WASHINGTON - Sen. Mike Crapo grinned ear to ear Tuesday as he praised the head of the Wilderness Society for his help bringing Idaho's Owyhee Canyonlands to the attention of Congress."Thank you so much," Crapo, R-Idaho, said, effusively shaking Bill Meadows' hand after a Senate hearing. "This is a really nice day to have."

After nearly a decade of work, the Crapo-led effort to designate more than 500,000 acres of Idaho's Owyhee Canyonlands as wilderness had its most promising hearing ever in Washington. Seeing the legislation sail so smoothly through its first major hearing holds the promise that it could pass sometime this year, said Crapo after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee heard the bill.

"This is the kind of thing, where if you come at it in a bipartisan way, it can move while we have our partisan battles over the war in Iraq and other issues," Crapo said. Already, the proposal has a diverse assortment of supporters. The legislation was first shaped by a panel of environmentalists, ranchers, outfitters, local officials, motorcyclists and snowmobilers who were brought together by Owyhee County commissioners. If it goes forward, the Owyhee Public Land Management Act of 2008 would protect 517,000 acres of prime sagebrush habitat as wilderness, prohibiting motorized use. Some 315 miles of waterways running through the deep, scenic canyons would be designated as wild and scenic rivers. The bill also would release nearly 200,000 acres of wilderness study areas back to multiple-use management. Also, several thousand acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management would be traded for ranch lands adjacent to wilderness areas. Instead of a direct land trade, the BLM land would be sold and the proceeds used to purchase ranch lands from ranchers, who would relinquish grazing rights in wilderness areas in exchange for compensation.

The bill pleases just about everyone, Crapo said. It gives access to off-road vehicle users, protects the cultural resources of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, maintains a pilot training area for the Air Force and establishes wilderness, he testified during the hearing. "And this will all happen within the context of the preservation of environmental and ecological health," he said.

If there is a holdup, it likely will be over the compensation to ranchers. Those concerns are most likely to come from Crapo's fellow Idaho GOP senator, Larry Craig. Crapo's Owyhee bill last had a hearing in 2006 under a GOP-controlled Congress when both Crapo and Craig, as Republicans, had more influence. At the time, Craig withheld support unless ranchers were paid for land sales and other payments at the same time wilderness designation goes into effect. Craig, while diminished in power since his arrest last summer, still has the ability to put a stop to legislation he doesn't like. His tacit - if not overt - support is necessary for the wilderness bill to move forward.

Tuesday, Craig said he would do all he could do to help Crapo to get the bill approved this year. But he said he still has concerns, especially about timely compensation to ranchers and others who commit to the proposal. "I still struggle with that some, but it's not a question legislation can answer," Craig said. But Craig also had a pointed question for the conservationists who support the legislation, represented during Tuesday's hearing by Craig Gehrke, the Idaho regional director for the Wilderness Society. Craig said that if the bill doesn't pass this year and Democrats take over the White House, conservationists could exploit their ties to a more environmentally friendly president. Then, Craig asked, what would happen to the ranchers, local officials and others who negotiated the bill in a lengthy yet collaborative process? Gehrke pledged to stick with the coalition, calling the local buy-in "something I've never seen before."

"I don't want to jeopardize this," he said. "I don't want to walk away from this."