Central Idaho’s soaring mountains – some jagged as broken glass, some so bold they look like pillars holding up the sky – seized Eric’s adventurous spirit in 2000 after his first visit to the Sawtooth Wilderness. The majestic valleys, broad and open, are lined with beaver ponds. Mountain slopes are cloaked in a carpet of trees. Fragrant sage wafts through the foothills, while crystal-clear streams cut rocky descents to the Salmon River. Wolves, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and wolverine roam these lands. Yet this Mountain Kingdom is delicate, like the alpine flowers that cling to life on an exposed ridge.

The Mountain Kingdom conservation photo series showcases the beauty of two mountain ranges – the Boulder and White Clouds. It is here where a land dispute is being fought. Some people want to turn these mountains into wilderness. Some people want to keep them just the way they are, open to motorized recreation, development and industry.

To date, Eric has developed a large and growing body of landscape photographs from the Boulder and White Cloud mountains. These images have not been used for conservation purposes. The effort to finalize management and protection of the Boulder White Clouds was well underway when Eric started photographing there. Congressman Mike Simpson started drafting the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA) in 1999. This Congressinal Act, if approved, will create a 650,000-acre managment area, swap federally owned land into private hands for development, offer a buyout of grazing permits, and create 300,000 acres of new wilderness. However, CIEDRA is still awaiting approval from Congress and time is running out.

For now, EZP offers this gallery of the Boulder and White Cloud mountains to show what the proposed wilderness areas look like. This area is truly a Mountain Kingdom. It is mystical, vast and stunningly beautiful. Walking through these mountains, it seems like a castle should appear around any random bend. To add a sense of uniqueness, only panoramas were selected for this gallery. If you want to see more images from the area that CIEDRA covers, visit the Boulder Mountains and White Cloud Mountains links.

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