Taking on Big Brother
(draft 3.8)

 

It’s not an exaggeration to say Idahoans have a love-hate relationship with the federal government. It’s certainly understandable. After all, the federal government owns more than 60% of our state. Only three(?) other states are more federally controlled. In Idaho, the U.S. Forest Service alone manages 40% of the state’s land mass; the Bureau of Land Management, 20%.

 

So when the Forest Service loses its grip on common sense, it can seem like a tsunami has hit those who work under the agency’s rules/purview.

 

Proof of that came in 2010 when Outdoor Idaho wanted to send a two-person video crew into central Idaho's Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Our goal was to gather footage of teens from around the country learning to build trails and learning about wilderness ethics.

 

Since Outdoor Idaho had routinely shot stories on forest land and in designated Wilderness areas, we naturally assumed there would be no problem documenting the fine work of the Student Conservation Association. That's the largest provider of hands-on environmental programs for youth and young adults in the nation. 

 

Our videographer Jay Krajic had already shot footage of the teens arriving at the Boise airport, and he also got them training near Cobalt, Idaho, on the crosscut saw and the Pulaski.  But our producer Marcia Franklin was hearing some disconcerting whispers, that the planned trip into the Frank Church Wilderness might not go as planned.

 

Marcia... something like this maybe... when I called the district ranger to inquire what the problem might be, I was shocked to hear that the two of us would not be allowed to finish our story. The reason given was that the wilderness act of 1964 forbade our entry. There really wasn’t a reason given... or something akin to that. Short and sweet. (And I can paraphrase this if you’d rather not be quoted, but I think it would be nice to have you write something)

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How could sending a videographer with a digital camera on one shoulder and a tripod on the other cause harm to the Frank? Wasn’t it the iconic landscape photographer Ansel Adams who built support for Wilderness by taking his camera into Yosemite? Incidentally, the videographer who would be taking our camera into the Frank had previously worked for the Forest Service, building trails. Jay could easily have taught a course on Wilderness ethics. 

 

I was taking it personally that someone thought Outdoor Idaho was disrespecting the spirit of the Wilderness Act.  This is the legislation with the most lyrical sentence of any law in the past 100 years. Wilderness “is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” It doesn’t get any more poetic than that. 

 

But we figured if the position of the Salmon-Challis district represented the latest thinking of the Forest Service, there was now an existential dagger pointed at the heart of Outdoor Idaho.

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We felt the Forest Service was giving us little choice. Even if we lost the battle, we knew we had to get in the ring with Big Brother.

Remember this date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010. That’s when the Forest Supervisor of the Salmon-Challis Forest, Frank Guzman, sent us a memo with these words: “... our experts in Special Uses and Wilderness Management in the regional office all agree that this sort of filming is commercial, and thus not allowed in the Wilderness. There really seems to be no grey area on this topic.”

 

That’s about as black and white as you can get: “no grey area.” 

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The battle was on.  General Manager Peter Morrill quickly notified the State Board of Education and other State officials that they had better prepare for a long, drawn-out battle. Within hours after the Forest Supervisor’s memo had crossed our desk, the Associated Press sent out a lengthy article to statewide media, entitled “Gov. Otter takes on feds over wilderness filming.”

 

Governor Butch Otter’s response was quick and definitive. This was the man who earlier in the year had tried to defund us. But now he was on our side.  “The claim that IPTV is a commercial entity is patently absurd and defies common sense. IPTV is owned by the state of Idaho and is an agency of the State Board of Education. IPTV is a noncommercial entity.”  Governor Butch was thoroughly enjoying his role in this skirmish!

 

In the same Associated Press article, GM Peter Morill asked, “If Ansel Adams were alive today, and wanted to bring his camera into the Frank Church Wilderness, would the Forest Service let him?” I was also quoted, arguing that we were not a commercial operation. 

