Outdoor Idaho, our series known for showcasing outdoor adventure and Idaho’s scenic wilderness, has occasionally turned its attention to significant environmental and resource issues, winning dozens of ‘Public Affairs’ awards, including Emmys and Edward R. Murrow awards.
“It’s a great way to explore our complicated state,” says former host and writer Bruce Reichert. “Water, wildlife, wilderness, wildfires — my colleagues and I always tried to be fair and to tackle complicated topics in a comprehensive manner.”
Here are Bruce’s picks for favorite public affairs programs:
With the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Americans began a grand experiment in land management—to set aside certain areas “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
In 2014, for the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Outdoor Idaho visited each of Idaho’s designated wilderness areas—the Selway Bitterroot, Craters of the Moon, Sawtooth, Hells Canyon, Gospel Hump, Frank Church River of No Return and Owyhee Canyonlands—to explore what we’ve learned since the passage of this landmark legislation.
2. The Bureau that Changed the West
No federal agency has changed the face of the West more than the Bureau of Reclamation. Using concrete, and lots of taxpayers’ dollars, the Bureau changed rivers and often the entire economic base of a region. Today the Bureau is struggling to find a new mission and many of its former supporters are not happy.
For almost a hundred years, various political leaders pushed to make the Sawtooth Mountains Idaho’s first national park.
But it was not to be.
Instead, in 1972 the Sawtooths—along with the White Cloud and the Boulder Mountains—became part of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, administered not by the National Park Service but by the U.S. Forest Service.
How this came to be is a story worth the telling. Forty years ago, Idaho was at the forefront of the nation’s environmental movement, electing a governor who pledged to save Castle Peak and the White Clouds from the degradation of an open-pit mine.
Outdoor Idaho celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area by examining this remarkable period in Idaho’s history, exploring what was gained, what was lost and what is yet to be considered.
Idaho’s salmon are facing extinction. Idaho’s 12-term congressman, Mike Simpson, says we need to breach the four lower Snake River dams in the state of Washington. His proposal – not yet a bill – has got a lot of people talking. Salmon advocates call it far-sighted and the only way to keep Idaho’s ocean-going fish from going extinct. Simpson’s proposal would also compensate all those impacted by the loss of the dams, to the tune of $33.5 billion.
Opponents of dam removal say the structures allow Lewiston to function as an inland “seaport,” making it possible to barge Palouse wheat to Portland and elsewhere. The four dams — Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor — also account for about 1,000 megawatts of hydropower. Why, they ask, should we take down the dams when the real culprits are things like unfavorable ocean conditions, warming rivers, predators and over-harvest.
Outdoor Idaho interviews people on all sides of one of the most controversial and consequential issues facing the Northwest.
The richest silver producing region in the world closed in 1981. In 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency declared a 21 square mile area of the Silver Valley a Superfund site. The Silver Valley is starting to rebound. We explore the history of mining, heavy metal poisoning, superfund issues and other challenges and the opportunities facing Idaho’s remarkable Silver Valley.
It was a trust forced on the West more than 100 years ago, one that has defined us ever since: our public lands. They are a playground for many, the source of our water and wildlife. But there is a price to be paid when more than 60% of your state is federally owned.
It seems like only yesterday Idaho was the forgotten state, the one routinely confused with Iowa. But no longer. Today the state with more cattle than people is now on everyone’s radar screen.
The changes in Idaho have been astounding, affecting just about everything, from cities and towns to public lands and wildlife. But throughout Idaho’s seven degrees of latitude, there’s a real sense of unease. Ask people who have lived here for 30 years. To them it feels like a no-turning-back kind of change.
The Outdoor Idaho crew examines some of those changes — as well as some reasons for optimism – in the nation’s 43rd state… a State of Change.
It’s some of the most dazzlingly diverse country in the West, deserving of the gold standard of protection. In this hour-long special, the Outdoor Idaho crew visits the three new wilderness areas in the center of Idaho—the Cecil D. Andrus White Clouds Wilderness, the Hemingway-Boulders and the Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness—to tell the fascinating fifty-year story of how the threat of an open-pit molybdenum mine eventually led to a unanimous vote for wilderness in Congress. This program also examines some of the major battles yet to be decided.
9. Wilderness in the 21st Century
Since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Americans have learned to accept the notion of wilderness as a place “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” But the recent success of the Owyhee Canyonlands wilderness and the controversy surrounding the Boulder-White Clouds proposal suggest that our views of wilderness and wilderness legislation have evolved in the past fifty years.
Idaho could be in for some interesting battles over water, and it will be the state’s unique water laws that will help determine the winners and losers in the fight over this precious, finite resource.
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