Idaho’s White Clouds Wilderness Debate Airing on PBS

By Todd Wilkinson, 1-02-07

	Caption: The PBS crew in Idaho's White Clouds Wilderness. Photo by Eric Zamora.His landscape book, Mountain Kingdom, explores the mountains of Idaho and the struggle to protect their wildness.

The controversy in Idaho over how to manage hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in the White Clouds and Boulder Mountains represents, in many ways, a commentary about the status of the modern wilderness movement in America.

This week, journalist Jon Christensen makes his debut as a television field correspondent when he profiles the White Clouds debate on the PBS program NOW scheduled to air Friday night on public TV channels across the country.

It's a story about breathtaking natural beauty and the unusual cultural divide that has emerged over peoples' ideas about how to best protect the land and allow for motorized use, which is forbidden under the Wilderness Act of 1964.

In 2006, a compromise bill was advanced by Congressman Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, that left some conservationists on opposing sides of the issue, with the Idaho Conservation League favoring passage and respected conservationists such as famous singer-songwriter Carole King, a longtime Idaho resident, speaking out against Simpson's bill.

The fact that new wilderness is even being proposed in Idaho is momentous because this was the same state, after all, that has been a den for the anti-wolf movement in the West, a bastion for the Wise Use Movement, and was the state where a hard-fought effort to reintroduce grizzly bears was rejected by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spent years working with environmentalists and resource extraction groups to develop an acceptable bear management plan.

Now comes the PBS airing of Christensen's timely documentary titled "The Great Wilderness Compromise." To find the air time for NOW in your area, click here.

If you happen to miss the broadcast, you can also view the entire 20-minute report by clicking here.

Christensen, who is presently pursuing a Ph.D in history at Stanford University, home for many years to the late great Western author Wallace Stegner, has himself been a newspaper reporter writing about environmental issues.

I caught up with Jon and had the following email exchange with him about his take on the White Cloud issue and its potential larger ramifications for setting aside other parts of the West as capital "W" wilderness.

NEW WEST: In a nutshell, Jon, describe the political landscape in Idaho today and some of the facts to help bring readers up to speed on what U.S. Rep. Simpson's bill proposes to do.

CHRISTENSEN: The bill would protect 318,000 acres of wilderness in the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains in central Idaho. One of the controversial compromises would keep open motorized recreation trails in the surrounding half-million-acre management area, and also guaranteeing that none of those trails will ever be shut down, unless a comparable trail is opened in the area.

A couple of those trails actually divide the wilderness into three separate wilderness areas. Another controversial compromise in the bill would give or sell public lands near Stanley to the town and to Custer County, so that this small town, hemmed in by federal land, could grow and build affordable housing. It would also make similar transfers of pubic lands in a few other communities in the county, totaling about 3,600 acres.

NEW WEST: What's the status of Simpson's bill following the change of political control in the House and Senate?

CHRISTENSEN: The bill passed the House in the last Congress, but failed to make it through the Senate in the final hours. Simpson plans to reintroduce the bill again in the coming days.

Clearly, the political playing field has changed. And this will be an interesting test of Simpson's political acumen. Will he be as effective reversing field and coordinating with the Democrats, who now control Congress, and in particular the key committees that control legislation?

I don't see any reason why he couldn't be. It was not easy getting the bill past Richard Pombo [the contentious Republican Representative from California defeated in the November election] in the last Congress. It may even be easier this time. But there is also sure to be opposition from some environmentalists, including Carole King, who now have more powerful allies in key places. So it's going to continue to be interesting.

NEW WEST: How is this wilderness debate different from others you had followed in the past? Today in Montana, for example, more than 18 years after Conrad Burns defeated veteran U.S. Senator John Melcher and President Reagan vetoed a statewide wilderness bill that Melcher had championed, Montana still has not passed significant wilderness legislation over that time. Getting new wilderness on the books can be a long and arduous process. And Idaho is more conservative than Montana.

CHRISTENSEN: The story that is unfolding around the White Cloud wilderness is intriguing precisely because it has reshuffled the debate. In most wilderness debates, it's pretty easy to predict where different westerners will make a stand. In his one, it is very hard to predict the positions that different players will take, their stakes in the negotiations, and what their bottom lines are. That's what makes it so exciting to watch, and why it has been so interesting to watch Congressman Mike Simpson put the deal together, and hold it together, so far.

NEW WEST: Some observers say that Congressman Simpson's willingness to advance a compromise bill—this in a state in which some residents in the past have approached wilderness legislation as an "over my dead body" proposition—revealed a side of the GOP in the red state West that has been masked these past few years by anti-environmental sentiments that started to simmer during the Clinton years. Having spent time with Simpson, how would you describe his approach to wilderness?

