What does the perfect wilderness of Idaho have anything to do with the imperfect wilderness of the Delaware Bay? On the face of it, not much especially after our friend and colleague, Jon Bart, took us for an overnight camping trip into the Sawtooth Wilderness of southern Idaho. We hoisted our packs nearly 9 miles and 4,000 feet to see one of the most spectacular morning scenes one could behold — the Sawtooth Lake. We explored the area looking for the wolves, elk and bighorn sheep that populate the gorgeous land completely protected from the schemes of man to make money.
Jon Bart and Mandy Dey look out over Sawtooth Lake in the Sawtooth Lake Wilderness Area in Idaho
Although federally-designated wilderness areas dot the landscape of Idaho, they are a small part of an otherwise working landscape. The forests are mostly managed for pulp or lumber and the valleys of desert scrub are magically transformed into farmland with irrigation supported by the massive snow melt (and ground water). Although there are small pockets of democratic-leaning voters, the state is solid republican and firmly in the Libertarian or Tea Party camps. There, Government is the root of all evil.
This is what sparked an admittedly-imaginative comparison in my own mind with Cumberland County, New Jersey, along the Delaware Bay. NJ is definitely not a Libertarian state, but Cumberland County might be. Although this rural NJ county is not wild by Idaho standards, it is compared to most other east coast states. The most glaring similarity, however, is the people are mostly low-income/poor and most of the land is owned by the public.
Look at the numbers. Idaho has the one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation, ranked 41st at $17,841. NJ’s per-capital income is one of the highest, ranking 2nd in the nation with an income nearly 50% higher than Idaho. Despite this, the per-capita income of people who live in Cumberland County is lower than Idaho. Sixty six percent of Idaho is publically owned, and over 50% of Cumberland county is publically owned or regulatorily protected from most uses.
The two variables are related — part of the reason for the poverty that pervades these two very dissimilar rural areas is the considerable land area that is not in some productive capacity. Certainly unsustainable mining practices and forestry operations took a heavy toll leaving large areas of Idaho struggling to restore itself. Part of Idaho’s landscape is naturally unproductive, like the high desert, but other areas are intentionally unproductive, like the Sawtooth Wilderness Area. So too, the legal battle over endangered and threatened species has removed land from production (think spotted owl). All for the good from my perspective as a wildlife biologist, but no one can argue all of this unproductive land has not taken a toll on the Idaho economy. 
Farmland in the high desert of Washington irrigated with water from the Yakima River. Most of the water comes from snow melting from the surrounding mountains.
The situation is worse in NJ. First, the farmland of the Delaware Bay area is one of the most productive in the world, yet most of the land is devoted to the same crops planted by industrial farmers of the Midwest — Monsanto Round-up Ready soy, corn, wheat and alfalfa. The fisheries of the bay had supported a robust community of fishermen and sport fishermen for most of NJ’s recorded history. No more because the Atlantic Coast industrial fishery takes want they want, with only token restrictions, until the fisheries collapse. The management of public and private forests for wood products is virtually dead, knocked down by the state’s natural resource agencies inability to reconcile competing uses. Most other resource-related activities, like habitat restoration, have ground to a halt because of the overlapping jurisdictions of regulatory agencies that leave landowners the onerous job of resolving conflicting requirements. All the while, McMansions spread from the north leaving in their wake boom-and-bust job creation, high property taxes and spoiled land, mostly farmland.
How do we escape rural poverty at a time when our nation’s economy itself struggles to recover? The first thing to remember is that Cumberland County, NJ (and Idaho) struggled before the great recession, so the problems are endemic. They won’t be solved by waiting for the country to start growing again. Second, initiatives to rejuvenate this land should embrace its cultural and natural assets — why protect 50% of the land and then leave all the residents to scramble for a living? Better to make good on the protection by investing in solid ventures that take advantage of this natural and historic resource breadbasket in the center of one of the largest metro areas in the country. Good-paying jobs based on sustainable resource use will make anyone a conservationist. Third, the shape of these initiatives should come from the businesspeople, fishermen and farmers of the bayshore area. State agencies, environmental groups and foundations should stop imposing untested, and largely ideological, solutions that rely on residents serving the mostly-richer residents of the state. Stop thinking “ecotourism” and start thinking decent paying jobs based on sustainable resource-related activities. This could start with value-added forestry, “branded” fisheries and agricultural products (e.g. Cape May Salts, Jersey Tomatoes), and massive habitat restoration efforts.
With the abundance of natural resources, the Delaware bayshore area could prosper once again from its wise use, and conservation will once again be rooted in the people who live here, not just in those that visit.
Sawtooth Lake, Idaho
