Roadless Wildlife Habitat Areas are pristine, unspoiled, undeveloped, natural, wild lands, which are accessed by trail, greater than 5,000 acres in size or contiguous to a designated wilderness and found in our National Forests.
Idaho has more roadless country than any other of the lower 48 states, at approximately 9 million acres. These roadless areas provide connectivity for far roaming species such as wolverines, wolves, and other large carnivores as well as for ungulates like elk, moose, white-tail and mule deer. Many of the larger roadless areas in the Wild Clearwater Country effectively act as de-facto wilderness. Their character is that of a place untrammeled by man, a place dictating its own future, a refuge for clean water, sensitive species, and serenity.
The scant protection offered them by the Roadless Rule is currently being upheld, most recently by a ruling of the 9th Circuit of the U.S. District Court in Northern California. This court reinstated the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, holding that the State Petition Rule issued by the Forest Service did not comply with the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Adminstrative Procedures Act. More recently, this same court ordered the Forest Service to stop work on 85 projects which actively sought to develop roadless areas, including a road project in Idaho.
As things currently stand, the inventoried roadless country in the Clearwater drainage remains roadless and we work to encourage the BLM and US Forest Service to treat the uninventoried roadless lands they administer for the public as protected roadless country is treated.
However, the Bush administration and the state of Idaho are poised to develop these critical Roadless Wildlife Habitat Areas. For more information and to make a comment on this terrible plan:
IDAHO ROADLESS Area Conservation DEIS
