Montana Wilderness News

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., is remarkably unfazed that a high-ranking federal official expressed serious concerns about his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

At the bill's first committee hearing in Washington Dec. 17, Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman balked at a main provision of the bill that mandates logging or thinning on 7,000 acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest every year for the next 10 years.

HELENA - The governor says he is backing U.S. Sen. Jon Tester's plan to both create more wilderness and mandate more logging.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, submitted the testimony in advance of Thursday's hearing on the bill in the U.S. Senate. He says it will create good jobs with more logging.

Tester's bill would add 600,000 acres of Montana wilderness, and set aside specific areas for recreation and trails. It is jointly written by logging outfits and environmental groups.

Montanans will have an opportunity to watch Thursday's Senate hearing on Sen. Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
Thursday's hearing, the first for the bill, is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. Montana time. Follow the link in this story online at helenair.com to see the hearing. If it begins late, Web viewers may see a blank screen until it begins.

Also on Wednesday, Gov. Brian Schweitzer sent the Senate subcommittee a letter in support of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

Montana has long been famous for its blue-ribbon trout streams, premier hunting and access opportunities for the public. For most Montana families, hunting and fishing on public lands and waterways is an important part of their outdoor heritage.

Our way of life here is unique, and people from around the world come to experience what we enjoy in our backyards.

Etymology: the history of a linguistic form shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another.

As a Montanan, I feel lucky to live in a state where everyone is a neighbor and no one is too busy to lend a hand. As a Montanan deeply committed to conservation, I am also lucky to live in a state that not only has spectacular wildlands, but also has a legacy of protecting those wild places.

Sadly, for the past two decades, both our tradition of cooperation and our legacy of wildland protection have been at a stalemate due to conflicts over forest management.

In 1969 I was working for the Forest Service and was sent to Dillon to be the budget officer on the Beaverhead National Forest. My wife fell in love with the town immediately and the fishing was and is the best. There was even a sawmill with jobs! What could go wrong?

Suddenly the peace and quiet was broken. The forest became embroiled almost immediately in a Forest Resource Planning effort that turned into a rock fight between wilderness advocates and those who believed in timber management, including logging. Forty years ago and I can still remember meetings that went nowhere.

Montana's remaining timber mills are struggling to survive right now, while the mountain pine beetle thrives. The dilemma demands action — to preserve what's left of the state's logging infrastructure, to harvest infested trees while they still have value, to reduce wildfire risk for communities near forest lands.

There were no fireworks Thursday as U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., spoke in support of the controversial Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

The open house, which lasted about two hours, drew roughly 75 people to Butte's Holiday Inn.

Tester opened with a 30-minute presentation on the meat of the legislation, which he introduced last summer, followed by remarks from Sun Mountain Lumber owner Sherm Anderson of Deer Lodge.

As a Montanan and as a Granite County commissioner, I'm grateful for Sen. Jon Tester's willingness to carry the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act in Congress.

The courageous new bill represents hope and new opportunity for our state, because it aims to break the decades-long logjam on forest policy. It will cut down the risk of wildfire. It will create and save jobs.