The Salmon River in Idaho is one of the largest undamped rivers in the lower 48.
We're on the east fork of the salmon, one of its major tributaries.
It drains the boulder white clouds mountains, which were just recently designated as a wilderness.
This watershed is iconic of western watersheds.
Many of the same problems you see here are repeated around the west.
So fighting for this place is like fighting for the west for me.
I'm excited about Advocates for the West because they pick the most important strategic cases
and the lawyers are effective, talented, trusted.
We know that they're going to bring the cases that matter the most and they have an incredible
record of winning.
The Forest Service had done an analysis and determined that the grazing was having a bunch
of impacts.
It was impacting the streams, it was impacting the sensitive plants, but then they authorized
the same number of cows to go back and they didn't close the areas right away.
So we sued and we won and the judge was like, yeah, you made this decision that you got
to get the cows out because they're causing problems and the cows are right there.
Get them off.
This year is considered really important spawning and rearing habitat for salmon, steelhead
and bull trout.
You can obviously tell the private land all the way down this whole valley looks so different
from the BLM exposure that we just looked at.
Now I don't think they've been grazing here for about eight or ten years and I'm surprised
there's not more recovery.
It makes me wonder, are they grazing sometimes of the year when they're not supposed to be?
So we're going to keep going up high.
This hasn't been graged in a long time, right?
No, not as much.
Steel some.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're going to put some more in this year.
Some more cows.
Yeah.
We'll get them pinched, right?
Right.
Lawyers bring lawsuits.
I bring lawsuits against people and it makes them mad and we do create conflict at times.
I'm not trying to create personal conflict with people, but there is conflict between
some of their land practices that actually are harmful and how do you transform that?
The east fork of the Salmon River can be a real refugia.
It has a lot of water, it has high elevation, it has a lot of abundant resources to preserve
fish and wildlife that need places to go as their habitats are being lost through climate
change.
So how can we find ways to help people who live in this valley also have good lives, good
incomes, but be living in more harmony with the nature of the land?
It's kind of a vision for the east fork of the Salmon.
