The central Idaho dark sky reserve is unique by definition.
It is the first of its kind in our country, and aside from
it just being the first, what makes it so special is the sheer size of this dark
sky reserve.
Covering over nine hundred thousand acres and sandwiched between
the Sawtooth National Wilderness and the Boulder White Clouds National Wilderness.
And so this sort of homogeneous but also organic process in which we have
wilderness accompanied by a dark sky reserve makes this one of the most
unique opportunities to protect everything from the ground up to the top
of the sky.
The Sawtooth National Forest came together with community partners to
demonstrate the value of the dark skies over central Idaho.
This combined effort resulted in the designation of the first
dark sky reserve in the United States.
We have a long history of trying to preserve the dark sky.
We are one of the first jurisdictions to pass dark sky
ordinance that regulates lighting in our County and I think this dark sky
reserved as a natural extension of those preservation efforts and really is a
testimony that Blaine County is committed to preserving our dark skies
and I think it's also reflective of the values of a lot of people in the
community it was a nice effort to see city of Ketchum and the county and city
of Sun Valley and Stanley and a lot of the individuals in our community and
ICL come together and bring this idea to the Forest Service and then to work
cooperatively with the Forest Service and the area to get a dark sky reserve
designated.
So I also think it's a nice indication of how we can work together
to preserve the environment.
So the Idaho Conservation League decided to work on designating the area as a Dark Sky
Reserve because of wildlife issues related to artificial
light, human health issues and energy issues all related to artificial use of light.
Communities all across the United States are losing their night skies.
And that is totally effecting our way of life.
And so Idaho Conservation League likes to think of sustaining our communities and
this is a big part of having a healthy community.
Well it's interesting when you think about the range of benefits with our
newly designated central Idaho dark sky reserve.
First and foremost there's some context and that is eighty percent of
Americans cannot see the Milky Way from where they live.
That's kind of a staggering number of people who lose
perspective of the cosmos in the heavens and so when we steer towards the
benefits, we think of it's a preservation of heritage.
We are ruining our dark skies by the amount of artificial light pollution
that we put into the sky.
In my opinion the city of Stanley will be ground zero for people wanting to
come visit the dark sky reserve.
There's good access to it from two major
highways that converge on Stanley and we are set up for recreation and tourism
that's the basis of our economy so we will have the capacity to host people
who want to come up to the area to explore and enjoy the dark sky reserve.
The central Idaho dark sky reserve is about nine hundred and six thousand
acres in size it encompasses the entire Sawtooth National Recreation Area and
the Sawtooth NRA is seven hundred and fifty six thousand acres, of course the
dark sky reserve is the first dark sky reserve on the National Forest System,
and it's honored to have it on the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
Having a dark sky reserve allows us the opportunity to start a real dialogue
with many of our neighbors partners and sister cities throughout central Idaho.
It really gets us to start thinking about our actions and how they maybe
impact our neighbors one mile ten miles a hundred miles away.
Light pollution is the only pollution I know
of that you can actually flip a switch and turn it off and so we really owe it
to ourselves as we look to the impacts of climate change and the other impacts
that we have on our environment to see can we actually come together as a
community, can we come together as a group of people really interested in one
outcome of making sure that a resource and really something as pristine as our
dark skies can be protected for future generations and so there's an
opportunity we have here to look forward, forward to a beautiful sky accompanied
by wonderful wilderness.