade from moving forward. But those issues would only pertain to a administrative trade carried out by the Forest Service, not a congressional trade.

“Nobody understands the congressional side of this, that it doesn’t have to go through (the National Environmental Policy Act), that it doesn’t have to be blessed by the Forest Service,” Anderson said. “The local politicians try to make everybody feel it’s not going to happen, but you look out the back door and here is a map and here is a conservation easement proposed.”

Sandra Mitchell, a former congressional staffer and executive director of the Idaho Recreation Council, has been introducing some members of the Idaho County snowmobile and motorized recreation community to the conservation easement. She said supporting the easement isn’t the same as backing the trade.

“It just means if there is an exchange, this is the way to get access protected.”

Bob Hafer, a member of the Grangeville Sno-Drifters club, has studied the draft easement. He is apprehensive about the trade and fears it could disrupt the grooming of snowmobile trails that start in the Fish Creek area and disrupt other forms of public land recreation. But he also thinks, if it is going to go through, people ought to try to preserve access.

“Something is going to happen, so how do we best make this go in a direction we can live with?” he said. “This is what I’m thinking on and I think a lot of folks understand that, one way or another, we better be looking at trying to preserve what we can.”

Anderson said the easement doesn’t ease his fears. He served on a citizens task force that analyzed the county’s proposal and concluded an easement would not be effective.

“They are complicated, they are expensive to write, they are expensive to maintain, if there are problems, who pays the legal fees for problems?” he said. “It’s way too complex, way too dangerous.”

The appraisal process is expected to continue into July.

SEPARATE POSTING 3-27-2012 in Idaho Statesman

LAND EXCHANGE

Lochsa swap must be stopped

The Idaho Recreation Council meeting in Grangeville on March 12 was a slick trick. Executive Director Sandra Mitchell in her introduction stated her organization was an advocate for public land users. She also stated she was called by Idaho County commissioners to “help” protect users’ access once the Lochsa land exchange was completed. She then went into a sales pitch to explain how conservation easements from Western Pacific Timber Co. would protect users’ access. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you are advocating for users, then sell an exchange that would take 40,000 acres of public land and turn it into private. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If your ATV or snowmobile club belongs to Idaho Recreation Council you might want to take a serious look at your advocate! Not one acre is our battle cry! Stop the swap is our group! Say no to Western Pacific Timber stealing our land! Join today at stoptheswap@gmail.com!

RAY PAYTON, Riggins

WILDERNESS

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/03/27/2051989/letters-to-the-editor.html#storylink=cpy

Currently we are seeing a movement to “privatize” our Public Land. The argument is it would boost the economy and provide jobs.   This action is “Wealth Redistribution” in reverse.   It steals from the Poor and gives to the Rich.   The Poorest Citizens are equal owners with the Rich when it comes to Public Land.    Butch, Skip, James, Jim and Mike want to steal from the Poor and give to the Rich.

When the Public Land is sold off only Wealthy Individuals and Corporations will be able to profit.   Many of our Middle Class Citizens can not afford to take their families to the movie or a concert.    Their idea of recreation is a Huckleberry excursion, nature hike or camping trip into their National Forest right outside their back door.

Our Heritage as Westerners will drastically and permanently be altered. Butch, Skip, James, Jim and Mike will find their support from the Wealthy.    The price will be paid by those who lose their access.

Ray Payton

Riggins
–
Ray Payton
Stop The Swap
Visit our website :: Stay Informed!  http://stoptheswap.net
Email: stoptheswap@gmail.com

Rep. Ken Ivory of Utah is leading Idaho into the darkness of the unknown.

Last year, Ivory sponsored a Utah state bill that was signed into law that attempts to seize 3 million acres of public land from the federal government. So how much will his scheme cost the beehive state? Ivory has no idea. Last month, he told an Idaho legislative committee that he’s just getting around to studying its financial effects.

Enter Ivory disciple and Idaho County Commissioner Jim Chmelik. He has no idea what a similar scheme would cost the state of Idaho, but he’s for it anyway. In December, during an Idaho County Commissioner meeting, he advocated waiting a couple of years to study the issue. Yet one month later, he was at Mr. Ivory’s side, eliciting grotesquely inflated statistics about the damage of last summer’s wildfires without citing a source. Then he used those numbers as “Exhibit A” for a full-scale land transfer.

Mr. Ivory and Mr. Chmelik are luring Idaho into the unknown. They have no idea what the consequences will be, but they’re for it anyway. We must hope Idaho lawmakers reject their nostrum.

Derek Farr

BOISE – Long before he got into politics, Paul Shepherd was interested in public lands.

