A few things come to mind here Daphne. MWA has not been authorized by anyone to cut backroom deals with the Forest Service, loggers or the off-road community on public lands. These lands are owned by all Americans, not MWA. The B-D deal left the public out of it. No public involvement, no NEPA.

Blaeloch and Fite (2006) said "These deals create a quid pro quo situation wherein wilderness protection is essentially “paid
for” with balancing provisions in the same piece of legislation that facilitate development, privatization, and
intensified land use—even in the very “wilderness” set aside in the deals. If this trend continues, the days of
the stand-alone wilderness bill, along with the strict observance of the letter and spirit of the Wilderness Act,
may become relics of the past.

As U.S. Representative Nick Rahall so astutely said "Wilderness designations should not be the result of a quid pro quo. They should rise or fall on their own merits. We all understand that compromise is part of the legislative process, yet at the same time, I would submit that wilderness is not for sale. Simply put, I believe we should not seek the lowest common denominator when it comes to wilderness and saddle a wilderness designation with exceptions, exclusions, and exemptions.

MWA needs to stop backroom dealing with public lands and get serious about a real wilderness bill. It's been over 20 years since MWA hit pay dirt the old fashioned way, without holding hands and singing Kumbayah. Don't trade away our lands to feather your nest.

MWA-lite, with Pew (Sun Oil of Philadelphia) at the helm, has orphaned most of Montana's 6.4 million roadless acres to focus on a short list of highly-marketable, low-hanging fruit: The Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, Rocky Mountain Front, Blackfoot-Clearwater, Scotchman Peaks-West Cabinets, and the Yaak. Far, far from "Montana-made." After 20 years, still dancing madly backwards, longing for another Republican administration. And the congressional sponsor is ....?

I know that I must be missing something; but, what is wrong with chilling a bit to give the Obama Administration a little time to settle in, work the economy, let the public digest this latest omnibus bill, and then stick to our guns and keep pressing on with what we want and should have out of the old NREPA? Sure, we had to be timid over the last few years because the rightwingers had power; but, things have changed and may be set to change a whole lot more. It's also great to "bring people together;" but, there's a limit when you're down to dealing with the lowest common denominator and the people you're trying to bring together have the minds of serial rapists. At that point, you have all the costs with few of the benefits left. Give Obama a chance. Now that the rightwing has destroyed its credibility, we may get a bit of a window and see even more change than we hoped for.

Amen, Steve Gilbert and Rep Rahall.

If the public were involved and informed, they would not think that wilderness is accessible by auto.

If the public were involved and informed, they would not be looking at a strip mining Eastern state Congressman to lead the way.

If the public were involved and informed, mass incineration under WFU would not be public policy.

If the public were involved and informed, responsible fuel reduction and forest health would be demanded of the federal land managers.

If the public were involved and informed, it would not tolerate this budget approach that has left the USFS a transparent exoskeleton of its former self, degraded, drained of life, its former self now no more than pieces and parts of organic detritus scattering to the winds. The USFS broke is just a weather event away from where southeast Australia is today.

If the public were involved and informed, the tax avoidance and financial powers of trusts and foundations would be derailed and put back on the track to paying their fair share to the Treasury. Pew is the epitome of leftist NGO highjacked trust funds--it has vast power in government but pays nothing to the Treasury. Better no trusts and foundations, the money going to the Treasury upon the death of the principals, to fund economic recovery in a world of mad banks and stock funds, those banks and funds managed by the very same people who manage and run the NGOs. Henry Paulson and TNC immediately come to mind. If you like Goldman Sachs, the Bush Treasury, you have to love The Nature Conservancy, because they have all been under his common leadership. Now the CIA is led by former Pew Trust employee and manager, Clinton Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, and don't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? NGOs as a training ground for CIA Director...on the cheap.

Want to tax the top one percent much harder? Tax the trusts and foundations they fund to avoid taxes. No? Then don't whine about big money if you are taking it from them, helping them avoid taxes, to fund your little part of the world.

So, no matter how good an idea a particular Wilderness designation might be, the byzantine and machiavellian process to get there from here is fraught with pitfalls and political machinations, all of which we all know too well. And I am actually on the other side of the equation, waiting for some sanity, and trees to cut to regain some sort of economic stimulus for the rural West other than fighting project fires once every two or three years. How about logging excess trees all year long, in a process of restoration forestry? Thinning all those over planted clearcuts of thirty years ago. Bioenergy fuel cells and the like. I know it won't happen because it is logging. And Wilderness ain't gonna happen, either, because people know that Wilderness is just a designated burn area for the few to enjoy before conflagration.

