Andrus Under Fire for Backing Bomb Range : Idaho: Democratic governor, a former Interior secretary, finds himself on other side in a nasty dispute.

If they ever build a Hall of Fame for environmentalists, Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus would be a shoo-in.

He pioneered the Green era in modern politics in 1970, not long after the initial Earth Day, by becoming the first governor elected on an environmental ticket. He was a national hero to conservationists as Interior secretary during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, when the national park system doubled in size and the amount of protected wilderness tripled.

But these days Andrus finds himself on the other side in a nasty dispute that, on a small scale, raises the same question bedeviling the Clinton Administration over such issues as timber cutting in the Pacific Northwest: Are there limits to conservation when economic development is at stake?

Certainly, few American politicians are better suited to navigating the perilous path between protecting ecosystems and preserving jobs than “Cece” Andrus.

A popular Democrat in a predominantly Republican state, he rose to the governor’s office by opposing a plan to mine the White Clouds mountains. Andrus argued then that a sound environment and a growing economy could exist side by side, and 23 years later, as he begins the final year of his fourth, and he says last, term as governor, he would seem to have proved his point.

This booming state on the western slope of the Rockies led the nation in job growth in 1992. Tourism is the state’s third-leading industry and the Snake River Valley is fast becoming one of the country’s leading high-tech centers.

The promise of low crime rates, relatively cheap housing, breathtaking scenery and abundant outdoor recreation--local boosters like to say that you can play golf in the morning and go skiing the same afternoon--have lured urban refugees from both coasts. They made Idaho the second-fastest-growing state in the nation last year, although with 1.1 million people scattered across an area larger than New England, there is room to grow.

Presiding over it all, as Sportsman-in-Chief, is the 62-year-old governor, who once worked as a lumberjack before entering politics.

“I have participated in some of the destruction that I abhor now,” said Andrus, who looks like he still could take down a Ponderosa pine without working up a sweat.

For years, the governor has been battling the federal government over its plans to store nuclear waste in Idaho. He succeeded in keeping large, coal-burning power plants out of the state when they were the rage elsewhere in the Rockies. And he hasn’t been afraid to take on the National Rifle Assn., which he once termed “the gun nuts of the world,” even though Idaho has the second-highest percentage of hunters of any state.

“I’m a practicing environmentalist,” Andrus explained in an interview in his sprawling, marble-columned Statehouse office, where a gold-plated rifle and a personal computer are both on display. “I’m not a dreamer with a flower in my teeth. I’m out there with a fly rod in my hands. I’ve got a little Brittany bird dog that’s just super with hunting quail and chukar and pheasants. And I hunt elk and I ride horses in the back country.”

All of which makes many fellow Idahoans wonder why Andrus is so stubbornly pushing an Air Force plan to put a 25,000-acre training range in pristine desert canyon land in the southwestern corner of the state, especially now that the Cold War has ended and the need for new military facilities seems remote.

“We feel betrayed,” said Nancy Westcott, a Boise housewife, in one of the milder comments one is likely to hear from training-range opponents.

Andrus insists that, without the proposed range, the Air Force is likely to eliminate its nearby air base at Mountain Home, Idaho, when the next round of base closings begins in 1995. That, he adds, would mean a loss of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars to Idaho’s economy.

“It’s our state’s largest employer. So we’ve got to have a training range,” said Andrus, who maintains that damage to the land will be minimal.

Environmentalists contend that the range, which would be “bombed” with non-explosive flares, dummy ordnance and aluminum chaff, would restrict hunting and recreation over a large area, threaten a large herd of bighorn sheep and possibly damage archeological sites that include Indian ruins and petroglyphs. They also point out that an existing bombing range is only 20 minutes’ flying time away, in northern Utah.

For months, the controversy has been the talk of the capital city of Boise, a town of 150,000 that sits at the foot of snowcapped hills. There have been TV and radio commercials, billboards protesting the range, and heavy coverage by the local media.

Environmental leaders, mindful of the governor’s record of achievement, speak more in sorrow than in anger of his determination to see the range created.

“When he’s on our side there’s nobody like him. When he’s against us, it’s a big problem because he’s so skillful,” said Pat Ford of the Idaho Conservation League. “Conservationists obviously want people like Andrus to be on their side on every issue. But that hasn’t happened, and it never will.”

Even as he fights to “bomb” the Owyhee desert, Andrus is waging his last, and most romantic, campaign of all--to save the oceangoing Snake River salmon from extinction. His national crusade, which he likens to efforts to protect the bald eagle, pits him against influential House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, whose eastern Washington district is home to a series of dams where many of the young Idaho salmon perish on their journey of nearly 1,000 miles to the Pacific.

It is the cheap electricity generated by those dams that powers aluminum factories, which are the major private employers in Foley’s district. Andrus contends the salmon could be saved if water were allowed to flow more swiftly through the dams during the migration period--at a cost of millions of dollars in higher electric power rates and possible economic harm to the river-port cities downstream.