The five-term representative from Riggins grew up enjoying the outdoors. His family hunted and fished, and his father ran a sawmill. He bought his own small mill near Stanley when he was 23.

“That was my American dream,” Shepherd said. “My wife and I talked about having our own business when we were still dating. I’d come out the door in the morning to fire up the mill and look out across the valley to the Sawtooth Range. I couldn’t believe I was so blessed.”

Initially the mill handled logs harvested from national forests. It has since relocated and now relies primarily on private timber.

That’s partly because federal timber harvests in Idaho have dropped precipitously, from an average of about 800 million board feet per year in the 1980s to less than 200 million today.

“When I was on the school board (in Riggins and Garden Valley), I saw how much money schools lost when we started letting the forests burn,” Shepherd said. “We’ve lost jobs and had mills shut down. That’s why I got involved in politics, because I saw what was happening with the forests.”

Reduced harvests, increased risk of catastrophic wildfires and “oppressive” federal policies are among the reasons why Shepherd and other lawmakers are pushing for ownership of public lands.

They introduced legislation Thursday calling on Congress to turn over title to about half the federal lands in Idaho, including national forests, roadless areas and grazing lands.

Similar demands have been made in the past. The last realistic opportunity Western states had of acquiring public lands came nearly a century ago (see related story).  Absent a court challenge, it’s unlikely they’ll prevail today.

Given the current budget challenges, though, Congress may be willing to consider a transfer of management authority.

“Allowing states to manage federal lands would be more likely to get a positive hearing in Congress, as opposed to the outright transfer of ownership,” said U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.

That’s essentially what Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter proposed in February, when testifying before the House Subcommittee on Public Lands. He lobbied for a demonstration project to show how a trust lands management model might work on national forests.

“It would be inappropriate to suggest an abrupt move to a different management system without first testing it on a smaller scale,” he said. “A pilot project could demonstrate in direct fashion how an alternative approach would be applied on the ground.”

Logging heyday spawned environmental backlash

Whether it involves a transfer of ownership or just a change in management authority, any revision of the status of public lands raises a number of concerns.

“Would these lands be managed the same as state endowment lands, or would this create some new status of lands that could take into consideration multiple values?” asked Jonathan Oppenheimer, a senior conservation associate with the Idaho Conservation League.

Under the endowment approach, he said, the state would manage lands primarily for revenue generation.

A recent analysis by the Department of Lands, for example, suggested Idaho could earn $51 million to $75 million per year if it took over management of 6.9 million acres of national forest – but that assumed timber sales would return to historic levels of 800 million to 1 billion board feet per year.

That kind of “nuclear forestry” no longer reflects what people want in forest management, Oppenheimer said. In fact, the heyday of logging helped spawn the national backlash that led to the environmental restrictions so many lawmakers now oppose.

Unsustainable clear-cuts in the Bitterroot National Forest in the late 1960s, for example, spurred passage of the National Forest Management Act, which regulates harvest practices and requires long-range planning.

The get-out-the-cut mentality “was seen as a too-narrowly focused management approach of our public lands,” Oppenheimer said. “That’s not what people want. They want to see a more moderate approach that takes into consideration clean water, endangered species, public input and a whole variety of issues.”

Department of Lands Director Tom Schultz said this question of how public lands would be managed is critical to determining whether Idaho could really handle them more efficiently – or more profitably – than federal agencies.

“If this (land transfer) were to occur, the first thing I’d want to understand is what’s my mission,” he said. “When it comes to state endowment lands, there’s clarity of mission: We’re generating revenue to support education. That mission isn’t as clear on federal lands.”

Management goals and values may differ

A switch from federal to state management would be transparent in some respects, Schultz said. The Endangered Species Act, Clean Air and Clean Water acts apply across all jurisdictions, and best management practices are largely the same.

“You wouldn’t see significant differences in terms of effects on fish and streams,” he said. “It may look different – typically, the federal government will have greater (riparian) buffers – but fundamentally you wouldn’t see significant deviations under what we would do.”

Visually, the state does more “even-age” timber management, Schultz said. His agency uses clear-cuts on about 30 percent of timber sales, whereas federal lands have more uneven-age stands and old-growth is rarely harvested, allowing for more diverse wildlife habitat.

That gets back to the issue of management goals and values. Even Shepherd faults the state for its “crop approach” to timber management.

“I believe public lands should be used for multiple interests, not just to supply the stud mill market,” he said. “Mowing down 40 acres of trees is fine for private lands, if that’s what the owner wants, but I’m concerned when the state does it. It has a negative impact on tourism, hunting and fishing and watershed protection.”

