An Idaho congressman aims to dump dams

Rep. Mike Simpson is a conservative Republican from Idaho whose concept of wildness in the 1990s was going into the rough at a golf course.

He fought higher taxes and remains a strong advocate for gun and states rights. But he changed as he waged a 13-year campaign to protect the Boulder-White Cloud Mountains in central Idaho. He began hiking the area, finding it a place of God. “The streams, the lakes, the forests are His cathedral, and you don’t desecrate a cathedral, you preserve it,” he said in 2014.

The next year Congress unanimously passed his bill to protect three areas of the White Clouds totaling 256,000 acres, enough to put him among the likes of wilderness icons Sen. Frank Church and former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus. But he wasn’t through.