Idahoans with resource-related jobs or off-road vehicles are joining a national effort to oust Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
The BlueRibbon Coalition, a national off-road vehicle advocacy group, led this week's "Bye Bye Babbitt" campaign in Idaho."The main reason for the call-in campaign is that Babbitt is attempting to beat up on the grazing and mining interests," said Clark Collins, the Chubbuck-based group's director.
Members are mainly loggers, miners, ranchers, off-road motorists and owners of inns at national parks, Collins said. Babbitt is pushing to tighten environmental controls on grazing, mining and logging.
"His announced plan to force grazing revisions over the heads of Western lawmakers and ranchers is arrogant," Collins said.
Another issue that concerns off-road motorists is a recent ban, spearheaded by Babbitt, on motorized travel across certain tracts of public sand dunes in northern California.
"The Department of Interior manages a lot of lands in Idaho and we're very concerned that he's going to force a lot of changes on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and BOR (Bureau of Reclamation) lands in Idaho," Collins said.
Reclamation will soon decide whether to ban motor traffic on trails in the Massacre Rocks area near American Falls. It has scores of Indian archaeological sites and is considered sacred by the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.
Babbitt has been a high-profile environmentalist for years, and the Bye Bye Babbitt proponents think that biases him.
"As head of the League of Conservation Voters," Collins said, "he's very clearly voiced his disdain for natural resource users . . . If he hasn't gotten to us here in Idaho yet, he will."
But Lynn Kinncannon with the Idaho Conservation League has a different perspective on Babbitt's performance so far.
"I think that resource extractors in general have banded together to stop any kind of reform of public land," she said, predicting a countermovement by people who support Babbitt.
"Westerners, other than those who make their living off the land, need to let Babbitt know that they're interested in the management of public lands, too."