 

Even the host and executive producer of “Oregon Field Guide” chimed in. Oregon Public Broadcasting had always viewed a fight with the Forest Service as a First Amendment issue, as an attempt to stifle a bone fide news organization.

 

But for this AP story, host and executive producer Steve Amen concentrated on how the interpretation of the Wilderness Act seemed to differ from state to state and forest to forest.  “The people in the main offices love what we’re doing. They want us on their land,” he said, referring to Forest Service leaders in Oregon.

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The public pile-on was just beginning. Bethine Church, widow of Senator Frank Church, told us that “Frank would have laughed, because he would have found this so nutty.” Idaho Statesman newspaper opinion writer Kevin Richert opined that “The Forest Service wanted to block public television from public lands. Can’t make all this up.”

 

Behind the scenes our Congressional delegation was applying pressure to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. Even though they all liked Tom, they were enjoying the take-down of the massive federal agency. It played well in Idaho.

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Once they realized we were not backing down, officials in the Intermountain region in Ogen, Utah, began desperately seeking a way out of their political mess. One even suggested to me that, instead of an Outdoor Idaho camera, why couldn’t we give the Wilderness students each a small camera and then use that footage for the video segment we were producing. That strange idea was over a drink, so I never took it too seriously.

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On Friday, May 21, the regional office raised the white flag. They had found the grey area. After less than three days, the Intermountain region overseeing the Salmon-Challis Forest sent out this press release.  “After careful review, the US Forest Service has moved to allow filming by an Idaho Public Television crew in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.”

 

The statement went on to say that the Forest Service wants to increase public understanding of the importance of National Forests, and “one of the ways we can do this is through the media.” 

 

Working with Forest Service officials Andy Brunelle, Dave Olson, and Erin O’Connor, we received an unprecedented blanket Special Use Permit for four wilderness areas across multiple National Forest locations and two Forest Service regions.

 

The free permit allowed everyone to back off the rhetoric and put the matter to rest. It also allowed us to produce our hour-long “50 Years of Wilderness” documentary that aired December 7^th of that year. That program went on to win a Regional Emmy and other First Place awards.

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As a postscript, the half-hour program at the center of this conflict fell apart. When the ranger in charge of the SCA students told them that the Outdoor Idaho crew would be allowed into the Wilderness with a camera, she pointedly let them know that they did not have to play nice with us.  Not wanting to jeopardize their chances of a future job with the Forest Service, the handful of students who were to be featured in the show all chose to play it safe and bowed out.

We thought the matter was resolved.

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Four years later the issue of filming in the Wilderness once again made the front page of newspapers. This time a “proposed directive” to regulate filming in the Wilderness ran into a buzzsaw of complaints from First Amendment advocates and the West’s Congressional delegation.

 

This time Forest Service officials seemed to be arguing they would allow reporting in Wilderness only if the subject matter pleased them. “If you were engaged on reporting that was in support of wilderness characteristics, that would be permitted,” said the agency’s acting wilderness director to a reporter from Portland's The Oregonian.

 

There was also the matter of permits and fees, with no assurances that a permit would be handled quickly. If a reporter took a photograph, even with a cell phone, permit fees could be upwards of $1500. There could also be a penalty of $1,000 without that permit. 

 

This time it was a different General Manager of Idaho Public Television who raised objections. “We think their interpretation of what commercial filming is, is way too broad,” said GM Ron Pisaneschi, “and we think their interpretation of what is news is way too narrow.”

 

Ron had been involved in the 2010 skirmish, and figured the Forest Service was looking for ways to find a source of income that they had earlier lost.

 

There would be no need for a permit for breaking news like a plane crash, but a permit and possible fees for slow-moving news, like a weed or beetle infestation that might require several days to cover the story. And those are exactly the kinds of stories that Outdoor Idaho did particularly well. 

 

This 2014 dust-up was bigger than just Outdoor Idaho and Oregon Field Guide. In this go-around, national advocates had entered the fray.

