IDAHO
A new Forest
Service management plan for the 2.4 million-acre Frank Church-River
of No Return Wilderness could increase jetboat traffic, and would
allow airplanes continued access to four controversial landing
strips.
Jetboats and airstrips normally aren’t
allowed in wilderness areas, but the 1980 act that established “the
Frank” allowed those uses to continue there. Under the new plan,
which the Salmon-Challis National Forest released last December
after a nine-year environmental impact statement process,
noncommercial jetboat use on the Salmon River would be allowed to
nearly triple.
The new plan also decreases float boat
traffic on both the middle and main forks of the Salmon, and leaves
four primitive airstrips open for “emergency use.”
Environmentalists say many of the 5,500 annual airplane landings
throughout the Frank are unnecessary and should be restricted.
The plan also ignores three illegal hunting lodges along
the Salmon River, which is officially designated a wild and scenic
river. In 2000, a federal judge ruled that the permanent camps
— which outfitters failed to remove in 1971 under Forest
Service orders — had to go. In 2002, under threat of another
lawsuit, the Forest Service ordered the lodges removed by the end
of 2005. But in May 2003, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, introduced a
bill, which is still pending, to exempt them from the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act.
Missoula, Mont.-based Wilderness Watch
appealed the new management plan in January. George Nickas, the
group’s executive director, says, “Here you’ve got the
largest contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48, and it’s one
where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to experience true
wilderness.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Jetboats stir up the Frank.
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