Revamped Rocky Mountain Front proposal ready for Congress

Phil Taylor

Supporters of a proposal to designate nearly 86,000 acres of wilderness and ban most road building on an additional 218,000 acres of federal land along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front say the plan is ready for congressional scrutiny.

The "Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act" -- while still seeking a sponsor from the Montana delegation -- has been vetted by stakeholders and tweaked to meet the needs of ranchers, landowners, environmentalists, off-highway vehicle users and the Forest Service, proponents say.

"The groundwork has been laid at the grassroots level," said Jennifer Ferenstein, an outreach coordinator with the Northern Rockies office of the Wilderness Society and a member of the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front. "This is really a made-in-Montana solution."

But some environmentalists say the coalition has compromised too much with private property owners and recreational users by proposing the removal of some roadless protections and allowing off-highway vehicles (OHVs) to exacerbate the spread of noxious weeds.

"The fact that the proposal would only protect less than 90,000 acres as wilderness is a travesty," said Matthew Koehler, executive director of the WildWest Institute in Missoula and a critic of the coalition's proposal. "Outside of Yellowstone National Park, this is the American Serengeti."

The "Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act" has been crafted to satisfy the needs of ranchers, landowners, off-road vehicle users, environmentalists and the Forest Service, but critics argue the compromises may have gone too far. Photo courtesy of Rick Graetz.

While opposition remains, Ferenstein said the coalition has made several key changes to the proposal since it was first introduced at a series of public meetings in Montana last fall.

Chief among those changes is a measure to allow the construction of temporary roads for forest thinning and firewood collection in inventoried roadless areas.

New temporary roads -- which would be allowed only within a quarter-mile of existing roads and must be removed within three years -- are meant to provide Forest Service access for disease management and forest thinning and allow private landowners to collect firewood, said Ferenstein.

"We wanted to maintain traditional uses and keep things the way they are," she said. "It's not a timber-producing forest, but people rely on the Front to supply firewood."

The revised proposal also shortens the deadline for the Forest Service to develop a comprehensive weed management strategy from three years to one year.

New language clarifies that existing ranching activities would be permitted to continue in all areas covered by the bill and also ensures that no BLM land is transferred to the Forest Service, after ranchers expressed concern with potential changes to grazing management.
Lastly, the revised proposal clarifies that private overflights and other non-wilderness activities would continue to be permitted outside of new wilderness areas adjoining the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat wilderness areas.

Disagreements over needs

The compromises were a particularly tough sell for wilderness proponents, said Gene Sentz, a member of the Front coalition who lives about 20 miles east of the Continental Divide in Choteau.

"If it were up to me personally, I'd just as soon have no motorized vehicles on the trails," Sentz said. "We've had some knock-down, drag-outs in our own group."

But a key sticking point of critics is the size of the wilderness proposal, which falls short of the wilderness recommended by planners at the Lewis and Clark National Forest.

Others question language in the proposal giving the Agriculture secretary one year to prepare a comprehensive management strategy for "preventing, controlling and eradicating noxious weeds" on more than 400,000 acres of Forest Service land within the proposed wilderness, conservation management area and the Badger-Two Medicine area.

"Even in their unprotected state, a lot of these areas are doing very well," Koehler said, adding that the roadless areas are not likely to see any logging or road building anytime soon.

"The status quo is still better than bills that are rife with compromises," he added.

George Ochenski, a political analyst and environmental writer in Montana, warned that the proposal's weed management provision could put the Forest Service at risk of lawsuits. He cited a recent proposal by the agency to use aerial spraying in the Kootenai National Forest that is being challenged in court by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which is pursuing its own wilderness proposal called the "Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act."

"Should the federal agencies decide to follow their current methods of weed control, you'd be seeing some more lawsuits -- for all the right reasons," he said.

Moreover, the allowance of OHV use on the conservation areas outside of the wilderness would perpetuate the spread of invasive spotted knapweed and leafy spurge, which threaten to dominate native grasses foraged by cattle and other wildlife.

"If you're going to control weeds, you have to start at the bottom, and that's missing in this proposal as far as I can see."
Ferenstein said the coalition decided early not to include overly prescriptive language in the bill regarding Forest Service management of the conservation area. Most important, she said, was bringing people to the table through the public land management process.

"What was important was to send a clear message to the Forest Service to prioritize this issue," she said.

Tough political road

The new proposal, while much smaller in scope than a separate wilderness proposal sponsored by Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D), now enters the tough terrain of wilderness politics in Montana, a state that has not seen new wilderness designated in nearly 25 years.

Tester's "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act" drew concerns from the Forest Service at a hearing before a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee in December and has been criticized both by environmental groups and OHV users. It has yet to receive a committee vote.

Despite the political challenges, Ferenstein said she believes the Rocky Mountain Front proposal will be evaluated independently on its merits.

In contrast to Tester's bill, the coalition's proposal does not include major provisions involving logging or new regulations for OHV use, she said.

Staff members for all three of Montana's lawmakers were present at each of the coalition's public meetings last fall and have responded favorably to the coalition's grassroots approach, Ferenstein said.

"We feel like the ball is in their court to be responsive to their constituents," she said.

The legislation could be sponsored as a stand-alone bill or pushed through Congress as part of a larger omnibus public lands package, she said.

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Source: Land Letter

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