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CapitalPress.com
February 6, 2015
Idaho
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Idaho Fish and Game seeks $2.3M to purchase ranch
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — Idaho Department of
Fish and Game officials have asked
state lawmakers for a supplemental
appropriation of $2.3 million to pur-
chase the 10,400-acre Rock Creek
Ranch in Blaine County.
Most of the property has been
leased as grazing land over the years
and that will continue if the depart-
ment buys the land, lawmakers were
told.
The previous owner, the Rink-
er family, worked with the USDA’s
Natural Resources Conservation Ser-
vice to obtain a $3.8 million Grass-
land Reserve Program easement on
the land that preserves grazing, said
Jeff Gould, IDFG’s chief of wildlife.
The land was then sold for $2.2
million to the Nature Conservancy
and Wood River Land Trust.
The previous owners intended
to leave the property as a working
ranch and preserve its wildlife val-
ues and public access, Gould said.
“The easement protects wildlife
habitat and maintains the property
as a working ranch,” he said. “IDFG
was viewed as the entity with the
most appropriate resources and ex-
pertise to own and manage the prop-
erty to meet these objectives.”
Gould was asked by Sen. Bert
Brackett, a Republican rancher from
Rogerson, whether he could provide
assurance that grazing would contin-
ue on the ranch in a meaningful fash-
ion if IDFG purchases it.
Under the easement, “it is con-
tractually binding for us to maintain
grazing,” Gould said.
After IDFG officials asked law-
makers for an additional $2.3 million
to purchase the ranch, the Senate
Resources and Environment Com-
mittee invited them to present more
details about the proposed purchase.
“I was concerned we didn’t have
enough knowledge about it,” the
committee chairman, Sen. Steve
Bair, a Republican farmer from
Blackfoot, told Gould. The $2.3 mil-
lion request “is a lot of money for
something, frankly, legislators never
heard about before.”
The ranch, located in the foot-
hills of the Soldier Mountains, is
surrounded by U.S. Bureau of Land
Management and state of Idaho
lands that are primarily used for live-
stock grazing and outdoor recreation
and that provide extensive wildlife
habitat for important game species,
Gould said.
The property also contains core
sage grouse habitat that is a strategic
part of a larger effort to prevent an
Endangered Species Act listing for
the bird, he said.
The purchased easement by NRCS
and the sale to the Wood River Land
Trust and Nature Conservancy, as well
as a sizable donation by the Rinker
family, greatly reduced the cost to pur-
chase the property, Gould said.
“The Rinkers’ vision of Rock
Creek as a wildlife management area
open to the public, and managed
with grazing as opposed to a resi-
dential development, is a showcase
opportunity,” he said.
Brackett told the Capital Press
later his main concern is that grazing
be maintained at a viable level.
“I’m confident that, initially at
least, it will be,” he said.
Gregg Servheen, IDFG’s wildlife
program coordinator, told the Capi-
tal Press the easement covers virtu-
ally the entire ranch and “requires
grazing to be used as a tool in the
management of the property.”
Greater carryover allowed in Ririe Reservoir
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
Wheat is harvested in a field near Nampa, Idaho, in July, 2014.
Data from University of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Labor
show that gross product from Idaho’s farming sector is growing at a
much faster rate than any other sector of the state’s economy.
Courtesy of USBR
Farming sector
driving Idaho’s gross
state product growth
An aerial view of Ririe Dam. Water collected behind this dam was withheld while the Snake River
pushed 12 feet above flood stage.
By SEAN ELLIS
The reservoir, which is filled
by Willow Creek east of Idaho
Falls and drains into the Snake
River north of the city, was
built in the early 1970s, large-
ly for flood control, and stores
100,000 acre feet of water.
In prior years, Springer said,
water managers started the win-
BOISE — Gross product
from Idaho’s farming sector is
growing at a much higher rate
than the overall gross state
product.
And agriculture’s contribu-
tion to GSP, on a percentage
basis, is growing four times
faster than any other sector.
GSP, like the national
gross domestic product, mea-
sures the total dollar value of
all goods and services pro-
duced within a state.
A new report by Universi-
ty of Idaho agricultural econ-
omists shows that farming
gross product in Idaho grew at
an annual average rate of 5.5
percent from 1980 to 2013.
During that same time, total
GSP grew annually at a 2.9
percent.
Those numbers were ad-
justed for inflation and based
on U.S. Department of Com-
merce and Bureau of Eco-
nomic Analysis data.
ter with the reservoir at 45,000
acre feet and let it fill to no more
than 50,000 acre feet, before
opening the reservoir to spring
runoff in late February. BOR
has headed into this season with
50,000 acre feet of storage and
will allow the reservoir to fill to
58,000 acre feet.
