The first questioner at Sen. Jon Tester's Monday public forum in
Missoula wanted to know how the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act was
coming along.
"My wife and I just drove over through Lincoln, and there's
crystal-clear evidence we need to manage in a different way,"
Tester said of the beetle-killed acres of forest. "We need to give
the Forest Service some different tools to work with."
But Tester also needs a committee date to work with if his bill
stands a chance of becoming law this year. After a flurry of
anticipation earlier in August, Congress recessed without bringing
S. 1470 before the Senate Natural Resources Committee.
"We're 95 percent there to get it out of committee," Tester
said. "It still revolves around the cut language. There's going to
be mechanical treatment in that bill - there's got to be."
Tester has hit the most opposition from fellow senators and some
Montanans on his proposed mandate of harvesting at least 10,000
acres a year from three national forests in Montana. Committee
staff sent him a revised draft in June with the logging mandate
removed.
Tester sent back a new version with the cut restored, but he
stretched it from 10 years to 15 and incorporated the Forest
Service's new watershed-level environmental analysis to pick
harvest sites instead of a more cumbersome landscape-level
environmental impact statement.
Plans to create 670,000 acres of new federal wilderness and
another 336,000 acres of mixed-use recreation areas remain
unchanged.
Tester said his new draft remains the one under consideration.
He added it emphasizes taking timber from roaded areas where
wildfire danger threatens houses and communities, while staying
away from more pristine roadless areas in national forests.
Tester spokeswoman Andrea Helling said she hoped the bill would
get its hearing soon after the Senate reconvenes in mid-September.
Assuming it clears the committee, it could go to the full Senate as
a stand-alone bill, be amended into related forest management
legislation or rolled into an omnibus public lands bill.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at
rchaney@missoulian.com.