One of my favorite things to do with my father was to hunt for fossils. He would grin as I proudly held out my hand and showed him the fossilized shell I had found. The joy of discovery when a kid discovers a fossilized fish vertebrae or a rare native plant is contagious.
Unfortunately, many of the special places like these have become lost forever: dug up, mined and ground up as a supplement for animal feed.
Luckily, the Shoofly Oolite is a place that is still geologically and ecologically intact. The Oolite is a series of cliffs and grottoes just southeast of Grand View, a little more than an hour from Boise and a short hike from the Mud Flat Road Scenic Byway.
This outcrop is a remnant deposit of ancient Lake Idaho and is made of sand-sized beads of limestone. Each bead consists of thin layers of calcium carbonate built up around each grain like layers of ice around a hailstone. The spherical grains in this particular outcrop are strongly cemented together and form cliff bands.
You can find fragments of snail shells, fish vertebrae, and fish gill plates in the cliffs and talus. Visitors are reminded to Leave No Trace and leave things as you find them as it is illegal to collect vertebrate fossils without a permit.
The alkaline soils also support several rare plants, including Mulford’s milkvetch, Snake River milkvetch, Packard’s cowpie buckwheat, and white-margined wax plant.
The Shoofly Oolite is also at risk of being mined. Most public lands managed by the BLM and Forest Service are automatically open for mining under the outdated Mining Law of 1872. Corporations are incentivized to take resources from public lands—regardless of what is on the surface—and maximize profits, with no royalties going to taxpayers who own this land. Federal agencies cannot even deny mining permits. Even special places like the South Fork of the Salmon River, the Boise River headwaters and the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer are under threat by high-risk mining operations. Other oolite deposits in the Owyhees have been mined as a supplement for livestock feed and for use as emergency acid cleanup kits. Usually, only landscapes with special designations like Wilderness, National Conservation Areas, and Wild Rivers are off limits to mining.
Fortunately, the BLM recognized that the Shoofly Oolite outcrop is unique and different from the surrounding oolite deposits. As such, the BLM has proposed administratively withdrawing this specific area from future mining claims and operations for the next 50 years.
The vast majority of the Owyhee front and mountains will remain open to mining. For example, Canadian mining company Integra Resources is still planning on reopening and expanding the already massive Delamar open-pit cyanide heap leach mine near Silver City.
While a postage-stamp sized, 1,958-acre mineral withdrawal is a far cry from reforming the outdated Mining Law of 1872, it is a small step toward recognizing that some of our public lands have an intrinsic value unto themselves; some places are just too special to be mined, and need to be protected. Shoofly Oolite is one of those places. Protecting Idaho’s natural heritage of this special place is far more valuable than providing a supplement for cattle feed.
We need your help to make sure the BLM follows through with safeguarding the Shoofly Oolite.
The BLM is taking public comments through November 4, 2024.
- Share your experiences at the Shoofly Oolite with the BLM.
- Tell the BLM that you support the 50-year mineral withdrawal.
- Encourage the BLM to create a responsible recreational plan at the Shoofly Oolite to provide access to the cliffs in a way that protects rare plants, prevents theft of fossils and keeps the area from being vandalized.
- Please support the Idaho Conservation League with a special gift to support our work protecting other special landscapes and waterways from high-risk mining operations.
Please take action today and send your comments to: BLM_ID_LLID933000_Withdrawal@blm.gov by November 4, 2024.
In the meantime, show the Shoofly Oolite some love. The rare plants there have been adversely impacted by unmanaged recreation. We recommend that recreationists voluntarily give the rare plants at Oolite some much needed space and time to grow back until a responsible management plan is in place. If you are interested in sliding down sandy slopes, Bruneau Dunes State Park is a much better place. If you are interested in hiking and exploring cool canyons, we recommend visiting the newly renovated Perjue Canyon trailhead for the Little Jacks Creek Wilderness which just a few miles farther south along the Mud Flat Scenic Byway.