Idaho Tug-of-War Pits Wild Against Wild Blue Yonder : Military: Odd coalition wants to shoot down plan to turn 13,000 acres into an Air Force bombing range.

The stark moonscape of Idaho’s southwest corner can be so quiet that Craig Gehrke, an environmentalist who camps and hikes in the area, says you can stand in the vastness and hear the true sound of silence: the steady, rhythmic whoosh of blood in your ears.

This stretch of high, rocky desert, cleaved deeply by dramatic canyons, is sacred to the Shoshone-Paiute Indians settled on a reservation nearby. It is home to about 35 rare species of plants and animals. It’s an area so wild and remote that the Interior Department has deemed it suitable for federal protection as a national wilderness area.

If the Air Force and Idaho’s governor have their way, however, the silence and solitude of Idaho’s Owyhee Canyonlands will be broken at least five days a month by the “sound of freedom”--the roar, thud and shriek of up to 80 warplanes flying at supersonic speeds, dropping dummy bombs and maneuvering out of reach of mock antiaircraft fire.

Under a complex land swap conceived and pushed by one the nation’s most environmentally minded governors, the state would take possession of 13,000 acres of southwest Idaho owned by the Interior Department. Gov. Cecil D. Andrus, acting as middleman, would then turn the land over to the 366th Wing “Gunfighters” of Mountain Home Air Force Base for conversion into the Idaho Bomb Range.

The Air Force would spend $26 million to buy equipment and privately owned land adjoining the site, improve roads and build the bomb range. It would then become one of four major target ranges within a 70-minute flight of the Mountain Home base.

But a coalition of federal officials, environmentalists, Native Americans and big-game hunters--as well as some of Andrus’ own state officials--are looking to shoot down the plan.

The test of wills, which could wind up being arbitrated by Congress, represents just one corner of a national battleground between the post-Cold War Pentagon and environmentalists.

As the shrinking U.S. military draws its forces home from places such as Europe and the Philippines, it is seeking to step up activities and expand territory for maneuvers and training throughout the United States.

Such domestic tracts need to be large enough for jets, tanks and other military equipment to practice fast-moving combat tactics and fire long-range weapons.

In a February, 1993, report issued by Gen. Colin L. Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon acknowledged that “an integrated test and evaluation range structure,” linking existing ranges across six Western states and areas off the California coast, would be necessary to bring U.S. training areas into line “with the changed world.”

But as the military pursues that expansion, it is locking horns with environmentalists, who are finding rare common cause with other traditional users of federal lands throughout the West, including ranchers, miners and hunters.

The Pentagon is “going berserk right now, and I don’t understand it,” said Grace Bukowski of the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, a citizens’ action group that helps organize resistance to the military’s expansion into public lands. “I thought the Cold War was over.”

The opposition, Bukowski said, is “this strange group of bedfellows who are leaving their shotguns at the door and joining forces to fight the military. Because when it comes to the military taking over our public lands, we’re all in agreement: If the military gets it, everyone loses. (The lands are) gone for the ranchers, miners, environmentalists and recreationists.”

Gehrke, for one, said he believes that the Idaho situation could represent a final push by the Air Force. “I just wonder if this isn’t the last big land grab--an effort to get one last range before the curtain closes,” he said.

With 27 million acres in the United States under military control already and support for the protection of public lands growing, Gehrke said, “I can’t see them arguing successfully for more training ranges.”

Skirmishes like the one in Idaho are being played out throughout the nation. But the fights have been concentrated in the West, where vast expanses of open land and lightly populated areas have increasingly drawn the military.

* In California, Army plans to expand maneuver areas by 320,000 acres at its National Training Center at Ft. Irwin have run headlong into efforts to protect the threatened desert tortoise. Legislation advocated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would exempt the area around Ft. Irwin, which is prime tortoise habitat, from special restrictions to protect the animals. But environmentalists continue to press for greater protection.

* In Arizona, a Marine Corps proposal to increase flight activity over the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge has drawn strong opposition from environmentalists.

* In Colorado, an Air Force bid to increase low-level flights across the state has caused a political uproar and has collided with a state law that strengthens protections for new wilderness areas under the military’s flight path.

* In New Mexico and Utah, an Army proposal to test-fire Patriot missiles across a stretch of pristine desert has environmentalists up in arms.

* In Alaska, the Air Force and Army are pressing plans for sweeping additions to training areas throughout the state, prompting cries of concern about the effect on wildlife and native people who hunt for subsistence.

* In Nevada, the Navy and Air Force have plans to expand two of the nation’s most extensive bomb ranges--those associated with Fallon Naval Air Station and Nellis Air Force Base.

At Nellis, the Air Force wants to build a landing strip on 1,400 acres of lake bed now used for recreation and ranching. In recent years, Fallon Naval Air Station has put forth plans to increase its training ranges more than threefold and to double its airspace.