The Wilderness process must be more than some Congressional Record notation available to people who are "in" siders...It has to be a national, public process. Every State and person. And the manner and type of access and available use has to be specifically outlined and described. The all too common mindset of the Wilderness being available to drive through so that it is thought of as a National Park is in the mind's eye, and is wrong, and that deceit is supported, and not discouraged, to garner support. Honest wilderness description for honest wilderness approval. Having a mis-informed base of support does not make for an open process.

I personally think Montana is getting their just rewards for Senator Baucus' ill timed, and vacuous tax bailout for Weyerhaeuser, and his assistance for Plum Creek to bail on logged over lands, at great public cost. When those lands have fallen in value precipitously, as they have, the tax money to buy them falls also. Any way you look at it, it is not "shovel ready" and is of no impact on creating wealth for a consumer economy, and even though the final bill was to a teeny bit less than a billion dollars, the lunacy is still apparent, and Plum Creek getting public dollars after their long ago involvement in the Clark Fork Logging or whatever it was called, the huge public timber purchasing collusion deal, should not be lost on today's public. The counties in which the timber was cut all got hosed by that deal, as did the US Treasury. Old log buyers not in that loop don't forget, because it cost them, too. Way back when. But a Montana native like Baucus should have that hung around his neck like an old tire, just for old times sake. A decoration to remind him, like a string on a finger. The larceny in the hearts of railroad timber barons never goes away. He has to know that. And either does and needs it or is not smart enough to not participate. Montana needs better leadership to get Wilderness.

Whatever happened to letting the States manage their own land? Montana is one of the few states left in the union that has some what of an understanding of freedom. God forbid that it be lost. Understand, the States are sovereign over the federal government. To keep giving the federal government more and more control over State land and function contradicts not only the basis of our constitution, but natural law and the ability of the state and local people to control the land that belongs to them.

Montana's land no more belongs to a person in Alabama, Florida or Georgia than it does to a person in Cuba. Jurisdiction is the principle here. Yes, conserve and be wise stewards of what God gave us, but do it through means and procedures that are state and locally controlled--not more of the same BIG GOVERNMENT control and ownership over what you should have control over.

When we will learn this lesson? When the Federal Government controls or owns the best of everything! By then, limiting their grasp will be like trying confine a wild horse with a thread.

A second Amen to Steve Gilbert, Steve Kelly and the Real Mike. That Montana has no areas to be protected in this huge Omnibus Wilderness Bill covering so many western states is a real travesty. With all the wonderful places listed in the comments above, it is really unbelievable that no wilderness has been protected in 25 years here in Montana. The differences between the environmental groups here should be put aside and, with the new conditions in Washington D.C., wilderness proposals should be advanced now. Bill Schneider and Pat Williams have done some excellent articles on why we seem to be so far behind in protecting our magnificent state.

As a council member of the Montana Wilderness Association and a long time wilderness supporter, I have found the responses to this article generally predictable, but still very interesting. To me, they are also revealing of where we should be heading.

The complaints about MWA's approach to securing wilderness, and the positive principles expressed here by several established radical leaders resonate with me, as of course they do with most conservationists. But it is hard to ignore the inescapable fact that the no-compromise approach these guys advocate has been completely and spectacularly unsuccessful in our state. That is reality.

In fact, the none of the critics of MWA represented here are engaged in a single credible wilderness campaign. MWA has 4 or 5 very promising campaigns in the works.

But the real problem I have with the old arguments about quid pro quo and compromise is that they are really beside the point. This is because of an important reality that is lost in the abstract arguments: The process of painfully bargaining away key wilderness assets is often neither very necessary or important to building support for a wilderness campaign. The process that is important is to assemble allies who don't have a strong stake in wilderness as an abstract concept, but who know the land. For them the protection of wildlands is really a common sense decision, for all the reasons that we all love Montana.

If we have learned anything in the last 25 years, I hope we have learned that if we skip the step about building allies, we will not be successful. We do not have enough wilderness idealogues to pass legislation without community support. What is often lost in the abstract debates among conservationists is that building allies is not really about making bad compromises. It is really about patience and hard work and a relentless committment to connecting with our communities. It is about working to bust the negative myths about wilderness, and inspiring people to speak up for the great joys and satisfactions of wild country. This is the process that MWA is committed to.

It is easy to lob criticism from the fringe, and I am sure the criticism is good for us all. I invite all wilderness lovers to focus on what positive steps we can take to protect wilderness in Montana. And I invite you to join the MWA in actively working to do just that.

