The Courier
News Idaho Parental Rights Bill
Last year one of the big news stories was a 15year-old Connecticut girl, Justina Pelletier, who was held against her will and the will of her parents by a Boston Hospital. It was a bizarre situation where the doctors involved were not the child’s doctors, and yet, the hospital managed to convince social services and a judge that the state should take custody of the girl. After a long legal battle, the judge who awarded custody of Justina to the state, essentially admitted he was wrong (the
judge’s actions in this case were in direct conflict with a number of U.S. Supreme Court rulings). It would be easy to write this off as an unusual event, but in reality, it happens all the time across the United States. The Idaho legislature is currently considering a bill that would help protect children from this sort of thing by strengthening parental rights. House Bill 113 would add explicit language to Idaho State Law that says, “Parents and legal guardians
who have legal custody of minor children have a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, education and control of their children.” This Thursday, February 19th, at 9 a.m. the House State Affairs Committee will debated this bill. If you are a parent, or a grandparent, or you believe that the State of Idaho should never be allowed to do what was done in Massachusetts, you can contact those legislators at hstaf@house.idaho.gov or by calling 208-332-1145.
Dry January Leaves Below Normal Snowpack January’s dry weather leaves Idaho’s snowpacks below normal Snow Surveyors from the Idaho Natural Resources Conservation Service recorded end-of-January mountain snowpacks across the state that ranged from 60-100% of median. “Oddly, one of the lowest snowpacks in the state is in north Idaho’s Panhandle region, which usually gets plenty of snow,” said Ron Abramovich, Water Supply Specialist with NRCS
Idaho. “A few of the long-term Panhandle snow courses with data back almost 80 years show near record low snowpack levels.” The lowest snowpack percentages are in the Panhandle Region and Weiser basins; basins with snowpacks at average or better were the Oakley, Salmon Falls, and Upper Snake basins. Pockets of above normal and well below normal snowpacks can be found across the state. Precipitation for January ranged from 35-85% of normal which reduced the average precipitation totals for all basins in Idaho. Predicted early February moisture could help build up the snowpacks to near normal levels if precipitation falls as snow. continued on page 8.....
February 18
,2015
Volume 39 ~ Number 7 News from the Heart of Idaho Camas • Lincoln • Gooding
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Protecting Sage Grouse
More than 600,000 acres of state endowment rangeland in southern Idaho fall within identified “core” and “important” habitat zones for sage grouse. This acreage makes up about 44 percent of endowment rangeland ownership in Idaho. The Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) recently laid out proposed conservation measures to protect this habitat. It also outlined proposed conservation measures for the department’s roles in wildfire prevention and suppression, and regulating oil and gas development and some mining activity. With the development of federal land management practices for sage-grouse, the USFWS asked 11 western states with sage-grouse habitat to develop complementary conservation measures for state lands. The Governor’s Office of Species Conservation and IDL Director Tom Schultz began developing conservation measures for endowment trust lands in Idaho to further demonstrate Idaho’s commitment to conserving sage-grouse to prevent a continued on page 9.....