Endowment trust land at the East Fork of Rock Creek closed Wednesday because of land abuse, according to an Idaho Department of Lands news release.
The area covers 40 acres located four miles east of Rockland in Power County. The land faced danger of closing this time last year because of trash overflow, human waste and off-trail usage of all-terrain vehicles.
Sharla Arledge, public information officer for the Idaho Department of Lands, said the abuse has been a problem in this endowment land for the last several years. She said this week’s closure was a response to those repeated abuses.
The Idaho Department of Lands held off on closure last year when a group visited the land to pick up the piles of trash. However, Arledge mentioned that the bigger issues at hand are human waste and erosion caused by off-trail ATV riding.
“It would take someone coming in and paying for portable toilets, a trash system and resources to remove the waste in order for the land to open up again,” Arledge said.
The Idaho Department of Lands previously had an agreement with a state agency who would frequently clean up the area, according to Arledge. However, this agreement ended a few years ago and there have been no resource replacements.
In 1889, Congress granted Idaho 3.6 million acres of land for the sole purpose of funding specified beneficiaries, according the Idaho Department of Lands website. These endowment trust lands create revenue for beneficiaries such as public schools and state hospitals for the mentally ill. The chief beneficiary is the public schools. Arledge repeated that the Idaho Department of Lands cannot use the land’s revenue for repair and upkeep. The school system is the priority.
“We need people to recreate responsibly. They need to be stewards of the land just as we are. Respect the land,” Arledge said. “People need to realize that it is a partnership. It is so important to our schools that these lands stay open.”
Arledge recalled a story from years ago when she floated Salmon’s River of No Return.
“We wanted to be responsible so we carried a bucket with us during the entire trip. We were not going to be a part of the human waste problem,” Arledge said with a laugh.
Arledge encouraged people to take the same responsibility as she did when floating the river. Responsibility not only lies in properly disposing of human waste, but in picking up trash and riding ATVs on marked trails.
“A bigger issue we are dealing with is up in the north. People are crossing the state line, tearing up land with their ATVs,” Arledge said.
Recreational users are ignoring blocked off areas and closed trail signs. This ignorance leads to heavy erosion the Department of Land is not financially able to repair.
The Idaho Department of Lands partnered with the USDA Forest Service Intermountain Region and Northern Region, the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Bureau of Land Management to create the Recreate Responsibly Idaho Campaign in 2020.
The campaign was created to instruct COVID policies. Arledge said that during the peak of the pandemic, more people went out to enjoy the land. The campaign aimed to encourage COVID safety procedures. This year’s campaign shifted its focus from the pandemic to education on general recreational responsibility.
“Idaho has been the fastest-growing state in the nation, so we expect new residents and visitors will be looking for places to play outdoors along with our long-time residents” said Steve Stuebner, Recreate Responsibly Idaho campaign coordinator, in a news release. “Bringing all those users together with the same mission to preserve and protect Idaho’s world-class outdoors ensures we all can enjoy what we love about Idaho and be sure it stays the Idaho we love.”
“We hope people would not go out onto the land and do things they would not do in their own backyard. Treat the land like it is your backyard,” said Arledge.
More information about how to recreate responsibly can be found at https://recreate.idaho.gov/.