The first major Montana wildlands legislation in decades hopes
to clean up a lot of the loose ends created by the state's
deadlocked wilderness debate.
"This is the first meeting in 30 years where there weren't
pickets outside and 400 people in the room," former U.S. Rep. Pat
Williams told about 100 people at a panel discussion of U.S. Sen.
Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act on Thursday evening.
Instead, the largely supportive crowd came to hear reasons why
Tester's bill would finally improve the state's logging industry
and its treasured backcountry.
S. 1470 combines three grass-roots projects in the Yaak,
Blackfoot-Clearwater and Beaverhead-Deerlodge regions of western
Montana. All three were separate efforts, but shared a common style
of forging compromises among timber mills, environmentalists and
recreation advocates.
Tester's bill would create about 670,000 acres of new wilderness
and 300,000 acres of mixed-use recreation area. It would also
designate thousands of acres of forest as "suitable for timber
harvest," including about 900,000 acres of inventoried roadless
land.
***
Several issues remain fuzzy. For example, the crucial term
"mechanical treatment" still doesn't have a solid definition. S.
1470 requires 100,000 acres of mechanical treatment over the next
10 years.
Tester staff member Tracy Stone-Manning said the term was going
to get more refinement as the bill works its way through Congress.
But right now, she said it basically means "someone doing work in
the woods with a tool that isn't a match." That includes everything
from commercial logging to brush thinning.
Another audience member asked how the U.S. Forest Service can
churn out the necessary environmental research for such large
projects every year, when smaller projects typically take three to
five years of study.
"We're very glad to have that conversation," Stone-Manning said.
Tester's staff has been in discussions with the Forest Service on
what it will take to speed up the work - whether personnel, money,
analysis methods or conflicting duties are the stumbling block.
Pyramid Mountain Lumber vice president Loren Rose added that the
Forest Service has spent many years as a reactionary agency, pushed
about by things like political changes, bug infestations and
recreation trends. Tester's bill should encourage the agency to
start "managing toward something," he said.
***
Paying for all the work was an issue for bill critic Matthew
Koehler of the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign. He questioned
how road reclamation and forest health work would get done when
timber prices are bottoming out and the national economy has
crushed the housing industry. Would the taxpayers end up paying for
the work, and if so, how much would it cost?
Stone-Manning replied that the latest Forest Service budget had
new money aimed at this kind of landscape-scale forest work, and
the bill's projects would likely get some of it. Other legislation
has already allocated money for forest restoration work and the
Blackfoot-Clearwater part of the bill is in competition for those
dollars.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at
523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.