From a procedural standpoint, Schultz said the endowment lands model is generally more streamlined than the federal approach. It offers less opportunity for public comment, less opportunity for a wide range of interests to have input – but that also means less opportunity for “analysis paralysis” and litigation.

Since he was hired in 2011, there hasn’t been a single lawsuit on a state timber sale, whereas more than 200 million board feet has been litigated in Region 1 of the Forest Service.

“That volume gets tied up for years,” Schultz said. “It increases your costs in terms of staff – more ecologists, more biologists, all the things you need to do to create a more ‘defensible’ document – not necessarily to make a better decision, but to be defensible in a court of law, so a judge feels you’ve evaluated a range of alternative.”

‘Health is a value statement, not a scientific standard’

Jay O’Laughlin, director of the University of Idaho’s Policy Analysis Group, said these kinds of trade-offs are inherent to any approach to public lands management.

At the federal level, the National Environmental Policy Act was created to try and balance competing interests. The problem is that it requires agencies to take a “hard look” at various alternatives – language so vague it leaves them open to lawsuits on procedural issues, rather than substantive grounds.

“NEPA makes it extremely difficult to do large-scale projects,” O’Laughlin said. “It forces agencies to look at smaller projects that are easier to defend. I’ve heard some (federal) managers say they won’t do projects bigger than 5,000 acres because the NEPA process is too demanding.”

Idaho has 20 million acres of national forests, he said. Doing a handful of 5,000 and 10,000 acres timber sales each year won’t keep up with the bug kill, much less with the total annual growth.

“We grow about a billion cubic feet of wood in Idaho each year,” O’Laughlin said. “Current Forest Service plans call for removing 5 percent of that. If we went back to the historic harvest of 800 million board feet, that still removes less than half. Bugs and fire kill about 40 percent, and more trees die every year.”

While dead trees provide critical habitat for dozens of bird and wildlife species, they also create conditions for catastrophic wildfires, stymie economic opportunities and give the perception that federal forests aren’t as healthy as state lands.

“Health is a value statement, not a scientific standard,” O’Laughlin said. “Some people would say a no-harvest policy is the best for national forests, that it’s the ‘healthiest’ approach. The trade-off is that you don’t manage the fuels. In 2012, more acres burned in Idaho than in any other state. To me, that’s not healthy.”

But neither is losing access to public lands – and for the Idaho Conservation League, that’s one of the biggest concerns with the land transfer proposal. Given how tight state budgets are, the group worries these lands will become a funding source, a type of savings account lawmakers can dip into during the next economic downturn or whenever they want to pay for another special interest tax break – or when they need to maintain the 59,000 miles or so of forest roads they’d get along with the land transfer.

“One of the reasons Idaho is a growing state that has a positive long-term outlook is because we have this tremendous public land resource,” Oppenheimer said. “We have wildlife, and hunting and fishing, and the most miles of white water in the Lower 48. Idahoans don’t want to see ‘no trespassing’ signs go up. They put great value in access to public lands. Like (former governor) Cecil Andrus said, it’s Idaho’s second paycheck. On weekends, you can go out and have an alpine lake or blue ribbon trout stream in most cases all to yourself. The value of that isn’t something you can put into a balance sheet. It far outweighs the $50 million you might be able to generate by aggressively logging our heritage.”

This recreation and access easement is for discussion purposes only – of how a recreation / access easement could potentially address public access issues and concerns as it relates to land Western Pacific Timber may acquire under the Idaho County Alternative F.  This is subject to final review and approval from both Western Pacific Timber and the unidentified easement holder.

January 4, 2013 Discussion Draft

At a recent Forest Revision Planning Meeting at the Senior Citizens Center, Forest Service Supervisor Rick Brazell told those present that the Record of Decision on the Lochsa Land Trade would not come about for approximately 6 months due to some STATE APPRAISALS being conducted that he has no control over, and they have “added a little bit more land” to the land considered.

Lochsa land exchange bumped back to July

FS proposes swap for Western Pacific Timber lands

By Andrew Ottoson – sports/outdoors reporter

Monday March 11, 2013

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest’s first quarter ‘schedule of proposed action’ notes a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) on the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange is now expected in July.

The Western Pacific Timber company presently owns roughly 40,000 acres of land in a checkerboard pattern near Lolo Pass, which the Forest Service intends to acquire through the proposed land trade. The amounts and locations of parcels WPT stands to acquire under an administrative trade depend on the environmental analysis and appraisal under way – as well as the Forest Service’s discretion in striking a bargain with the company. WPT may also pursue a legislative trade, under which Congress would make the final decision.

The proposal became controversial locally when, in 2011, the Idaho County Commission asked the Forest Service to consider carrying out the trade entirely within Idaho County, prompting the Forest Service to analyze roughly 45,000 acres in the southern part of the county.

