Sawtooth National Recreation Area and Jerry Peak Wilderness Additions Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President and fellow Senators, today is a historic day for the State of Idaho. This is the creation of a wilderness area in the Sawtooth area of Idaho, the Boulder-White Clouds area, and the Jerry Peak area. These two mountain ranges and one mountain peak area have been under consideration for about 10 years.

I want to talk very briefly about what we are dealing with. These are some of the most magnificent pieces of land, not only in Idaho but in the United States. Before anyone goes abroad to see the Champs-Elysees or to see the magnificent works of art in Italy, you need to put on your list seeing the Boulder-White Clouds area. It is truly a magnificent area.

What we just did was we created a wilderness of about 275,000 acres that creates these three wilderness areas, plus a buffer zone around them. It is a great day for Idaho. This is an Idaho solution to an issue that has been pending for some time.

I conclude by simply stating that all credit for this goes to Congressman Mike Simpson. Congressman Simpson started working on this about 10 years ago and wanted to put together, in a collaborative fashion, a wilderness bill for this particular area. He did that. He brought it back to Washington, DC. Because of the situation in DC at the time, the bill was changed greatly and was no longer an Idaho solution to the Idaho problem.

Congressman Simpson did not give up. He worked and he worked and he worked at it. It is truly his long-term commitment to this and his long work on this that got us to this point. What he did was take this land that there was virtually unanimous agreement should be in wilderness; that is, the heart of this area, the Boulder Range, the White Cloud Range, and the Jerry Peaks area.

There was unanimous agreement that this is the kind of land that needs to be in wilderness. Indeed, when I was Governor, I wrote this rule for several million acres. This was included in it. It was protected as wilderness. This is not changing the character of it in that regard. What it does is put it in statute instead of in rule.

The difficulty was, as always with these kinds of areas, the buffer area around what everybody agrees is truly unique ground that should be handled as wilderness. Obviously, it is an area that ingrains passion in people. It causes people to have strong feelings about the area. As a result of that, people fight to protect what they think should be protected, and just as much, people who use the buffer zones for different reasons feel just as passionately the other way.

What Congressman Simpson was able to do was get everybody to the table in a very collaborative fashion, to where he got the wilderness preservationists, the hikers, the backpackers, the horse people, the motorized users, including snowmobile, ATV, and motorcycle people, to all agree to a management plan for everything that is included in this bill.

Congressman Simpson was tenacious on this. He gets the full credit for this. I think Idahoans will truly appreciate this for many years. There is no doubt in my mind that the efforts Congressman Simpson put into this will be greatly appreciated for years and years to come.

With that, I yield the remainder of my time to my colleague, my good friend, Senator Mike Crapo.

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