Craig's spokesman, Dan Whiting, said Monday that the Republican senator - who had placed seemingly deal-breaking demands on the bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho - made the pledge to supporters who nearly brokered a compromise that would have attached the wilderness measure to a tax bill in the final hours of the GOP-led session.
Simpson had convinced House and Senate negotiators to include the wilderness bill as a rider to the bipartisan tax bill. Despite support from incoming House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, top Republicans removed the wilderness rider hours before the tax package cleared Congress early Saturday morning, according to lobbyists and congressional staffers who followed the negotiations.
Before the frantic midnight negotiations, Craig decided not to block the wilderness measure - a promise Whiting said will extend into next year, when Simpson has said he will try to revive the legislation.
"He said he would not stand in the way and he's not going to change that position between now and the next Congress," he said.
Craig had demanded that Congress pay all ranchers and other stakeholders their promised compensation before the wilderness boundaries are designated. Simpson's bill passed the House in July, but had sputtered after a subcommittee chaired by Craig held a hearing on the bill in September.
Craig's demand threatened to unravel the coalition in favor of the bill because environmental groups who helped write the bill have always refused to support such so-called "trigger language."
On Thursday, Simpson and Craig wrote side-by-side opinion pieces in The Idaho Statesman outlining their disagreements over the bill, officially called The Central Idaho Development and Recreation Act.
But on Monday, Simpson thanked Craig for softening his demands.
"While I was pleased that CIEDRA passed the House of Representatives and nearly became a law at the end of this Congress, I will not settle for a moral victory and I plan to see CIEDRA through to completion in the coming Congress," Simpson said in an e-mail. "In the end, Larry Craig did not stand in the way and I appreciate that."
Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, said he was disappointed after the bill teetered so close to passage. Johnson had been monitoring negotiations in Washington, D.C.
"It was in the bill and then it was out," he said. "I had a number of folks who had been lobbying for decades say they had never seen something get so close and not make it."
In all, the bill would have designated three new federally protected wilderness areas in the rugged mountains of the Sawtooth and Challis National Forests.
In return, local governments - in Stanley, Clayton, Mackay, Challis, Custer and Blaine counties - would have received almost 4,000 acres of Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management property to sell, manage or develop into affordable housing or public facilities.
Also, the Department of Interior would have released from study 130,000 acres of public land that had been earmarked as potential wilderness, allowing federal land managers to issue permits for mining, logging or other commercial uses.
Johnson said the wilderness measure cleared some hurdles this year - winning Craig's support and receiving attention from high-level Democratic and Republican power brokers during last week's negotiations.
Still, the bill faces new challenges, namely a gauntlet in the House Resources Committee, which is expected to be chaired by Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia.
Next session, the bill bounces back to Rahall's committee for a new hearing. Rahall is a strong ally of national environmental groups that oppose the measure's public land transfers and openings for real-estate development and mining speculation.
"The Idaho bill is on the national stage now," Johnson said. "And it will stay that way."
