Thursday December 11, 2008
Owyhee Initiative
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"The best way to make decisions about our environment and land is through cooperation and collaboration, and we have done that with the Owyhee Initiative proposal." - Mike Crapo
The Owyhee Initiative is a collaborative effort with a broad representation, started by the Owyhee County Commissioners in 2001, to address and resolve decades-old land management issues in Owyhee County, Idaho.
The Owyhee Initiative will designate 517,000 acres of public land as the Owyhee-Bruneau Wilderness, in six units, release 199,000 acres of wilderness study areas to non-wilderness multiple use management and designate 316 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers.
On April 9, 2008, I re-introduced legislation regarding the Owyhee Initiative in the U.S. Senate. Listed below are a number of documents and links that provide more detail about S. 2833. Click here for a summary sheet on the legislation.
Goal
The goal of the initiative has been to develop and implement a landscape-scale program in Owyhee County that preserves the natural processes that create and maintain a functioning, unfragmented landscape. This will support and sustain a flourishing community of human, plant, and animal life. It will also provides for economic stability by preserving livestock grazing as an economically-viable use and that provides for protection of cultural resources.
My Role
I have been involved, from the beginning, in the efforts to draft a 
collaborative proposal for Owhyee County. It is my goal to take the proposal developed by the workgroup and the commissioners, and draft legislation which will be enacted by Congress. The workgroup finished crafting a full proposal, and turned it over to the Owyhee County Commissioners for review. The Owyhee County Commissioners and the Shoshone Paiute Tribes passed the agreement on to me in October 2004. Recently, I had been working to draft the language in the final bill, and gather consensus on that language with the Owyhee Initiative workgroup. With their support and approval, I have now introduced the bill on the floor of the Senate, and will work with my senate colleagues to achieve passage of this critical piece of legislation.
Legislation
Read the legislation, S. 2833, introduced in the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2008 (PDF).
Click here for a summary of S. 2833.
Supporting Documents and Maps
Please note that the documents listed below are very large files, and it is advisable that you right-click on the link and select "save as" to the hard drive on your computer before attempting to open them.
| Owyhee Initiative Wild and Scenic Rivers Act Water Rights Agreement | PDF (49 kb) |
| Shoshone Paiute Tribes & Owyhee County MOU | PDF (625 kb) |
| Cultural Resource Protection Project | PDF (86kb) |
| Owyhee Initiative Hunter Access Road Review | PDF (22 kb) |
| Owyhee Initiative Final Agreement | PDF (140 kb) |
Please note that the maps listed below are very large files, and it is advisable that you right-click on the link and select "save as" to the hard drive on your computer before attempting to open them.
| Big Little Jack's Creek Wilderness | PDF (12.87 MB) |
| Bruneau Jarbidge Wilderness | PDF (9.89 MB) |
| North Fork Owyhee Pole Creek Wilderness | PDF (13.16 MB) |
| Owyhee Initiative Vicinity Map | PDF (9.12 MB) |
| Owyhee River Wilderness | PDF (10.70 MB) |
More Information
For more information, please visit the Owyhee Initiative website.
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