At the same time that the Pentagon is trying to expand its turf in some regions, it is being forced to defend its training grounds elsewhere. Last year, a group known as Defenders of Wildlife sued the Defense Department to stop bombing and aerial combat training at Copalis National Wildlife Refuge on Washington state’s coastline, an area that is home to endangered stellar sea lions.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt intervened to stop the military activity there, and Defenders of Wildlife is now striving for legislation to strengthen protection from military activities for all national wildlife refuges. In recent years, the managers of 72 wildlife refuges in 27 states have warned that their areas have suffered from military air exercises and bombing practice.

In pressing its case, the military has gained a powerful weapon: the threat of base closures. For many rural communities dependent on military payrolls, the prospect that the shrinking military could pack up and leave is both real and frightening.

The Pentagon has distanced itself from the politically charged decisions over base closures by turning them over to an independent commission.

But the services continue to have a powerful influence in the process because the commission’s deliberations begin with a list of closure recommendations drafted by the military.

As a result, state and local officials know that keeping local base commanders happy could spell the difference between economic life and death.

In Idaho, the fear of economic abandonment by the Air Force is at the heart of the bomb range proposal. Andrus says the Mountain Home base is the second-biggest employer in his state, with a direct annual payroll of $140 million and a yearly energy bill with the state’s utility of $300 million. Roughly 4,000 Air Force and civilian personnel are based at Mountain Home. With their families, they make up well over half the population of this old railroad town.

Andrus said he hopes that a new bomb range will forestall any thoughts by the Air Force of closing the base. “I would be totally irresponsible as governor of this state if I ignored the potential” that the base would close, he said.

With the state working so hard to expand, “you just cannot turn your back on all those jobs” at Mountain Home, he said.

Herb Meyr, a retired lieutenant colonel and fighter pilot who opposes the Idaho Bomb Range, called the threat of base closures “economic blackmail” that has Andrus and the state over a barrel.

The Air Force denies that it has made any such threat. “We would like to be here a long time,” said Brig. Gen. Dave McCloud, commanding officer of the 366th Wing. But because the base-closure commission and the President have the final say in what facilities should close, he added, “it is absolutely out of our hands.”

McCloud and other Air Force officials, however, made it clear that the Idaho Bomb Range would be counted as another advantage for the base at Mountain Home, which already offers good flying conditions and inexpensive living costs for personnel.

McCloud said that by having a new range close to the base, his pilots could get out of their planes “still soaking wet” with sweat after bombing exercises.

The Mountain Home base now has one bombing range nearby, but it is so limited that the “Gunfighters” have to use much of their congressionally limited flying time to reach ranges in Utah and Nevada for many of their practices. Including the time it takes to refuel the jets, the trips take 45 to 70 minutes each way.

But environmentalists charge that convenience for the Air Force does not outweigh the dangers to wildlife, Native American culture and scenery that the Idaho Bomb Range poses.

To the Shoshone-Paiute Indians who live on the border of Idaho and Nevada, all the land the Air Force seeks is sacred. Beyond that, a burial ground and many religious and cultural sites lie in and around the bombing area.

In one of the two proposed areas, Air Force contractors found about 400 Indian artifacts and sites of potential archeological interest.

The area over which warplanes would concentrate is habitat for the prong-horned antelope and the nation’s largest herd of California bighorn sheep.

Both species are considered to be in serious decline, and Idaho’s herd of bighorn sheep has provided vital transplant stock to replenish populations in California and elsewhere.

Moreover, part of the proposed Idaho Bomb Range falls in an area that has been deemed suitable for federal wilderness protection, and two rivers that are candidates for designation as “wild and scenic rivers” flow between the two “impact zones” sought by the Air Force.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has warned Babbitt that if the Air Force plan moves ahead, those areas probably would not satisfy the criteria for federal protection.

In the end, the federal government, and possibly Congress, will likely be called upon to arbitrate. And that, in turn, could set off a war of wills between Babbitt and the Air Force--whose secretary, Sheila Widnall, strongly supports the new range.

While Babbitt has not yet spoken out publicly on the issue, he is being urged by many advisers and some lawmakers to block the transfer of land to Idaho.

Last month, the Idaho Fish and Game Board--whose members are named by the governor--recommended against proceeding with the northern half of the bomb range.

“We’re telling them: ‘You picked maybe one of the single worst places to do this,’ ” said Jerry M. Conley, the Fish and Game Board commissioner. “We’re telling them: ‘Why don’t you look at someplace else? . . . Why can’t there be another place?’ ”

Healy was recently on assignment in Idaho.

Target Sighted

The state of Idaho wants to devote 13,000 acres of wilderness to a new bombing range for Mountain Home Air Force Base.