I’m a believer in the Law of Unintended Consequences. Loosely defined, that’s when you try to accomplish something and what you didn’t anticipate becomes way more important than what you did. We’re about to have a lesson in unintended consequences due to Congressman Mike Simpson’s Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act [CIEDRA]. The Act is an attempt to bring prosperity to Custer and Blaine counties by giving federal land to municipal and county governments, establishing a White Cloud/Boulder Mountains Wilderness, and setting up improved routes for ORVs and motorcycles and mountain bikes. CIEDRA is being touted as a model of compromise for land-use in the West. But here are some things that Congressman Simpson—a man known for his good intentions—and the rest of us might want to think about before proceeding further:

—Wilderness designation for the White Clouds and the Boulder ranges looks logical. The area is currently de facto wilderness due to its rugged terrain, surrounding roadless zones, and distance from large population centers. But CIEDRA would attract heavy use by designating areas for specific users. Backpackers would be directed into wilderness, mountain bikers would be given improved trails, and the cyclists and ORVers would be directed onto newly designed routes that would put them close to wild areas or in a corridor between wild areas.

Right now the backpackers avoid the motorcyclists, the motorcyclists seldom get off their bikes, and the mountain bikers don’t leave the trails either. Get fifty yards off a trail in the White Clouds and you’re alone. Get fifty yards off a trail in the Sawtooths, which are a designated wilderness, and you’ll run into people. Compare visitor impact at off-trail sites in the Sawtooths against impact in similar sites in the White Clouds, and you’ll see that wilderness designation can actually harm what is wild.

—Wilderness designation results in the most highly-regulated real estate in the country. If the resulting gridwork of enforcement organizations, laws, and rules were to be made visible, it would look like an organization chart for a Fortune 500 company. Wilderness designation bureaucratizes land and creates a legal entity that is wholly artificial and heavily policed, even as it looks natural and free.

—A sacrificial doughnut surrounds wilderness areas, because wilderness has commercial value. Realtors, developers, trophy-home builders, hobby ranchers, and idle young folks without visible means of support hang out in towns that have wilderness nearby. You can see a weird drama around the West as people come for the solitude and the romance and wildness and then ruin what they came for by re-creating the social and physical infrastructure they’ve just escaped.

The upper Wood River Valley is a good example of a place where only the extremely wealthy can feel comfortable anymore. It’s hard for me to believe that Custer County would want its cowboys to become houseboys in ten-thousand square-foot mansions, even if the county would get more taxes. Fourth generation Custer County folks should talk to fourth generation Blaine County folks, if they can find any of them still around.

—The recreational gasoline industry will suffer if old folks are freezing to death in their houses because they can’t afford heating oil. We might look at this War on Terrorism we’re in, and look to our self-disciplined gasoline rationing during WWII, when we really wanted to win. It might not be the most tasteful time to be building ORV tracks and motorcycle circuits.