First thing first. At 4:00, Saturday, May 26, we gather at Oden Communnity Hall (here’s a map) for our annual State of the Scotchmans meeting. Bring a dish to share, a favorite beverage and dinner service. Find out who our 2012 Old Goat award goes to, help honor some of our other valiant volunteers and get the lowdown of the search for wolverines from Michael Lucid, Idaho Fish and Game Biologist. You might even meet our 4,00th friend!

We will also introduce our summer project coordinator, John Bauer. His first day on the job is May 24, and we are pleased and privileged to welcome him to the Scotchman Peaks. John brings a huge amount of experience in stewardship and volunteer coordination with him to the job.

Looking ahead to summer, our hike and stewardship series is ready for viewing.

We will celebrate National Trails Day three ways this summer, first with man’s best friend on the Regal Creek Trail on June 2, then with Brian Baxter-led classes on June 9 and June 30, Old Growth and Riparian Ecology respectively. Dennison Webb of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education will lead a Leave-No-Trace hike for kids on June 16, and Forest Service archeologist Rachel Reckin will teach fellow hikers about Native American uses of the Spar Creek area on June 30.

Rachel is also a driving force behind one of our most exciting stewarship projects of the summer. Thanks to her, on July 29 and 30, the Forest Service’s Nine-Mile Mule Team will be hauling restoration supplies to the historic Star Peak lookout. We are seeking a very limited number of volunteers (only five per day) to help with packing and unpacking as well as catch a glimpse of how the Forest Service moved materials in the beginning days of the agency.

Speaking of Star Peak, we begin rebuilding the historic Star Peak trail on the west side of

Eddy Creek with a kickoff work day on Sunday July 8. This is a great opportunity for Friends to help restore the tread that originally led to the lookout. Further work days will be Fridays, July 20 and August 3 and 17th.

Assuredly, we have plenty of recreation, education and stewardship events in store, more than we can fit into this message. Visit our website for regular updates and learn how to sign up to take a hike, lead a hike, swing a pulaski, pack a mule or learn about our beautiful wild Scotchmans!

Read more about the upcoming summer here.

Eight individuals, representing 4 conservationists and 4 folks from the Timber Industry met regularly for several months to look at common areas of interest.  We did not try to settle every issue facing the national forest, but what we found was that there was a lot we could agree upon.

Most of our areas of common agreement were general visions with some broadly outlined suggestions.  Much work remains to figure out how the details will work.  But every worthwhile venture begins with a vision, one which brings us one step closer to Wilderness for the Panhandle and for the Scotchmans.

Call it collaboration, but let’s be clear, this is about more than compromise (yes there is some of that).  This collaboration is about how to work towards improvements in managing our natural resources in ways that we all find mutually agreeable.

Let’s start with some basics:

To a person there is agreement that there is a desire and need to have a healthy, vibrant, sustainable timber industry. It’s our heritage, it’s an important sector of a diverse local economy, it’s a means by which the forest service can conduct restoration, reduce the threat of wildfire and achieve other ecosystem goals found in the forest land management plan. In our working group, there are questions of where, when and how much; but there is no question of “if”.

To a person there is agreement that wilderness is important for many reasons and a valuable component of forest management. It would preserve our heritage as well as our future, conserve species and habitat, provide opportunities for hunting, fishing, primitive recreation and solitude. In our working group, there are questions of where, when and how much, but no question of “if”.

This is worth repeating: the conservationists at the table support active management of our forests, and the timber folks support wilderness.

It really should not be surprising.  The two goals are NOT mutually exclusive. The Idaho Panhandle National Forest contains over 2 million acres, room to achieve many objectives. There are wilderness quality landscapes which the timber industry agrees are not ecologically desirable, or economically feasible to log – their best use is as wilderness. The conservationists agree there are landscapes where logging can be done sustainably with economic and ecological benefit.

We all agree that our communities benefit by getting the best of both.

Again, the broad vision statements are pretty easy to agree upon, they make sense to most folks. The devil is in the details and the details will still require more work, but we are one step, a big step, closer to getting them worked out.

Since our beginning the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness has worked to develop a community consensus where wilderness protection for the Scotchmans is valued highly and sought after by a broad spectrum of the public. We have long believed in these vision statements.

We are not against active management for timber, nor are we against grazing, mining, managed OHV recreation or other uses of the national forest. We believe that on the 2 million acres of the Idaho Panhandle National forest and on the 2 million acres of the Kootenai national forest we can find lands suitable for sustainable timber production and forest product jobs and other natural resources industries such as mining and grazing as well as managed recreation (both motorized as well as primitive) AND the benefits of natural resource conservation, both environmental as well as economic.

We also believe that wilderness is an important component of this balanced use of the land and that the Scotchman Peaks represents one of the areas where clearly the greatest benefit is to be found in Wilderness designation.

We are glad that there are others who agree with us and who are willing to work towards these common goals.

You can read more about this recent effort on an article published by the Spokesman Review:

www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/may/10/common-ground/

This stewardship opportunity with our Forest Service partners on the Cabinet Ranger District is a summer-long project to reclaim a trail abandoned decades ago to another route designed for motorized use. The old-new tread will have its own trail head near the bottom of Fatman Road # 2292 and join the upper trail above the end of the old road, allowing hikers great views of the Clark Fork valley as well as a great trip on a trail designed for non-motorized use.