 

Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson, in particular, wanted the matter resolved quickly. During this time, Outdoor Idaho conducted an interview with Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell in Boise. After the camera was turned off, Tom told Ron and me that Congressman Simpson reminded him that every day this prickly issue was in the newspapers, it was setting back the Congressman’s efforts to get Wilderness designation for the White Cloud Mountain area.

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Soon after we had met with Chief Tidwell, he issued a two page Memorandum entitled  “Commercial Filming and Photography Permits,” File Code 2720. It calmed the storm and cleared up many concerns.

 

Here’s a small part of what it said. “Journalism is not to be considered a commercial activity for purposes of the regulations or our permit policies on any NFS lands. Journalism includes but is not limited to breaking news, b-roll, features news, news documentaries, long form pieces, background, blogs, and any other act that could be considered related to news-gathering."

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Once again, we thought the matter was resolved. But one thing I’ve learned about the Forest Service. There’s not a lot of uniformity among forest districts, especially when you get further away from the big cities. Not everyone reads the latest memo coming out of Washington, D.C.

 

In fact, it can be so bad in the faraway forest districts that I started telling the Outdoor Idaho staff not to bother the Forest Service, even with a courtesy call. If you announce your presence, I said, chances are they will feel the need to “do” something. And that "something' might not be a good thing for us.

 

Case in point. In February of 2021, Outdoor Idaho producer Lauren Melink and videographer Jay Krajic began work on an hourlong documentary on the Bitterroot Mountains, with an emphasis on the history, culture, recreation and science of the mountain range shared by both Idaho and Montana.

Lauren was put in touch with a recreation specialist from the Forest Service, an overly zealous individual who wanted dates and locations and length of time of every visit into the forest over the next year. As she wrote to Lauren in an email, “we anticipate it will take us a bit more time to complete a permit and operating plan.” 

She also suggested that Outdoor Idaho use old footage, that she had seen past shows, and there was no reason it couldn’t be used again. It didn’t seem to matter that issues may have changed in a quarter century, or that a new show for us demanded the highest quality video from our latest cameras.

 

Lauren, something like this, in your own words... “Another suggestion she had for us was to ask people hiking in the Wilderness to take videos with their phones and share them with us,” said Lauren. “When we showed her the memorandum, dated November 4, 2014, from Chief of the Forest Service Tom Tidwell, she thought it was funny that we were relying upon a directive from a former chief of the Forest Service. ‘It doesn’t apply anymore,’ she told us.”

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When I called the Forest Service Supervisor to enquire why this was still an issue, I was more brusque than usual. But this was déjà vu all over again, and it was frustrating. “This is bullshit” were my first words to him. His first words to me: “I agree.” The conversation that followed was amicable. For our part, we agreed to get only what we needed, to not damage the resource, and to not make a big fuss about it. And with that, the matter was resolved.

 

The hour-long “In the Shadow of the Bitterroots” aired in December of 2022 and was the recipient of many awards, including a Regional Emmy in the Environment/Science category.

 

It’s hard to get too upset with a federal agency that strives to protect a designated Wilderness area from destruction. In fact, it’s commendable. But we were not shooting a remake of “Return of the Jedi.” Our impact on the land was completely negligible. Plus, given our track record of shedding favorable light on resource successes, you’d think a sharp Forest Service manager would welcome us with open arms. That was certainly the position of Dave Olson, Boise National Forest Public Affairs officer. "Don't they realize what great work you guys do to show Forest Service projects that benefit the land?"

 

Still, it’s a complicated issue, made more complicated by the explosion of social media content providers. In January of 2025, Congress passed the “Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act,” known as the EXPLORE Act. It provided more guidance in the ‘commercial’ vs ‘non-commercial’ debate, eliminating permits except in rare cases.

 

Will this be the last word? I wouldn't bet on it. The Forest Service has proven to be a lousy monolith; and when it comes to the protection of official Wilderness, there’s enough gray area in the Act to keep it a guessing game for a program like Outdoor Idaho.