The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest is currently updating their forest management plan. The plan governs land use, resource protection, recreational use, and recommends areas for potential wilderness or wild and scenic river designation.  These Forests contain the Selway and Lochsa Rivers, Lolo Creek, Meadow Creek, and many other classic whitewater runs. 

For the past few months, AW has been sharing our input and concerns with the U.S. Forest Service.  We offered them detailed comments focused on river conservation and enjoyment.  Our comments had three main elements:

• We asked that the 40-year-old river management plans for the Lochsa and Selway Wild and Scenic Rivers be updated in the near future.
• We strongly opposed the USFS intent to remove protections for many streams that are eligible for Wild and Scenic designation by conducting “suitability determinations.”  Suitability determinations are agency analyses that consider the current political feasibility of congressional designation of a stream.  If the agency doesn’t think designation is currently feasible they release all protections for the stream.  This makes no sense: building political support for designations takes years of conversations with local, regional, and national interests.
• We recommend that the Forest Service finds more rivers “eligible” for Wild and Scenic designation.  Eligibility is good – it offers streams interim protection from dams and other impacts, and simply requires that the river be freeflowing and have at least one “Outstanding Remarkable Value” or ORV.  An ORV is any nationally or regionally significant attribute, and could be recreational, geological, biological, cultural, historical, etc.  As paddlers we are in a great position to share the values of the awesome rivers we paddle and advocate for their eligibility.  You can read the list of streams we recommend in our comments, or better yet read our eligibility report. 

So what can you do?

Send the Forest Service an email pointing out the areas or issues you care about: fpr_npclw@fs.fed.us

You can also visit this mapping website to indicate the special places you care about. You can upload photos there, or just describe why you want to see these special places protected for future generations.

Add your comments by July 1^st.  The incredible rivers of Idaho thank you!