The Montana map on Jon Tester's forestry bill Web page ends just east of Bozeman and Great Falls. It shows that this isn't a bill to end all wilderness bills. It wouldn't decide forever the decades-old argument of whether Montana has too much or too little public land protected from roads, motorized use and development.
However, Senate Bill 1470 is the first effort in a generation to set aside Montana wilderness and also the first effort to combine forest conservation and logging. By calling the bill "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act," Tester even avoided that controversial W word.
Pragmatic approach
The bill is a pragmatic approach that proposes managing federal lands according to the specific attributes, values and needs of a particular area. Thus, the Jobs and Rec Act is really three bills in one, based on separate areas of federal lands with input by people who know and use those lands for a myriad of purposes such as hiking, hunting, outfitting, logging, off-roading and snowmobiling.
As previously reported in The Gazette, Tester's legislation garnered support and input from a variety of Montanans including, but not limited to: Montana Wilderness Association, Montana and National Wildlife Federations, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Wilderness Society, Troy Snowmobile Club, Pyramid Lumber in Seeley Lake, Rosebud Forest Products in Missoula, Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge and Kootenai Ridge Riders ATV Club.
Tester and his staff received input from dozens of organizations, met with interested citizens and held public listening sessions. All the senator's meetings were listed on his Web schedule, according to Tester spokesman Patrick Devlin.
"There's never been a request for a meeting (on this issue) that we turned down," Devlin said.
'Home-grown solution'
Tester touts his bill as "a smart, home-grown solution." Of course, there are critics who want a much larger area designated wilderness as proposed in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. And others oppose virtually any new wilderness designation.
Tester staked out middle ground and found a lot of company there. His bill has a long road ahead before it can get Barack Obama's signature. But it's a cinch that a bill proposing an extremist position won't become law. Because he started with grass roots, his Jobs and Rec Act has the best chance of growing into a successful public-lands law.
As described by Missoulian reporter Michael Jamison in Monday's Gazette, proposals for the three areas addressed in Tester's bill involved discussions and relationships that predate Tester's term. Tim Baker of the Montana Wilderness Association recalled a timber summit organized by former Sen. Conrad Burns at which Burns told Baker and and a logging company representative that they ought to work together because they weren't that far apart in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. In the Seeley Lake area, varied interests already had a track record of working together for shared interests, like clean water. In the Yaak Valley, a neighbor brought other neighbors together.
"There is a yearning for this type of approach out there. People are really tired of shouting at each other," Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, told The Gazette State Bureau recently.
Let's keep talking about this legislation.