Sawtooth National Recreation Area was created to protect its character. Has it lost its way?

A backhoe dug into the top of Fireworks Hill towering over the town packed with summer visitors.

The house on the top of the hill is the latest change in the landscape that many still think should be a national park. The iconic view of the majestic Sawtooth Mountains is still one of Idaho’s most beautiful views. But for visitors at Stanley’s Pioneer Park, a large house on the edge of the town stands before it.

The law that created the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in 1972 was supposed to preserve the “pastoral character” of the valley. But continuing budget shortfalls along with rich, powerful part-time landowners — who have replaced all but one of the original ranchers there — have allowed incremental changes as ranch homes have been replaced with “statement houses,” in the words of Stanley Mayor Steve Botti.

“The whole character of the town changed when the super wealthy swooped in and scooped up all the property,” Botti said.

Cliff Hansen, the Challis rancher whose family is the last to still own their ranch in the Sawtooth Valley, acknowledges the changing look and feel of the valley where he grew up. When he was young, 33 students attended the Stanley school for first- through eighth-graders, and now only 10 attend.

“You can knock the rich people, but they hire the caretakers, the contractors, the gardeners and others,” Hansen said. “If they weren’t here there wouldn’t be any jobs.”

Going back to the ranching economy of the past is unrealistic, said Craig Gehrke, Idaho state director of the Wilderness Society in Boise. But he worries Stanley is heading the same direction as Jackson, Wyoming, or Sun Valley.

“The SNRA doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago, but I don’t think it will look like it does now 30 years from now,” he said.

In Stanley, who is bullying who?

Who is most to blame for the incremental changes in the character of the Sawtooths depends on your perspective. Different recreation area rangers had different approaches to their jobs, Hansen said, with some aggressively pushing fish and wildlife protection over agricultural needs.

Conservation groups were critical of the U.S. Forest Service, saying it didn’t show enough backbone to protect Idaho values in the face of landowner pressure. And landowners have had mixed histories of stewardship.

Stanley’s city government has failed to pass stronger ordinances to prevent large homes like the one under construction on Fireworks Hill, Mayor Botti acknowledged. And the Idaho Board of Land Commissioners will decide whether to allow a cell tower that would infringe on the viewscape of the mountains.

The recent dispute over the Stanley to Redfish Trail under construction is a good example of the ideological challenges the area faces. The trail runs through ranchland owned by Dave Boren and his wife Lynn Arnone. He prefers a different route, which also would cross his land.

But a federal court allowed construction to begin on the easement in place when he bought the 1,800-acre-ranch next to Stanley in 2016. Boren and his brother Michael, who also owns a ranch in the recreation area, co-founded Clearwater Analytics and now sit on its board of directors.

The issue came to a head when Michael Boren allegedly harassed the trail work contractor on June 20 by flying a helicopter close to them. A federal judge denied a restraining order against the Borens, who denied they were harassing the workers.

The Borens have embarked on an intensive lobbying campaign to stop the trail, including blanketing the Wood River Valley with postcards with their version of events. So far, they have not made much progress with the city of Stanley, the Idaho Conservation League and the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association, which back the Forest Service.

On a recent tour of his strikingly scenic land, Dave Boren said he had been in the Sawtooths all his life and wants to see them protected. He is building a new home on the site of the Piva Ranch west of Stanley, staying within the footprint of the Piva house he moved.

He said he thought he had reached an accommodation with the Forest Service only to be told later it was standing firm on the trail route. While he gets that critics are wary of private landowners’ influence, he says understanding needs to go both ways.

“I don’t like a private landowner stuffing something down our throats, and I don’t want the Forest Service stuffing something down my (throat) like the trail,” Boren said.

A natural wonder in Idaho

The Sawtooth National Recreation Area contains the headwaters of four major rivers: the Salmon, Boise, Big Wood and South Fork of the Payette. It also includes four mountain ranges: the Sawtooths, Boulders, White Clouds and Smoky Mountains. Its timber and grasslands provide habitat for 214 species of birds, more than 70 species of mammals, and 14 species of reptiles and amphibians. The area also is the spawning grounds for endangered sockeye and Chinook salmon that swim 900 miles to and from the Pacific Ocean, among the longest in the world.

