The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (I.C.B.E.M.P.) was initiated in July 1993 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management under direction from President Bill Clinton to “develop a scientifically sound and ecosystem-based strategy for management of eastside forests”. Following this, a Project Charter for the I.C.B.E.M.P. was signed in January 1994. Geographically,... the project’s scope encompassed 140 million acres in the interior Columbia River Basin, the Upper Klamath, and parts of the Great Basin—effectively spanning across eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, and Western Montana. The project aimed to complete several goals, including creating a scientific framework for ecosystem management in the interior Columbia River Basin; scientifically assessing and analyzing social and biophysical conditions in the Columbia Basin; producing two Environmental Impact Statements (EIS); applying the EISs to develop new ecological management strategies; and additional assorted scientific, managerial, and socio-economic goals. Initial drafts of the EISs were released for public review in June 1997, resulting in over 80,000 feedback letters from impacted individuals, communities, tribes, and organizations. Supplemental drafts were then released in March 2000, with the Final EIS released in December 2000. Aaron Harp was the primary author of the I.C.B.E.M.P. project. Harp, born in 1961, was raised in Sacramento, California where he lived on two acres with his family and their herd of sheep. After moving to Idaho, he worked as an assistant professor of agricultural economics and an extension rural sociologist for the University of Idaho Cooperative Extension System.