This is for volunteers with moderate to very good fitness, only. Work includes using pulaskis, shovels and loppers as well as moving rocks, small logs and “swamping” for Forest Service sawyers. Volunteers are required to wear hardhats (provided) and long pants (no shorts, please), and should wear stout trail shoes or boots and bring gloves, sunscreen, energy snacks, a good lunch and lots of water.

There will be several more workdays on trail #998 as summer progresses. Check for other days in the hike schedule below. Other, unposted opportunities, which we will keep volunteers appraised of, may arise.

This stewardship opportunity with our Forest Service partners on the Cabinet Ranger District is a summer-long project to reclaim a trail abandoned decades ago to another route designed for motorized use. The old-new tread will have its own trail head near the bottom of Fatman Road # 2292 and join the upper trail above the end of the old road, allowing hikers great views of the Clark Fork valley as well as a great trip on a trail designed for non-motorized use.

This is for volunteers with moderate to very good fitness, only. Work includes using pulaskis, shovels and loppers as well as moving rocks, small logs and “swamping” for Forest Service sawyers. Volunteers are required to wear hardhats (provided) and long pants (no shorts, please), and should wear stout trail shoes or boots and bring gloves, sunscreen, energy snacks, a good lunch and lots of water.

There will be several more workdays on trail #998 as summer progresses. Check for other days in the hike schedule below. Other, unposted opportunities, which we will keep volunteers appraised of, may arise.

This stewardship opportunity with our Forest Service partners on the Cabinet Ranger District is a summer-long project to reclaim a trail abandoned decades ago for another route designed for motorized use. The old-new tread will have its own trail head near the bottom of Fatman Road # 2292 and join the upper trail above the end of the old road, allowing hikers great views of the Clark Fork valley as well as a great trip on a trail designed for non-motorized use.

This is for volunteers with moderate to very good fitness, only. Work includes using pulaskis, shovels and loppers as well as moving rocks, small logs and “swamping” for Forest Service sawyers. Volunteers are required to wear hardhats (provided) and long pants (no shorts, please), and should wear stout trail shoes or boots and bring gloves, sunscreen, energy snacks, a good lunch and lots of water.

There will be several more workdays on trail #998 as summer progresses. Check for other days in the hike schedule below. Other, unposted opportunities, which we will keep volunteers appraised of, may arise.

This stewardship opportunity with our Forest Service partners on the Cabinet Ranger District will be the kickoff for a summer-long project to reclaim a trail abandoned decades ago for another route designed for motorized use. The effort is the result of a discovery by Recreation Tech Joel Sather of an old map of the area showing a trail that once ran up the west side of Big Eddy Creek, on the other side of the drainage from the road that now makes up the lower half of trail #998. The old-new tread will have its own trailhead near the bottom of Fatman Road # 2292 and join the upper trail above the end of the old road, allowing hikers great views of the Clark Fork valley as well as a great trip on a trail designed for non-motorized use.

This is for volunteers with moderate to very good fitness, only. Work includes using pulaskis, shovels and loppers as well as moving rocks, small logs and “swamping” for Forest Service sawyers. Volunteers are required to wear hardhats (provided) and long pants (no shorts, please), and should wear stout trail shoes or boots and bring gloves, sunscreen, energy snacks, a good lunch and lots of water.

There will be several more workdays on trail #998 as summer progresses. Check for other days in the hike schedule below. Other, unposted opportunities, which we will keep volunteers appraised of, may arise.

Compared to taking a hike, stalking wolverines, marching in July forth parades or wearing a Scotchman Peaks logo hat, writing plan comments is about the least exciting thing to do in support of wilderness, yet it may have the longest lasting value.

If you would like to read a copy of the comments that the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness Submittee, we have posted them on this page on our website:

http://www.scotchmanpeaks.org/pdfs/FSPW_CommentsKIPZ_May2012.pdf

Making your voice heard is one of the fundamental building blocks of democracy. Our public lands are managed for timber, mining, conservation of species, recreation and wilderness, of course; but, ultimately, our public lands are managed for people – for you, me and everyone across our communities and our country who ever look out the window of a passing car.  They are managed for our children and their children. As Woodie Guthrie would say: “this land is our land”.

And so we appreciate that there are folks who will take the time to express their thoughts on how best our public servants manage these lands.  If you did so, pat yourself on the back!

If you missed this opportunity, fear not, there will be more opportunities ahead. Managing public lands, manageing the Scotchmans is about more than setting a one time vision, it is about a continuing commitment to be good stewards, to help our agencies make good decisions.

Now the fun begins for forest service planners – they get to read all the many comments sent in, and analyze them, and act on or answer them. Expect a run on Evans Brothers coffee. In another 6 months or so, there will be a final plan out and we will ask you again to speak up for the Scotchmans.  Hopefully one day there will be legislation looming on the horizon and we will ask again for supporting comments.

Democracy is not a one time sporting event, it is shaped in the long-term by those who choose to participate. We hope you will be there with us!

4 miles one way, 8 round trip with an elevation gain of 3,800 feet.

Round trip: 12 + miles. Elevation gain, 3500 + feet.