CHRISTENSEN: Simpson's approach to this wilderness bill seems to be taking place at two levels. The first is political. The second is from the heart.

On the political level, Simpson seems to be very savvy, tactically and strategically. On a tactical level, this bill is a complicated compromise. Almost every piece depends on every other piece. Keeping all of those pieces and players in the game is a real political feat.

On a strategic level, Simpson understands that there is a red and blue constituency that values wild lands in Idaho. And if he can pull this off, in a way that keeps them all in his tent—something no Idaho politician has been able to do in a generation—it will be a landmark in his political career and will likely bode well for his political future.

On the personal level, we got to spend a few days with Simpson camping in the White Clouds. He was relaxed, had a few days growth of beard, and hiked, and sat around camp shooting bull with us. I got the sense that this wilderness has moved him deeply. And he is committed to it.

NEW WEST: On the other hand, it could also be stated that Rick Johnson and the Idaho Conservation League also have demonstrated a kind of common sense pragmatism that hasn't always been attributed to wilderness-oriented environmentalists. True?

CHRISTENSEN: Like Simpson, Rick Johnson see opportunities in this political landscape for a new wilderness compromise in the West. Tactically, he saw that it could be possible to get the first big wilderness bill out of Idaho in a generation. Strategically, he saw that this could open wide new opportunities with new partners for the Idaho Conservation League in the future. And his heart is in it too.

NEW WEST: In your mind, has the concept of wilderness become passé? Is it a relic from a different time or does the idea still hold as much relevance and magic as it did when the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964?

CHRISTENSEN: The concept of wilderness is problematic. But it has always been so. Howard Zahniser, who wrote the bill and gave us the immortal definition of wilderness as "untrammeled" or free, unshackled from people, knew that. It's why he chose such a poetic word rather than the more prosaic "undisturbed." He knew much wilderness was disturbed, and compromised, and he compromised to get the bill passed.

The idea of wilderness still has relevance, and yes, even magic in it. But the reality of wilderness has even more magic in it, beyond words and concepts. You really have to go there to get that. But I hope the images from the White Clouds fleetingly capture some of that magic.

NEW WEST: What were the toughest challenges to overcome with the White Clouds issue and how do you interpret Carole King's position? Carole has been a devoted conservationist for many decades, at the forefront of ecosystem protection and restoration legislation aimed at the northern Rockies. She has complained that too much is being given away.

CHRISTENSEN: Indeed. Carole King cares about this wilderness as much as anyone. She is devoted to the White Clouds, in particular, a place close to her heart, as well as a broader vision for wilderness in the northern Rockies. She believes the compromises are too much, and that they desecrate this wilderness and the wilderness idea. It is a principled and passionate position.

NEW WEST: If there's a message that you hope viewers of the program will walk away with, what is it?

CHRISTENSEN: I hope they get a feeling for this wilderness and the communities around it, and the people who are so passionate about this place. And I hope that carries over to open up possibilities for a wider conservation about places like it around the West. This conversation is happening around the West. And the White Clouds are an eye-opening window into new ways that we might make it a productive conversation.

NEW WEST: You're a veteran journalist in a PhD program at Stanford, the longtime perch for Wallace Stegner. Can you still feel Stegner's presence there?

CHRISTENSEN: I've always felt Stegner's presence in the West. I lived along the eastern Sierra Nevada in the Great Basin for a dozen years before coming to Stanford a few years ago. And when I lived in Nevada, I had the great, good fortune to correspond with Wally, as his friends called him, about what he called the "refractory" characters who inhabit and shape the West. Stegner worked here at Stanford, but his work was the West. And that's an inspiration to me.

NEW WEST: Final question: In working with NOW on this project, is there anything you'd like to say, or anything that inspires you about the show's approach to covering environmental issues and the value of public television in general?

CHRISTENSEN: This is my first time working as a correspondent in television. I'm so used to just going in with nothing but my notebook and a pen and hanging out and talking and generally being as unobtrusive as possible. It's hard to do that with a cameraman and sound man and producer, and camera and lights and boom mic.... like they say, it's like a one-ton pencil .... It was great to have a couple mules to do the heavy equipment lifting so that we could hike into the White Cloud Mountains with Simpson for a few days.

And working with images is so different, but wonderful, especially in this case, with the beauty of the place, and the quirks of the characters. Tim Metzger, the director of photography, does stunning work.

But in the end it's all about storytelling. And producer Gail Ablow is a superb storyteller.That's what I really liked about working with NOW. There's room for storytelling. And this is a great story, full of political drama, at the local and national level, and passions and intrigue, and wonderful scenery and characters. And it's timely. Simpson is expected to re-introduce the bill soon. So stay tuned!




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