Sawtooth Lodge expansion inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area
Sawtooth Lodge Master Development Plan
U.S. Forest Service· Sawtooth National Recreation Area, Sawtooth National ForestU.S. Forest Service project page ↗
Forest ServiceWe track this on the agency’s own system of record, where most on-the-ground decisions live.
The groups on this fight
4 groups work Idaho
By footprint, from the same match the STAND matchmaker runs; none is linked to this decision in our record yet. Give straight to them; nothing routes through us.
- Advocates for the West
Works Idaho: represented Western Watersheds Project in the Jarbidge grazing litigation, winning 2004 and 2005 NEPA rulings, a 2009 injunction that grazing-as-usual must end, and a 2011 order closing 17 allotments across the 625,000-acre resource area..
- Center for Biological Diversity
Works Idaho: plaintiff and co-counsel in the February 2025 lawsuit arguing federal wildlife agencies violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to protect salmon, steelhead, bull trout, and wolverine from the mine..
- Idaho Conservation League
Works Idaho: mobilized Idahoans to file Interior Department comments defending Craters of the Moon during the 2017 national monument review, arguing shrinkage would damage the economies of Blaine, Butte, Minidoka, and Power counties..
- Western Watersheds Project
Works Idaho: has litigated BLM grazing mismanagement across 1.4 million acres of the Jarbidge and Bruneau river canyonlands since the early 2000s, winning injunctions against permit overruns and Ninth Circuit-affirmed orders requiring allotment assessments and stream protections..
Every group above is on STAND for Public Lands, with its court record, its filings and who backs it.
The Forest Service may authorize new facilities at a private lodge inside a protected recreation area.
What’s at risk
Public land within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area would be used to support expanded private lodge infrastructure. The proposal authorizes new development under a special use permit on federally owned land.
If this goes through
New and expanded lodge facilities would be authorized on public land inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, setting a development footprint that shapes the site for years to come.
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
3 holes in the agency’s own analysis
Make these points, in your own words
- I oppose this action as proposed, and I ask the agency to weigh the specific harms below.
- The Forest Service must rigorously analyze how new facilities proposed in the Sawtooth Lodge Master Development Plan will affect the natural character of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
- The analysis of both new and existing facilities under this special use permit must fully comply with NEPA before any development is approved.
- Any infrastructure approved under this Master Development Plan must be shown to be compatible with the recreation and conservation purposes of the Sawtooth National Forest.
- Say something only you can say. The law requires the agency to consider and respond to substantive comments, and specifics are what make a comment substantive.
In the agency’s own words
The Sawtooth National Forest and SNRA propose the analysis of the accepted MDP for the Sawtooth Lodge to include both new and existing facilities.
The reporting behind this
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