View of Blacktail from near the Transfer Station

Map of the lands that are being traded to Western Pacific Timber in Alternative F of the Lochsa Land Exchange.

Oh you thought it was a dead deal?  Commissioner Brandt said as much in a September 4, 2012 commission meeting.  That was just a decoy to get the general public feeling comfy doodle about the exchange so they could go back to sleep without worry about losing their land.  It worked.

WAKE UP CALL!!!

All of the land marked in this map is being swapped through Congressional approval with some sort of quasi – open ended “skies the limit” conservation deed deal that legal counsel for Western Pacific Timber Mr. Hawes, likely helped to write or at least approve. He’s so nice. Its just out of the kindness of his heart that he would do this, it has nothing to do with the fact that he wants to get his bloody hands on Idaho County public lands.

Check out this map below and share with your friends.    Say goodbye to these public lands where you  go to picnic and ride atv’s and hike and enjoy the beautiful views.    Not sure if this will go through this year in 2013 or next.   Someday, you might see a few logs gone, but Western Pacific Timber is apt to subdivide the land, sell it to investors who will turn around and divide it a little bit more.  You might see some nice mobile homes, meth labs, rat infested cabins and other lovely residuals of the trade.

Rick Brazell of the Nez Perce Clearwater said the Record of Decision on the Lochsa Land Exchange is still 6 months out because “THEY” the state is doing all kinds of appraisals and some pieces of land were added to the original map that Idaho County Commissioners Skip Brandt, James Rockwell and Jim Chmelik approved when they started their crusade to privatize public land.   As of the Forest Revision Plan meeting, Rick Brazell said he had not seen this map.   Its mostly out of the Forest Service’s hands what happens to the land anyway, since there is a complicated web of Congressional approvals that are superceding the opposition by taxpaying citizens of Idaho that we witnessed during the 2011 and 2012 Land Exchange meetings and commenting period.

The GENERAL PUBLIC spoke loudly in opposition of the Lochsa Land Exchange.  And while the Idaho County Commissioners moved their lips to “No Action – Alternative A”,  they were rallying support for the acre for acre trade through Congressional blessings.   

 Even Commissioner Chmelik said during his re-election campaign that 85% of the people he talked to in coffee shops and at dining room tables were opposed to the trade.   But in his grandstanding approach to shove his agenda and those of the other two Idaho County Commissioners, plus numerous Idaho Congressional Delegates, WPT, lobbyists Larry Craig and Mark Rey’s agenda down the throats of taxpaying citizens – since they know best – Chmelik disagrees with the desires of the general public and will pursue the trade to Western Pacific Timber with all his might.   Very well then.   Ignore the citizens.  Isn’t that what politicians do nowadays?   The man in the mirror won’t change his ways anytime soon.

Letter – Hanes

OPPOSITION TO PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC LANDS IN THE CLEARWATER NEZ PERCE FOREST

This is a really good opinion piece to reflect on the kinds of “cause and effect” when politicians like our   Idaho County Commissioners lobby for acre for acre swaps to private companies like Western Pacific Timber…. then there is the and the new juggernaut where Jim Chmelik is lobbying for the American Lands Council to crusade for state wide disposal of federal land to the state.   I hear he is back tracking in stating that privatization is not going to be needed.  SURE JIM!   The state of Idaho will just suddenly become financially stable enough to manage all of the new lands they have in their coffers without any sales of the land to private land owners.  Yeah, thats real believable.

The Forest Service’s refusal to allow privatization of land within the Clearwater-Nez Perce Forest should remind us all that our federal government is best suited for some jobs.

In August, Kelly Creek fly fishermen were greeted with “private property” signs at their favorite fishing holes.

A woman picking huckleberries was threatened by an armed man, informed she was trespassing and ordered to leave.

Some of the 52 would-be “gold miners”, with their recently purchased claims, pressed the Forest Service to get the roads open so they could move trailer houses on “their land.”

The Forest Service removed the signs, informed the “miners” they had no right to put them up, and like everybody, they must move camp every 18 days ….no trailer houses allowed.

Also, they requested an administrative hearing to ban mining on the North Fork as it is in gross conflict with other current uses of the area (mainly fishing). Governor Otter sold-out Highway 12 to foreign oil without public notice. Are public interests as important to Otter as his well-documented desire to cozy-up to business? Would state agencies that care little why we have two-headed fish in the Snake River care about the North Fork being inundated?

There are dedicated Forest Service employees working to ensure the upper North Fork and other areas remain unspoiled and accessible to the public. Keep up the good work!

Ron Hanes

Orofino