BOISE, Idaho -- Congress is briefly back in session, and one of the bills being considered could open up wilderness-designated areas to mountain biking.
Senate Bill 3205, called the Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act, was introduced by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and co-sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and would enable local federal agencies to assess whether non-motorized travel should be allowed in wilderness areas.
Jon Harloe, owner of Custom Cycles in Boise and a former member of the Southwest Idaho Mountain Biking Association, said bikers have plenty of other places to ride besides wilderness areas, which make up about two percent of the contiguous United States.
"It's not like there's some epidemic shortage of mountain bike trails. They're popping up everywhere,” Harloe said. "Why can't we just leave two percent of our land alone? Not only for our own sake, but if you read the Wilderness Act, it talks about respect for nature."
Harloe said the bill was born out of a conflict over mountain biking trails that became part of the Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness Area last year. According to a 2013 report from the U.S. General Accounting Office, there are 3,700 miles of wilderness trails - compared with 20,000 miles of non-wilderness trails - in Idaho's national forests.
Supporters of the bill said there is a blanket nationwide ban, and that local managers should be in charge of what type of travel is permitted on these lands.
But Craig Gehrke, Idaho director of the Wilderness Society, said according to the bill, local federal agencies would have two years to determine whether a trail should be open to mountain biking. After that, the areas would be automatically open to bikes.
"It's a bit of sham in a way,” Gehrke said, "because with all of the wilderness areas in the United States, the managers couldn't possibly make public determinations on all the trails individually within two years."
Harloe said he also worries this bill could lead to other intrusions on protected lands.
"The issue is bigger than our desire to ride our bikes,” Harloe said. “We need to continue the tradition of protecting our wild places from encroachment of disruptive user groups and, possibly down the road, forces that we may not foresee."
The original Wilderness Act from 1964 stated there should be no form of mechanical transport on wilderness-designated land.
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Crews have been ramping up wildfire resilience projects to thin out brush and dead wood in California's giant sequoia groves, clearing twice as many acres in 2023 compared with 2022.
The Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition is trying to avoid a repeat of the disastrous mega-fires of 2020 and 2021 - which killed about 20% of large mature trees in their native Sierra Nevada range.
Joanna Nelson, Ph.D. is the director of science and conservation planning with the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
"We remove fuel," said Nelson, "we get to a safe place to do prescribed burning and to do cultural burning - which is always led by Indigenous people, which is another practice of taking care of the forest and reducing wildfire risk."
Sequoia National Park is just one part of California's giant sequoia groves, which stretch over 26,000 acres.
A new report shows that in 2023, the program treated nearly 9,900 acres in 28 groves - and more than 14,000 since 2021.
Crews have also planted 542,000 native tree seedlings in severely burned areas over the past two years.
Nelson said the groves must be re-treated about every 8 to 10 years.
"The cost of inaction is loss of giant sequoias in their native range," said Nelson. "And big fires that spread because of the fuel continuity. We risk further loss of trees that are anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 years old if we do nothing."
The groves have built up quite a bit of dead wood fuel because, until the last few decades, it had been national policy to suppress almost all fire - which led to intense firestorms that incinerated entire groves of old-growth trees.
It is now understood that judicious use of fire can clear out the understory and be beneficial to the forest.
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The Bureau of Land Management has proposed expanding the public land available for solar power production in 11 states, including Montana.
The BLM's Western Solar Plan builds on a version first released in 2012 and focuses on harnessing the potential in Western and Plains states most amenable to solar production.
Nick Fitzmaurice, energy transition engineer for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the expanded plan reflects the country's growing demand for solar energy.
"It's projected that 700,000 acres of solar development are going to be needed to meet future clean goals, and in the range of about 5,000 of those acres are going to be in Montana," Fitzmaurice explained. "It's a small part of the picture but important that all our open land that is able to contribute to solar can do so."
The Wilderness Society released a statement supporting the proposed Western Solar Plan expansion. The BLM is taking public comment on it until April 18.
The BLM has already done an environmental impact statement, which can sometimes be a stumbling block for such projects.
Fitzmaurice pointed out Montana was not part of the first Western Solar Plan. He thinks adding the state and having the BLM involved in siting the facilities will be crucial as Montana takes advantage of its alternative energy opportunities.
"It's really important that BLM gets ahead of this," Fitzmaurice asserted. "As these applications for development come in, they are able to be sited and put in locations that will minimize the impact on this important public land resource that we have."
Fitzmaurice added the plan proposes solar facilities be built near existing power transmission lines but not near culturally sensitive areas of Montana. Critics of the proposal said additional solar development could threaten wildlife species and habitat.
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The remote landscape of southeastern Oregon is receiving additional protections.
The Bureau of Land Management has finalized its resource management plan for the southeast corner of the state and it includes protections for parts of the Owyhee and Malheur Rivers and canyon lands in the region.
Michael O'Casey, deputy director of forest policy and Northwest programs for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said it's an exciting announcement, which will protect sensitive landscape from activities like surface development and road building.
"When that landscape is impacted, it's really hard to bring it back and restore it," O'Casey pointed out. "And so, it's really important to protect the places out there that are healthy and intact and resistant. And resilience is a term that we use, to stresses from climate change or whatever else."
O'Casey noted the plan still allows for traditional uses of the land like hunting and fishing. The BLM's final resource management plan for the district covers four-point-six million acres of public land.
O'Casey stressed the agency deliberated for years on this decision.
"This planning process was initiated in 2010 and so it's been 14 years in the making," O'Casey emphasized. "The good news is that, even though it's been a really long time, was that there was a really robust public comment process throughout this."
O'Casey added appointing the Southeast Oregon Resource Advisory Council in 2014 was an important part of public involvement. The council was made up of a wide variety of area people including grazing, energy and conservation interests, who made recommendations for management in the region.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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