FORESTS: Need local control

It doesn’t make much sense to have government bureaucrats in Washington to control nearly half of all land in Idaho — especially with timber communities struggling to survive and wildfires raging out of control.

Under federal management, Idahoans have watched timber harvest plummet since the 1990s. The U.S. Forest Service controls three quarters of all timberlands in Idaho, yet just one-tenth of the state’s timber comes from federal lands. As a result, rural economies that depend on the land are facing high unemployment rates, an eroding tax base, and catastrophic fires. Last year, the Idaho Department of Lands spent just shy of $80 million suppressing fires across the state.

Yet, bizarrely, we see a group calling itself the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership advocating for continued federal (mis)management of the land. TRCP claims to advocate for hunters and anglers, but most of its funding isn’t grassroots — it comes from out-of-state labor and environmental interests, according to tax records. Radical environmentalists despise logging, and the best way to impose their beliefs on Idaho is to have Washington, D.C., control the woods, even if it costs local jobs.

WILL COGGIN

Research Director

Environmental Policy Alliance