SILVER CITY, Idaho - The craggy gullies where Idaho cowboy Paul Nettleton runs 1,200 head of cattle are often precious minutes from reliable cell phone coverage.

That could spell disaster in this region where sudden summertime storms howl in from eastern Oregon, bringing dry lightning that can ignite fast-moving wildfires on sage- and juniper-covered hillsides. Unchecked, the flames could quickly turn this old mining town’s historic wooden buildings to ashes.

This spring, Nettleton and six other Owyhee County ranchers who make their livelihoods in some of America’s most remote backcountry began carrying satellite telephones provided by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

It’s an effort to turn men whose ranching families have been wedded to this land for more than a century into a high-tech advance guard against devastating wildfires.

“Minutes count in that country,” Nettleton told The Associated Press one morning last week after parking his four-wheeler outside the town’s 145-year-old Idaho Hotel. “Right now, it’s pretty quiet. But it’ll come.”

The BLM says Owyhee County — the name comes from South Pacific explorer Captain Cook’s spelling of Hawaii and honors Hawaiian trappers who disappeared in the uncharted region in 1818 — is the first place the agency has armed cowboys with satellite phones.

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written by Andrew