Pretty is illusory, however.
 

• Idaho rivers and streams are now essentially devoid of salmon, and steelhead trout are in steep decline.
• Thousands of landslides caused by rain, but induced by roads and timbering on overly steep and/or unstable slopes, pock the backcountry.
• The valley of the Coeur d'Alene River in northern Idaho is the nation's largest superfund site.
• Essentially every scenic backcountry area in private ownership is being sub-divided into recreational homesites.
• Boise and Coeur d'Alene are sprawling like every unplanned city in the country.
• Wood products increasingly damages the countryside even as production and employments slips. This is because the last timber stands are the poorest and in the most unstable areas. It employs ten to twelve thousand people.
• Mining is significant only in SE Idaho where I live; and it is for phosphate rock; not for gold, silver, lead -- the traditional minerals.
• While off-road vehicle interest groups complain about closures of 4 x 4 roads on the public lands, their abuse is causing landowners to close off access to the public lands so no one can get there.
• There must be a reason for all this -- environmentalists, black helicopters, "easterners."