Springer believes the BOR
has done as much as possible
to help the irrigators without
raising the flood risk. Though
Springer acknowledges the res-
ervoir could hold a significantly
greater volume with little dan-
ger, he said raising the risk even
slightly would require a lengthy
internal process, and possibly an
act of Congress.
Mitigation, Inc., Chairman
Darrel Kerr, wouldn’t rule out a
congressional fix, believing the
roughly $50,000 cost of clear-
ing the channel would exceed
the value of the extra water.
Kerr said the Corps has been too
conservative, managing the res-
ervoir for the type of flood that
would occur only once in thou-
sands of years, and advocates up
to 70,000 acre feet in carryover.
He’d like the BOR to share in
the cost of clearing the chan-
nel, and to consider opening the
reservoir to spring runoff a few
days earlier.
Capital Press
Gross product from Ida-
ho’s farming sector was $2.6
billion in 2013, a 15 percent
increase over 2012, and that
number accounted for 4.5 per-
cent of the state’s total GSP of
$57 billion.
When agribusiness was
included, the industry’s share
of total Idaho GSP rises to 14
percent.
The report, “Economic
Contribution of Idaho Agri-
business, 2014,” found that
farming and agribusiness con-
tributed $25 billion in direct
and indirect sales in 2012,
making the industry responsi-
ble for 20 percent of total state
sales that year.
It was also responsible for
124,000 jobs directly and in-
directly, or one in every seven
in Idaho, and $3.8 billion in
wages, which was $1 of every
$8 in wages paid in the state.
That makes agriculture
the state’s top industry, when
indirect contributions are in-
cluded, said UI ag economist
Garth Taylor.
Cattle groups defend Idaho rancher
in grazing reduction court cases
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
Local, state and national
cattle industry groups are help-
ing southwestern Idaho ranch-
ers fight a legal battle they fear
could set a precedent for sig-
nificantly reducing grazing on
federal lands in the West.
6-5/#5
RIRIE, Idaho — The Bureau
of Reclamation has agreed to
relax flood-control requirements
in Ririe Reservoir, enabling ir-
rigators to store an additional
8,000 acre feet of water through
winters.
The reservoir is being man-
aged for the extra carryover.
However, the reservoir’s irri-
gators, represented by Mitigation,
Inc., argue they’ll shoulder an
undo share of the financial bur-
den to implement the plan, and it
doesn’t go nearly far enough to-
ward curbing wasted water.
When they accept extra carry-
over and weather conditions raise
the flood risk above thresholds
set by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, the irrigators will bear
the full cost of clearing ice from
the reservoir’s outflow channel,
in case of an emergency release.
On one of the coldest days of
the winter of 2013, Mitigation,
Inc., brought in contractors with
backhoes to clear the channel for
a test release, demonstrating the
plan’s viability.
Roland Springer, assistant
area manager with the BOR’s
Upper Snake field office, said
the change is based on recent
findings of a $250,000 environ-
mental assessment, funded 80
percent by BOR appropriations
and 20 percent by irrigators.
6-5/#4X
In response to a lawsuit by
Western Watersheds Project,
U.S. District Court Judge B.
Lynn Winmill in 1999 ordered
the U.S. Bureau of Land Man-
agement’s Owyhee field office
to rewrite 68 grazing permits
that it renewed in 1997.
The permits in the so-called
Owyhee 68 case include 120
grazing allotments and impact
hundreds of thousands of acres
of land.
Idaho-based WWP argued
the permits weren’t properly
analyzed for their environ-
mental impacts according to
the National Environmental
Policy Act.
The new permits were is-
sued in 2013 and in most cases
reduced grazing by 30 to 50
percent, according to Idaho
Cattle Association officials.
ICA Executive Vice Pres-
ident Wyatt Prescott said his
group believes the BLM re-
duced grazing on the allot-
ments to try to avoid litigation
with WWP.
ICA also says BLM offi-
cials didn’t properly follow
NEPA’s requirement to con-
sider the economic impact of
their decisions on the permit-
tees and local communities,
Prescott said.
He said BLM’s decisions
were based largely on protect-
ing sage grouse habitat but the
agency didn’t adequately con-
sider the impacts of wildfire,
which is the bird’s primary
threat.
If the decisions are left
standing, it could set a dan-
gerous precedent in the West,
Prescott said, which is why
ICA and other cattle organiza-
tions have appealed the graz-
ing reductions.