BLM Creating Travel Plan For Deep Creek, Curlew

The Bureau of Land Management wants the public’s opinion on what to do with the 360,000 acres of public land in the Deep Creek and Curlew areas.

Currently, the BLM does not have a travel management plan for the area, meaning that people can drive, ride or walk anywhere, but that will change and public input can help to shape the outcome.

BLM Outdoor Recreation Planner Chuck Patterson said there may be nothing out there now, but he wants to know if people want specific mountain bike trails, horse-riding trails or hiking trails.

“Those are the kind of opportunities that we want to work with the public to identify, you know, are there areas that we can provide additional recreation for them?” Patterson said.

The land will become a limited use area, meaning people can only travel in certain places. Supervisory Resource Management Specialist Blaine Newman said they don’t want to hurt the activities that people already use the land for, but with the number of off-highway vehicles in Idaho jumping to more than 100,000 in the last several decades, keeping a balance is crucial.

“What we would like to do is designate a system of roads and trails that’s reasonable for people to get access to public lands, as well as offer protection for wild life and sensitive plants and other resources that are out there,” Newman said.

One of those resources is grazing land, and that is what brought Kelvin Taysom out to the meeting. He has cattle that graze by permit on the BLM land, and wants to make sure the new plan doesn’t take a bite out of his livelihood.

“And so my concern was access, mostly so that they can tend to stock and so on and also anything that might affect us as adjoining property owners,” Taysom said.

People who missed the series of public meetings can still submit their comments to the Pocatello field office until Aug. 1.