Mike Simpson

CIEDRA is not a perfect bill. It is a complicated bill that forces each side to give a bit in order to find the balance that is needed to resolve outstanding land management issues.

If this were easy it would have been done by now.

I'd like to offer my thanks to Sen. Jim Risch on the committee for your support of this bill.

I am proud of the finished product.

CIEDRA is an example of statesmanship and collaboration at its finest.

I am committed to providing the funding necessary to implement such an agreement.

Many Idahoans have decided that leaving land management in the Boulder-White Clouds in flux, as wilderness study areas and under the threat of closures and lawsuits, is not acceptable.

This bill is the product of a decade of collaborative discussions and negotiating.

S. 3294 is a well-constructed piece of legislation that is the right thing to do for Central Idaho both economically and ecologically.

If this were easy it would have been done by now.

The needs of the people who live and recreate in the area are as important as the lines that we draw on a map.

I offer my thanks to Sen. Mike Crapo for his leadership.

Our challenge today is to rise above the noise and provide leadership that represents the true majority who sit squarely in the center and want to see collaborative conservation advance in the West.

It is NOT the way Senator Bennet developed his Washington County, Utah Wilderness bill.

The old approach of wilderness, of sacrificing the needs of one individual or specific user group to benefit the others will not work anymore.

These are national lands, held in trust by the federal government, and while many of us who live in Idaho think of these lands as our own, these are America's lands.

This bill releases four wilderness study areas that are currently wilderness study areas, treated as de facto wilderness.

I've been working on for some 10 years since I got into Congress.

That would be rural America, but Mr. Cole and I will come and visit your school at 6,700 feet if you will provide the oxygen.

Somebody has got too much money.

Providing content-rich educational materials on line and connecting with rural communities through traveling exhibitions are worthwhile endeavors that I fully support.

Due to the lack of resources to provide deterrents and lack of public safety, many of our people over the past few generations have turned to gangs, drugs, crime, alcohol, all of the social ills that can affect the community in the worst…

We were not asking for something that was extravagant but adequate.

His words were that it was deplorable conditions, and these need to be changed.

Mr. Simpson has had the opportunity to come to our reservation. He just lives next door.