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BLM questions conservancy director’s use of access road
LEWISTON, IDAHO - 11/15/03— Federal land managers have expressed concern about what appears to be preferential treatment on west-central Idaho´s Craig Mountain for supporters of the Nature Conservancy. Bureau of Land Management Field Manager Greg Yuncevich labeled as inappropriate the conservancy´s use of a limited-access road on its Cove Gulch property to drive contributors in so they could hunt birds. Yuncevich said the reason Cove Gulch was not officially closed to motorized vehicles when the BLM bought it from the conservancy in 1995 was because access to the road was blocked by a gate on the adjacent conservancy preserve in Hells Canyon. The road is restricted to administrative use only. But he said a formal closure may have to be initiated because of the questionable use of the road by conservancy state director Geoff Pampush. “I need to treat the public as an all inclusive public,” Yuncevich said. During a recent donor appreciation weekend, Pampush drove donors
from the Garden Creek Preserve to Cove Gulch to tour the conservancy´s
weed treatment projects and hunt chukars, an upland game bird. |