The formula for the recreation area’s success was to purchase scenic easements from ranchers that would allow them to economically support themselves, while stopping subdivisions that were quickly growing along the Salmon River, near Smiley Creek and Fisher Creek 48 years ago. The authors of the legislation to establish the area, Democrat Sen. Frank Church, Republican Sens. James McClure and Len Jordan, and Republican Rep. Orval Hansen, chose to protect the scenic space and its fish and wildlife values as a national recreation area under the Forest Service instead of as a national park.

Congress initially authorized $47 million for purchasing easements and even condemned some subdivision property at Obsidian, moving the homes to Iron Creek, hidden inside the forest. Even Hansen and his parents, who obtained the first easement, supported the law and stopping the development of the subdivisions.

But beginning in the 1980s, the ranchers began to sell out to rich landowners who pushed the limits of the law that required “a low profile, rambling, well-proportioned, rustic-appearing, rough-sawn wood or wood and stone structure or group of structures harmoniously situated within a natural environment.”

The Forest Service found that its easements, written primarily to stop subdivisions, weren’t specific enough to prevent larger homes with modern designs.

“If all the ranchers have to sell out and are replaced by people who live here a couple of weeks a year, then I’ve failed,” Paul Reis, a retired recreation area ranger, told the Idaho Falls Post Register in 1993.

Now a Hailey resident, Reis said earlier this month that the feel of the area is “being lost for sure.”

Kirk Flannigan, the man who now has the recreation area ranger job, said some landowners have different interpretations of the original regulations and the easements than the Forest Service.

“Ranch-style character can be interpreted in many ways,” he said.

Forest Service funding woes

Part of the problem is the Forest Service dramatically cut back funding in the 1980s and 1990s, reducing the staff who could consult with landowners and manage recreation on the 756,000-acre area. That made many people ask why the area was not protected as a national park.

Larry Craig, then a Republican member of the U.S. House, initiated a study of national park status under a committee headed by the late Boise State University professor and fellow of the Andrus Center for Public Policy, John Freemuth. Though the Forest Service was now treating the recreation area budget-wise like any other ranger district, it promised to provide “showcase management.”

When Craig study was over, the agency backed off, Freemuth said in 2012, unable to find a way in its agency culture.

“The Forest Service never figured out what to do with national recreation areas,” Freemuth said then.

When one rancher proposed a large subdivision in 1996, because he couldn’t get the Forest Service to buy him out, Craig (who was then a U.S. senator) and his partner Sen. Mike Crapo got additional funds from the Clinton administration that increased funding for land and easements.

Jim Lyons, who served as undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Clinton administration, said he and Craig agreed on the value of the Sawtooths.

“It’s the crown jewel of the Forest Service,” said Lyons, who is now a board member of the Sawtooth Society. The society was created in the 1990s by Bethine Church, McClure, Hansen and Andrus to preserve the area.

Overall, the federal government has spent $65 million for 92 easements on nearly 20,000 acres of private land.

“If these things are not enforceable, what did we spend all that money for?” Botti asked.

Finding common ground

Ultimately, reaching a common understanding on the regulations and the easements — and updating them if necessary — will be important if the area is to remain a crown jewel.

The Sawtooth Society had been focused on preservation, but critics, including its late founder Cecil Andrus, called it a “homeowners society” because of its efforts on behalf of its landowner members.

The society, which includes Michael Boren on its board, has been neutral in the trail routing dispute.

But the society has a new executive director, Kathryn Grohusky, who wants to facilitate collaborative discussions with all stakeholders on the Sawtooths’ future. The organization’s 35-member board of directors is holding its semi-annual meeting today, and the Sawtooth Society’s annual Sagebrush Soiree will be held Saturday.

“The society supports a collaborative dialogue and problem-solving approach to strengthen the existing set of regulations to better support protection of these lands and the work of our Area Ranger,” Grohusky said. “These efforts to bolster the effectiveness of the private lands program needs to be focused on protecting the values of the SNRA, not on solving the individual problems of society members.”

One of the group’s critics, the Idaho Conservation League, welcomes talks about the future.

“It’s appropriate the Sawtooth Society foster this discussion given its mission and new leadership,” said John Robison, public lands director of the Idaho Conservation League.

Reis, the former ranger, said money and authority won’t stop the Sawtooths from degrading without wide public support.

“In the end, the Forest Service was not going to have to save the Sawtooth National Recreation Area,” he said. “It will be saved by the people who love it.”

This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 4:00 AM.