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Latest Posts tagged with "Idaho"

Wilderness Volunteers Make for Happy Trails

June 20, 2011 By Brad Brooks

National Trails Day Event in Idaho

Credit: Joe Pickett

Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to help organize and participate in one of the first trail stewardship projects in one of Idaho’s newest Wilderness areas, Big Jacks Creek Wilderness.  It was an experience that was physically challenging and richly rewarding.  The Wilderness Society spent nearly a decade working to protect this rugged desert canyon country, but the work doesn’t stop at protection.  Region:  Idaho Read more

Wild places worth saving: 27 sites Congress must protect

May 25, 2011 By Rebecca Bright

South Fork of the Snake River

Credit: Dave Carlson

Every September, Idaho resident Dana Menlove and her husband take to the river with their two young children, trading a few days in the classroom for the lessons of the Snake River’s South Fork. At their favorite spots, the family fishes for native Yellowstone cutthroat, browns and rainbows and watches moose meander through their camp. Region:  Northeast Read more

Our victory for Idaho’s Salmon-Challis National Forest

February 16, 2011 By Brad Brooks

Earlier this month, a magistrate judge in Idaho issued an important decision on a lawsuit filed by The Wilderness Society and our partners over destructive off-road vehicle use on the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho.  The judge agreed with us that the Forest Service had violated environmental laws in developing its plan to designate where motor vehicles were allowed to travel. This decision was the culmination of several years of work on behalf of TWS and our partners to halt unauthorized and inappropriate motorized recreation.  Region:  Idaho Read more

Do Roads Belong Here? New threats to Idaho’s backcountry forests

February 1, 2011 By Christopher Lancette

We prefer to inform you about advances in wild land conservation, but this week that opportunity has been denied for Idaho’s magnificent backcountry forests. At the end of January, a federal district court upheld a dangerous federal rule that eliminates protection for 400,000 acres of Idaho’s wild backcountry and exposes more than 5 million acres in the state to greater threat of development. Region:  Northern Rockies Read more

Protected roadless forests celebrate anniversary, but threats loom

January 11, 2011 By Mike Anderson, J.D.

Rogue-Winema National Forest Brown Mountain Roadless Area. Courtesy USFS.

A decade after it was first adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has proven to be remarkably successful in protecting the 58.5 million acres of national forest roadless areas from road building and logging. Only about 75 miles of road building has occurred in the roadless areas — far less than the Forest Service had predicted a decade ago — and just a miniscule fraction of the unroaded forests has been logged, mostly in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Read more

Reflecting on the life of conservation champion Bud Moore

December 2, 2010 By John McCarthy

Bud Moore

Bud Moore, a great conservationist and a wilderness champion for Idaho and Montana, passed away last week at his home in Condon, Montana, at age 93. Bud blazed a trail his whole life for all who revere wilderness and wild land — linking the mountain men, who taught him backcountry skills in his youth, to the modern foresters who came to understand ecosystem management with his vision. Read more

Suiting up to protect wilderness in Idaho

November 22, 2010 By John McCarthy

Little Jacks Creek Wilderness Area, Idaho. Photo by John McCarthy

One of the great things about going on Idaho Public Television to talk about wilderness in the 21st century is that we’re building on success. When IPTV asked me to go on camera in a five person round-table show called “Dialogue”, the central question was whether we need more wilderness. The answer, of course, yes. (Watch the Dialogue episode.) Read more

Breaking down human barriers to protect wilderness in Idaho

November 16, 2010 By Craig Gehrke

Craig Gehrke pointing out features of Owyhee Canyonlands

People throughout Idaho rallied to add 517,000 acres of our state’s rugged Owyhee Canyonlands to the National Wilderness Preservation System in 2010, breaking a generation-long drought of wilderness designation in Idaho. During the previous 30 years, not a single acre of wilderness had been designated in Idaho -- despite the fact that the state has more candidate wildlands than any state outside Alaska. Read more