Editor's note: This is the first in an occasional series of
stories examining issues raised by Sen. Jon Tester's Forest Jobs
and Recreation Act.
During a public meeting on Sen. Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and
Recreation Act, Missoula resident Jackie Corday asked a question
that nearly stumped the panel of speakers: How many inventoried
roadless forest acres would be labeled "available for possible
harvest" under the bill?
After several other speakers took a stab at it, Tester staff
member Tracy Stone-Manning declared 900,000 acres of the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest's roadless territory would be
in the yellow harvest zones on the legislation's map. But that left
a bigger, unspoken question: What does that mean?
According to Tester's staff, it means a breakthrough in
Montana's three decades of timberland debate. Senate Bill 1470
identifies where a coalition of loggers, environmentalists and the
U.S. Forest Service agree logging can be done. And it skips a fight
over "release language" for other lands - the flashpoint that
wrecked several previous wilderness bills.
Montana has millions of public acres caught in various forms of
legal limbo. These include wilderness study areas, recommended
wilderness and inventoried roadless areas. Previous wilderness
bills hung up on what to do with the land that didn't get declared
wilderness, but was nonetheless roadless: Was it released for
logging or other development, or left in limbo?
***
Inventoried roadless acres aren't wilderness.
They aren't active timberlands either.
But they are political hot potatoes, getting kicked around in
three versions of the U.S. Forest Service rule-making process and
litigated in two separate federal courts of appeals.
Tester's bill would put 670,000 acres of Montana wildlands into
federal wilderness status, colored green on his maps. That's the
most restrictive category, prohibiting motorized vehicles or
equipment inside its boundaries.
Another 336,000 acres would become recreation management areas -
protected from industrial development, but open to motorized use
and other activities. Those are colored brown.
Most of those areas are bordered or surrounded by land shaded
yellow: the "possible harvest" acreage. The 900,000 roadless acres
in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest come from that
district's new forest plan - the Forest Service's own guidebook for
what activities should happen where. Beaverhead-Deerlodge staff
updated their forest plan last year, while most other Montana
national forests are still working with plans at least 10 years
old.
Forest Service roadless areas must be more than 5,000 contiguous
acres of public land without improved roads. There are 58.5 million
acres of inventoried roadless land in the United States. In
Montana, 6.4 million of the state's 16.9 million acres of national
forest are inventoried roadless acres.
According to Forest Service maps, 2 million acres of the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge's 3.3 million acres is considered roadless.
Most of that, 1.65 million acres, is roadless but allows for road
construction and reconstruction.
The Kootenai National Forest has 639,000 acres of inventoried
roadless land out of almost 2.3 million acres. The Three Rivers
portion of S. 1470 would affect 400,120 acres, of which 73,029 are
inventoried roadless. The Blackfoot-Clearwater portion of S. 1470
would turn almost all of its roadless territory into additions to
the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat wilderness areas.
***
Opponents such as Montana Congressman Denny
Rehberg have asked Tester to put firm release language into the
bill as a "phased-in trigger:" more wilderness only as more logging
is confirmed. Tester has responded that such triggers would doom
the bill in Congress, and restart the release language fight he's
determined to avoid.
Some wilderness advocates aren't happy either.
"I think this is a gray area - will this bill allow logging in
roadless areas?" questioned George Nickas of Wilderness Watch, a
critic of S. 1470. "I think this would override the Roadless Rule
as a statute. And the frustrating thing is our inability to get a
straight answer on if the roadless areas in the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge are open to logging."
The answers are yes, no and relax, according to S. 1470
supporter John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association. Yes
- current federal law allows logging in inventoried roadless areas.
No - Tester's bill doesn't designate anything differently than the
Forest Service does. And relax - because what the bill does is
focus timber action in places that already have lots of roads or
development impacts, and away from roadless areas.
"Those are going to be the priorities, if the bill is amended as
Tester wants," Gatchell said. "It will produce logs for mills, and
the roadless areas will remain roadless. Both things can happen,
and it doesn't require one side to lose and one side to win."
Under the Obama administration, any logging proposed for
inventoried roadless areas would have to be approved by Secretary
of Agriculture Tom Vilsack himself. Tester's bill doesn't change
that, Gatchell said, giving further incentive to leave the roadless
areas alone unless lots of players agree it's necessary.
***
One change Tester proposed after a series of
scoping meetings last summer was increased harvest work on the
wildland-urban interface - the forests close to communities and
subdivisions that are most at risk in forest fires. In the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge, there are 170,000 acres of such lands.
Tester's bill mandates 7,000 acres of mechanical treatment a
year in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge. Those wildland-urban lands alone
would fill that mandate for the next decade and beyond, according
to his staff.
The bill doesn't change the roadless acres' status from what
either the federal Roadless Rule or the Forest Service forest plans
dictate. They aren't made into wilderness or targeted for intensive
logging. And the current non-timber uses, such as snowmobiling and
livestock grazing, don't change either.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at
rchaney@missoulian.com.