From the fringe: IN the present configuration of wilderness protection, the USFS wants to not fight fire in the heat of summer because they have no other viable way to reduce fuels on their lands which are adding fiber volume at a rate that is not sustainable absent logging and stand management by means other than mass incineration. Fire is unpredictable in its behavior, and when you add the crap shoot of weather to the mix, there have been way too many incidents of bad decisions, and decisions limited by land use rules, and particularly Wilderness. Lighting backfires on multiple use and private lands on the Wilderness border, with cat fire lines and all the other permissible uses on those lands, and not permissible on Wilderness, results in public and private resource loss that is avoidable if it were not for designated Wilderness. The WFU approach, and non-NEPA vetted procedure, presents a clear and present danger to non-Wilderness lands bordering Wilderness. And that danger is not uniform as the non-Wilderness lands have an obligation to not let their fire pass on to Wilderness, but with no reasonable and sure way to prevent Wilderness fire from impacting non-Wilderness and private lands.

My concern, with Wilderness designation, would certainly be much less if Wilderness were not now, because of present policy, a liability and danger to bordering land solely due to the fire problem. If the policy were changed, and all fires fought vigorously in Wilderness until some mitigation or mediation of how to reduce fuels without harm to neighboring land, while still respecting Wilderness values, is arrived at, I would NOT support Wilderness expansion into present roadless areas. As it stands, Wilderness appears to be a veiled threat of public management arson aimed wherever, with no regard for private estate values or meaningful airshed, watershed, aesthetic, wildlife and other values that add merit to having land in Wilderness. Wildfire in the Western States produces smoke in some years that is more than the whole of all other human sources of greenhouse gases in those individual states. If you demand that I drive with less efficiency due to ethanol spiked gas, or I pay surcharges on fuel or vehicles to reduce greenhouse gases, or I am to forgo coal fired electricity to have clean air, and then you allow WFU to foul the air and totally negate all that citizens have done to reduce greenhouse gases, that false economy is not supportable by having the expansion of sure to burn Wilderness. There is no need to expand the fuel source for uncontrolled wildfire.

Of course, that is just where I come from in forming my opinion of Wilderness. I have been a Wilderness user for my lifetime, and way before the original Wilderness Act, the one where the designation was followed by the USFS burning all the CCC three sided shelters in a zealous implementation of law, with hundreds of historical cabins and trail shelters incinerated before common sense could even address the USFS arsonists. Dumber than a bucket of rocks, those managers who implemented that policy. And not any smarter today with the use of WFU. As long as WFU is the viable fuels management option for Wilderness, I cannot in good conscience support additional Wilderness. Leave it roadless, and be able to use chain saws and engine driven water pumps, helicopter drops and landing zones. Put the fires out until there is some sort of reasonable fuels management policy that has had a national review and comment period, with national inputs, and one thoroughly vetted by NEPA process. My opinion from the fringe.

Dearest Doug Ferrell,

Daphne's guest column made me a little uneasy, primarily because some of it sounded like what I've heard before, in Montana and other places. I tried to make a polite comment intended to encourage some broader thinking, specifically in the context of a bolder approach like NREPA; and to urge the consideration of political timing in the context of what wilderness advocates might aim for over the next few years. I truly believe that our side may be stronger, may not need to compromise so much, over the next few years, and I really didn't give it much thought beyond that; but, your rude response piqued my interest a bit more and got me looking a little deeper into the MWA.

First, your assertion that "none of the critics of MWA represented here are engaged in a single credible wilderness campaign" is a little rash; you don't really know what I've been engaged in or what I'm engaged in now. Then, you boast that "MWA has 4 or 5 very promising campaigns in the works;" but, I am not aware of much wilderness having been designated in Montana in a long time. If your 4 or 5 campaigns haven't resulted in any successful designations, then how can you so boldly assert that they are so much more promising than any other "campaigns" or even, say, NREPA?

So, I guess that, if I stay objectively focused on what is actually being accomplished in terms of designating wilderness, I really don't know what "people" you're "bringing together" for what purpose. Are you thinking that, if you're nice enough, "Tim" or "bearbait" or maybe Dave Skinner or Marion Dickinson are going to help you get a postage stamp parcel designated? If they did, they would only do so as a means to say that you have already gotten your share and shouldn't come back for more for at least another hundred years. The truth is that, in the past, similar efforts at this kind of collaboration have resulted in the dilution of conservation leverage as often as any strengthening of it. In my experience, more and more time and money is spent on staff offices and salaries to support socializing and marketing that lowest common denominator, which never really gives you the kind of support that you need, and it often results in little or no actual progress toward any designations. All you do, in my experience, is dilute your focus and end up forgetting your objective.

