To some, Sen. Jon Tester's wilderness bill is a way to circumvent environmental laws and give away trees to timber companies at taxpayer's expense.
To others, it's a massive land grab by environmentalists that is meant to keep people out of public land in vehicles and ATVs, while limiting development of natural resources that providegood jobs.
But Aaron Murphy, Tester spokesman, said the bill is neither.
Rather, it's a good compromise between those views: a measure that aims to get loggers back in the woods, restore degraded landscapes and protect high alpine areas that are importantwildlife habitat. He said with good planning, the logging mandated by the bill would provide jobs while improving the landscape by clearing out overgrown, bug killed trees.
"A lot of the area that the Forest Service specified suitable for timber harvest is red trees, a lot of it is near homes and a lot of it is roaded," he said. "It's not like they would be going tosome stand of trees wherever they want and cutting it down." Tester's bill, called the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, is the latest chapter in the long, often bitter fight over wilderness,logging and motorized access in Montana. It's a fight that has gone on for decades.
Major changes to the proposal Introduced last month, the bill largely resembles a plan put forward three years ago by the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. The coalition of timbercompanies and environmental groups came together to hammer out an agreement on a wilderness bill that also dictates large-scale restoration projects in many areas.
The bill would designate more than 600,000 acres of wilderness areas - the highest level of protection for public land that bars development and motorized use - on three nationalforests and some Bureau of Land Management Land. The vast majority of that wilderness - more than 500,000 acres - is located on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest ButMurphy said Tester made major changes to the partnership proposal.
Among the most significant was nearly tripling the land areas designated for logging projects on the 3.3 million-acre Beaverhead-Deerlodge. The partnership called for 700,000 acreswhere logging is allowed. Tester's bill designates 1.9 million acres as timber suitable.
The bill also would designate "landscape scale" restoration areas of 50,000 acres that are targeted for restoration projects. Forest officials would conduct one environmental study for thoseareas and work under it on restoration projects.
Murphy said within those areas, companies would replace clogged culverts, reclaim old, degraded roads and other work to improve the landscape. Money from the timber sales would helpfund those projects.
Within the timber-suitable areas, the bill mandates that the Forest Service log an average of 7,000 acres a year. Over the course of a decade it would log 70,000 acres before the law sunsetsand the set acreage goes away.
That's just one of the provisions that draws the ire of Beaverhead County commissioners, who said they're staunchly opposed to the bill as written. Commissioner Mike McGinley saidafter reading the fine print, the bill's limit on acreage, sunset clause and criteria for where restoration projects would take place only limit future jobs.
"I can't see where this bill does a bit of good for Beaverhead County on the jobs end of it," he said. "The jobs portion of this bill is set to terminate in 15 years - then what?" And evenbefore that sunset of the logging provision, McGinley said the criteria that stewardship projects be focused on areas with a road density of fewer than 1.5 miles per square mile takesBeaverhead County out of the picture. He added the 7,000 acre limit is, if anything, a job killer because no private mills will invest with a restriction on how much timber can be cut onpublic lands.
"You could turn it around and say this bill is limiting jobs to do effective landscape management," McGinley said.
Commissioner Garth Haugland agreed, and said given that the forest has more than 800,000 acres of beetle infested timber that is dying, the 7,000-acre limit doesn't make sense. He saidthat would be better left to professionals within the agency.
But Murphy disputed that stewardship projects wouldn't take place in Beaverhead County. He used as an example a map showing numerous areas with more than 320 square miles of land with road densities well over the standard that would be targeted for work, including many in Beaverhead County.
Madison County Commissioner Dave Schulz is also skeptical that the bill would result in significant thinning getting done on the forest. He said environmental groups that haveeffectively shut down timber sales and fuel reduction projects will still use the courts to block projects, and the bill doesn't change that.
"It still doesn't get us into the forest," Schulz said.
Environmentalists note their concerns Tester's bill isn't only drawing fire from local government officials. Several environmental groups that have consistently appealed and sued to shut down Forest Service projects say its mandated cuts fly in the face of federal environmental protection laws.
Among them is Michael Garrity with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. His group is among the frequent litigants of logging and fuel reduction projects on the forest.
Garrity said Tester's bill would essentially allow officials to ignore the National Environmental Policy Act, a law that requires a thorough review before resource projects that is often used to challenge projects.
"It's a way to circumvent environmental laws," he said. "You don't have to do a site specific analysis and that's what NEPA's all about - to take a hard look." Garrity also attacked the planon economic grounds, calling it a giveaway to timber companies. He said with the economy tanked and housing starts down, there's no market for timber products.
"It's guaranteed welfare for these timber corporations, that's why they like it so much," he said. "They can't make it on their own, so they want taxpayers to help them out." Still, Garrity acknowledged that if the bill passes, it could supersede existing laws. That might limit people's ability to challenge projects.
Matthew Koehler, director of the Wild West Institute in Missoula, said the bill's call for stewardship contracting won't work because timber cuts lose money.
"How does logging pay for restoration under such a scenario when for every acre you do of logging, you lose more money?" he said. "It buts up against some economic realities." But other environmental groups, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, are supporting the bill.
Mike Clark, GYC executive director, said the bill would protect an array of excellent wildlife habitat, fisheries and watersheds while at the same time providing jobs. And he disputed thatthe bill was an effort to sidestep environmental protection laws.
"It provides a way for NEPA to be implemented," he said. T
imber production in Beaverhead-Deerlodge If the bill does pass, it will represent a significant increase in timber production on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge. Since 1990, the cut has never exceeded 1,000 acres, said Sonja Shadow, Beaverhead-Deerlodge spokeswoman.
Murphy said while some environmentalists are criticizing the plan to increase timber harvest, those same logging companies can be used to do a lot of work. The Forest Service would be following existing forest plans to direct the logging projects in areas ravaged by beetle kill and in areas already containing roads - most of it second- or third-generation forest - while restoring the landscape.
For example, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge has 240 clogged culverts and miles of roads that need to be reclaimed or repaired, and those areas would be a high priority in projects. Murphycalled the bill a win-win that would help provide a steady flow of timber to local mills in return for their services helping restore the land.
"It could be expanding watersheds by opening up these culverts, it can also be improving a road that's sloughing off into a creek bed," Murphy said. "There is a lot of work in the woods that requires a chainsaw, but doesn't require cutting a tree down."
- Nick Gevock, nick.gevock@mtstandard.com
For a map showing how the proposed Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would impact the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and other area land visit www.mtstandard.com/extras/Proposed_Land_Designations.pdf