For more than two decades, Utah wilderness advocates
have been chanting, “5.7! 5.7!” Now, a similar cry is rising in
Idaho: “8 million! 8 million!” There are 8 million acres of
unprotected roadless land in Idaho’s national forests, according to
Idaho’s Vanishing Wild Lands, a report by the Wilderness Society.
The number is falling fast. Over the past decade, says the
society’s Mike Anderson, Idaho has lost about a million acres of
roadless land to logging and road-building. In a list of “Timber’s
Terrible 10,” his group has named 10 more areas in jeopardy.
Roadless areas are “strongholds’ for grizzly bears, wolverine, and
sensitive fish such as bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout,
steelhead and chinook salmon. Many are also prone to landslides and
critical for maintaining clean drinking water. As the state moves
from an economy dependent on extractive industries such as logging
to one based on tourism and other services, the report says,
“Idaho’s remaining roadless areas are more important… in their
natural state rather than as a source of raw materials.” The
Wilderness Society has requested a moratorium on logging in
roadless areas, an end to funding logging roads in national forests
and a wilderness bill that will make Idaho “the premier wilderness
state outside Alaska.”
For a copy of Idaho’s
Vanishing Wild Lands, or information on “Timber’s Terrible 10,”
contact Craig Gehrke at
208/343-8153.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Fleeting forests.
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