Analysis: It will take a new wave of supporters to preserve Idaho’s beloved Sawtooths

Monica Church stepped onto the stage of the Sawtooth Society’s annual fundraiser as the sun set over the picturesque peaks that are the heart of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.

Both of her grandfathers, prominent Democrats Frank Church and Cecil Andrus, joined Republicans Jim McClure, Len Jordan and Orval Hansen to create the SNRA 50 years ago today. It was 25 years ago that her grandmother, Bethine Church, joined McClure, Andrus, Hansen and many others in forming the Sawtooth Society.

Monica Church, now the executive director of the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University, was urging affluent second-home owners and other people who love the Sawtooths to give — just as her grandmother did in 1997. The SNRA is threatened even more by overuse and abuse, she said.

Development pressures remain high. Fire threats, Forest Service budget reductions and outside threats like climate change and potential salmon extinction loom.

That evening, in front of a bipartisan crowd, the torch was passed to a new generation of protectors of Idaho’s crown jewel.

“I have hope,” Church said in an interview. “There is a vibrant and activated community of young people ready and willing to take up the mantle of environmental conservation in Idaho.”

But the Sawtooth NRA also was created to protect the pastoral character of the 756,000-acre landscape, where ranchers still graze cattle and horse packers guide visitors deep into the backcountry. Most of the ranches have passed from traditional local ranchers to wealthy second-home owners.

For many rural Idahoans, including those living in surrounding Custer County, the area is managed for the people who live in Boise or Sun Valley and come from across the nation. They see all the same problems but feel left out of the management decisions.

Steve Smith, a Challis resident and Custer County commissioner, addressed the issue at a conference on the 50th anniversary of the SNRA in May.

A person “can hear all the wolves howling he wants, right next to my dead cow, but the thing that we’re really dealing with here is the SNRA (and) the challenges with the different viewpoints on multiple use on public lands,” he said.

Those differing viewpoints led the Republican-dominated Idaho Legislature to twice vote down a memorial celebrating the SNRA’s 50th anniversary. They also led the Idaho state board of land commissioners to approve an extension of a cell tower in front of a lovely vista over the objection of the SNRA and its supporters.

In the 1980s, then-Republican U.S. Rep. Larry Craig created a committee, chaired by the late John Freemuth of Boise State University, to study whether the Sawtooths should be a national park instead of a national recreation area. It concluded that it should remain under Forest Service control in part because of the agency’s commitment to “showcase management.”

In the 1990s, Congress added $17 million to the SNRA budget to buy an easement for a large tract of land in the Stanley Basin to prevent development. But since then it has been managed as “just another ranger district,” in one of the poorest national forests in the state, according to its critics. Today its staffing is 60% lower than it was in the 1990s, said Kirk Flannigan, SNRA district ranger.

But the agency once again is recognizing the pressure to do more both locally and nationally for recreation. Eventually, it will need leadership in Congress.

In 1990, the Shoshone Bannock Tribes petitioned the federal government to list the Sawtooth Valley’s sockeye salmon as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. In 1972, 500 sockeye returned to Redfish Lake. In 1992, only one, called Lonesome Larry by then-Gov. Andrus, returned.

Due in part to the management of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Sho-Ban Tribes, more are expected to return this year.

The Endangered Species Act also resulted in the reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s. By 2009, wolves were numerous enough that residents and visitors could see them regularly, especially in the winter.

Once delisted, though, wolves became scarce because of hunters and killing by the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Agency.

The 1972 law that created the SNRA did not add significant protections to salmon and wolves like the Endangered Species Act did. But the habitat protection has helped them, along with 214 species of birds, more than 70 species of mammals, and 14 species of reptiles and amphibians.

Monica Church, also a member of the boards of the Sawtooth Society and the Andrus Center for Public Policy, said the future of the SNRA will take the state, Forest Service, tribes, counties and the many supporters to protect the area her grandfathers and grandmothers helped preserve over the past 50 years.

“I’m really hopeful that these conversations will continue,” Church said at the conference in May, “and we will find ways to partner and collaborate that is good for the earth, the indigenous communities, and also the fish and wildlife.”

Rocky Barker has reported on the SNRA since 1985. He retired from the Idaho Statesman in 2018. He is a member of the Andrus Center for Public Policy board of governors.