Again, I do not believe that NREPA should be abandoned, certainly not now when things are shifting. Yes, I've heard that none of the federal legislators from Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming are supporting NREPA; but, the honest truth is that nobody outside Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming has much respect for or even cares about the federal legislators from Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming? Even most people back on The Hill can't remember who the latest bunch are and, if they think about them at all in DC, it's to laugh about old Cubin or Sali or Kempthorne or to crack a vulgar joke connecting Larry Craig's antics to a mispronunciation of Crapo's surname. When they think of the Montana delegation, they still remember Conrad Burns and he truly did not leave big shoes to fill in the minds of any influential politicians back there.

Then, because your response piqued my interest, I went back and looked at your staff and council members. What do you know, I know a bunch of these people and I won't be renewing my MWA membership. I'm afraid that the next thing I hear will be that MWA is buying something from CUT.

Federal public land systems were set aside by a Republican president named Theodore Roosevelt and his friends from the Boone and Crockett Club in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Without the federal public land systems such as national parks, national wildlife refuges and national monuments, many of the wonderful places we enjoy visiting would be subdivided and destroyed.

Wilderness areas are additionally good places for wildlife to thrive and I support it, although I do not find Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)the wonderful guy as some of you might think. I have had personal dealings with him when it comes to the staffing and funding of national parks and national wildlife refuges and he favors contracting over Civil Service scientists and technicians that have the education and training and experience to take care of national parks and national wildlife refuges, etc. properly. In fact, Mr. Rahall has sided with Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska at-large)on many occasions when it comes to turning our national wildlife refuges over to special interest groups that also want to develop these precious lands for economic reasons, contrary to the purposes of these federal land systems. Mr. Rahall is no friend of federal land systems even though he remains as the chairman of the House of Representative's Committee on Natural Resources.

I agree with the author's points in her essay but I warn all of you to not trust ANY of the representatives and senators in Congress when it comes to the proper funding and staffing of federal land systems. If a constituent with lots of money and power comes along that wants a piece of a national wildlife refuge or national park, they will quickly change their tune and do it behind closed does away from the press and public.

As to Susan's comments, just because a former President did "this or that" does not mean that "this or that" is constitutional or correct. Sure, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, but such an act is as unconstitutional as going to "war on terrorism" where there is no defined enemy and/or declaration of war by Congress. The constitution's grant of powers is clear, and it grants no powers to the federal government to seize state property for the sake of "conservation" or any other purpose, and to control its use and function.

Where is the logic in saying that the federal government somehow inherently possesses more virtue and prudence regarding land conservation/use that is near and dear only to the hearts of the citizens of that state? In fact, America's founders were much more leery of the federal government's encroachment against the citizens and expected the states (as sovereigns over the federal government) to be the on-guards of freedom.

Where is the sense in saying that federal congressmen in the states of Florida, New York, South Carolina and every other disinterested state will have more wisdom and understanding than those state legislators, in which the affected land is located? Who takes care of your house better, you or Joe Smoe across town? Who mows your yard, picks up the trash and prevents vagabonds from devaluing your property, you or Jane Smith in the next town? The answer is obvious, and the same principle applies to matters of state.

I encourage Montanans to pursue their conservation issues with their state legislators and to quit feeding at the hands of unconstitutionally asserted power presumptively held by the federal government. Montana is one of the last states who holds literally many thousands of citizens who cherish freedom more than handouts. Don't become like the rest.

The "real mike" asks some damn good questions, especially about whether the Montana Wilderness Association really has any "promising" wilderness campaigns. Our track record for the last 25 years is zilch, so the question is well deserved.

I will tell you briefly about the Friends of Scotchman Peaks campaign, which I am working on. Our group has over 2000 "Friends" signed up, has received many important endorsements from a variety of groups, media and elected officials, and we are working hard to build even more public support. We consider it our job to demonstrate that our project is appealing and sensible, and further that it is well supported in surrounding communities.

We feel confident that we are close today to raising enough support to get the job done, and that we are going to get over the top before long. Of course only time will tell whether we will be successful or not, and real mike and others are well justified in being skeptical.

But the idea that our group should skip the step about building local support, and focus instead on lecturing politicians and others about what we think they should do, does not seem very productive.

I might add that our proposal is based on a FS roadless boundary, and so far we have not found it neccessary to tinker with this boundary. We are just promoting the idea that leaving this area in its present natural condition is a good idea. I hope this approach is something the readers of this blog can support. For more info go to MWA's site, or http://www.scotchmanpeaks.org.