The Bureau of Land Management released it draft management plan for the Owyhee Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers.
The plan for six wilderness areas totaling 518,000 acres and 16 Wild and Scenic River segments totaling 325 miles is the agency’s proposal for putting into place the center piece of the Owyhee Initiative. The initiative was designed to protect wilderness and ranchers in Owyhee County and ended up with legislation that included a science review plan, opportunities for ranchers to sell ranches and make land trades along with the wilderness and Wild River designations.
A Kayaker on the East Fork of the Owyhee River in the Owyhee Wilderness
Local ranchers; county representatives, environmental groups, outfitters, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe and others working on the ideas that became law in 2009.
But the wilderness proposals were unique because many of the areas spelled out ways that ranchers would be allowed to continue fences, motorized use and other activities they needed to continue operating. This “working wilderness” is designed to allow ranching to continue on the landscape where it has been for more than a century.
“I look forward to implementing a plan that embraces the visions of such a collaborative effort,” said BLM Boise District Manager Jim Fincher.
You can read the wilderness plan on line. Comments will be accepted through April 30.
Why call it wilderness when it isn’t? Are we training special wilderness cattle that won’t do to the riparian areas what cattle do everywhere else?
because without those provisions the bill would not have been passed by Congress.
Purists like you will result in no new wilderness because there is very little lands left that meets the definition of wilderness in the 1964 Wilderness Act.
My purity or lack thereof aside, why apply the wilderness designation to areas that not only allow cattle grazing (and yes, I understand what the Wilderness Act says) but also fences and motorized access? We are stuck with grandfathered grazing and the damage it causes in many wilderness areas, but can’t we just drop the pretense and recognize that these are just multiple use areas?
All livestock should be removed from public lands…PERIOD
Welfare ranching is broke, time to move on.
Them old boys got horses; they don’t need motorized vehicles in our wilderness areas. The Owhyees is definitely wilderness.
Truly remarkable that after 150 years of livestock grazing there still exist within the Owyhees over a half-million acres of land with Wilderness characteristics, and at least 325 miles of Wild and Scenic rivers! This reality causes me to question the basis upon which some call for a cessation of grazing. If not for grazing, practiced with an eye for long-term sustainability as it has been in Owyhee County, would there yet be any Wilderness lands left? I know that I visited the Boise Valley recently, and though there was narry a beef cow to be seen there also was nothing that looked to me like a potential Wilderness Area. Obviously, my observations do not establish the existence of a cause and effect relationship between livestock and Wilderness, or between a lack of livestock production and a lack of Wilderness. However, they may suggest that there is value in basing “multiple-use” lands management decisions upon the actual costs and benefits associated with each potential use rather than upon preconceptions or misinformation.
“! This reality causes me to question the basis upon which some call for a cessation of grazing. If not for grazing, practiced with an eye for long-term sustainability as it has been in Owyhee County, would there yet be any Wilderness lands left? ” Spraying sagebrush with 2,4-D then drill seeding crested wheatgrass to feed cattle isn’t “long term sustainability”