Ignored by feds, aircraft continued ‘illegal landings’ in Idaho wilderness, lawsuit says
Several environmental and outdoor recreation groups have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Forest Service officials, alleging the agency allowed and even encouraged the illegal use of remote airstrips in an Idaho wilderness.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Wilderness Watch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Friends of the Clearwater and Friends of the Bitterroot, accuses federal officials of violating the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Central Idaho Wilderness Act by allowing hobby pilots to use the “Big Creek Four” airstrips in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
The groups said private hobby pilot use of the landing strips — Simonds, Vines, Mile Hi and Dewey Moore — has “exploded in recent years” and is marring the solace of the wilderness. According to the lawsuit, none of the Big Creek Four were regularly used as landing strips when the Frank Church wilderness was designated in 1980, disqualifying them from being “grandfathered in” for public use. Instead, they were considered emergency landing areas.
The plaintiffs have asked a judge to determine whether the Forest Service violated the Wilderness Act and other environmental regulations by performing maintenance on the airstrips and not citing pilots who landed there in non-emergency situations.
If the lawsuit is successful, a judge could bar maintenance on the airstrips, essentially letting them grow over, and force the agency to cite pilots that use the airstrips.
Plaintiffs allege airstrips are safety hazards
Typically, aircraft and watercraft are prohibited from wilderness areas unless those uses existed before the wilderness designation. Wilderness areas also bar bicycles, motorized vehicles and motorized equipment, like chainsaws.
The Forest Service maintains several public access airstrips in the wilderness area, including Cabin Creek and Bernard landing areas. The four airstrips named in the lawsuit are located roughly 40 miles northeast of McCall.
The lawsuit cited Forest Service documents referring to the Big Creek airstrips as safety hazards that were “marginally operational at best.” The environmental groups said the Forest Service decided to let the areas return to their natural state as early as the 1980s. It also noted that they should be used only in emergencies, according to an excerpt from a 1984 wilderness plan.
The groups’ lawsuit alleged the airstrips created more problems than solutions as use grew in the 1980s and ‘90s. They said there are no records of any of the four airstrips being used in an emergency landing — though there have been crashes from hobbyists trying to land at the sites “for fun,” according to the lawsuit.
Feds turned ‘a blind eye to illegal landings’
Though the Forest Service weighed reopening the airstrips during a wilderness plan review in 2003, it ultimately decided against making them public landing areas. The lawsuit said the agency revised part of that plan in 2009 — including changing language around “emergency landings.”
“The tweaks in language served to mollify recreational pilots as a nod to the agency’s informal, unofficial assurance that it would turn a blind eye to illegal landings,” the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit.
The complaint also pointed to a 2018 communication from the Forest Service’s Intermountain Regional Forester directing the supervisor for the Payette National Forest — which oversees the portion of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness where the Big Creek Four airstrips are — to refrain from citing pilots who use the areas for non-emergency landings.
The directive also implemented maintenance plans for the airstrips, the lawsuit alleged.
“The Forest Service’s actions under these plans further demonstrate the agency’s intent to improve the Big Creek Four to allow for non-emergency landings,” the plaintiffs said. “The Forest Service has closely coordinated with Idaho agencies whose clear and explicit goal is to render the locations serviceable, safe, and amenable for modern recreational flying.”
