Idaho, Nevada Tribes Take Flight to Protect Sites

John Miller

Tribal rangers from a southern Idaho and northern Nevada American Indian tribe will fly helicopters over their ancestral homeland in the Owyhee Front starting this holiday weekend to keep watch on important cultural resources and protect them from vandalism and theft.

The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation are descended from Western Shoshone and Northern Paiute groups that have made the Great Basin home for thousands of years. They have sacred sites within the new 517,000-acre federally protected Owyhee wilderness created in 2009, as well as across the entire canyon-laced region that includes parts of Nevada, Oregon and Idaho.

Ted Howard, tribal cultural resources head and one of two rangers who will fly this weekend, said the flights will provide a status report on places that include ancient fishing sites, burial grounds and religious "vision quest" areas the tribes still try to keep secret in order to stop thefts and damage.

Howard's tribe once fished for salmon all over the canyon lands here, a practice wiped out in the 20th century with the construction of downstream dams that blocked the fish's inland migration.

"A lot of these sites are hundreds, if not thousands of years old," Howard said. "Through our oral histories, we know there's a lot out there."

As part of the new wilderness area spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, 316 miles of rivers and streams in the region were placed under federal Wild and Scenic designation, including the Bruneau, Jarbidge, Big Jacks and Little Jacks creeks, and portions of the North Fork and South Fork of the Owyhee River.

Crapo's bill also provided for traditional activities by releasing some 199,000 acres of wilderness study areas to multiple uses, including motorized recreation and livestock grazing.

Until just a couple of years ago, the Bureau of Land Management had funded airborne tribal patrols over the region; Howard, a private pilot, also flies a rented fixed-wing aircraft over the Owyhee Canyonlands.

With U.S. congressional action on the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, some money for airborne patrols was restored as part of efforts to boost protection and preservation for tribal cultural sites and resources. The tribe now has a contract to send the helicopter aloft to keep an eye on the region through the start of hunting season this fall.

Howard said he didn't want to publicize his flight schedule, to keep potential vandals and other scofflaws guessing.

For instance, lawbreakers several years ago damaged an important prehistoric site at Camas Creek, an encampment where rock art from Indian groups dates back to 5000 B.C. or older that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

The Bureau of Land Management installed several remote cameras but never caught those responsible, Howard said.

"I want them to be looking over their shoulder, whether it be for a fixed-wing aircraft or helicopter," he said. "The people that are out there legitimately, we don't have a problem. But the folks that are doing something illegal, I want to let them know, we're going to be watching."

Flights will be routed to avoid flying low over canyons where bighorn sheep ewes are soon to give birth to this season's lambs.

In addition to the chopper flights starting this weekend, at least three BLM rangers from the Twin Falls and Boise field offices will also be doing ground patrols, largely to help educate hikers and all-terrain vehicle-riders about new wilderness rules - and about leaving artifacts where they are found.

Doug McConnaughey, a Nampa, Idaho-based mediator who has worked for 15 years with the tribe and BLM, said the tribe hopes to secure more federal money in coming years to expand the number of its rangers to five and buy its own surveillance plane.

"That's going to be important for the tribe over the next five years: Working with the public to fully understand the rich treasure we have there, in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada," McConnaughey said. "That rich treasure belongs to all of us, and we have to protect it, because it's nonrenewable."

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Source: http://www.kolotv.com/news/headlines/95151409.html

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