Guest Opinion

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Shouldn’t Dismiss Hard Work of Citizens’ Committee

By Jerry O’Connell, Guest Writer, 4-20-10

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) is committing an egregious act of public dishonor.  I’m talking about FWP policymakers, not the hard-working, dedicated rangers and wardens with boots on the ground.  Strong criticism for sure, but nonetheless well-earned.

Nearly 2 ½ years ago, FWP and Governor Schweitzer created a citizen advisory committee, River Recreation Advisory For Tomorrow (RRAFT), with the mission of developing the long-awaited Blackfoot River Recreation Management Plan. “Long-awaited” certainly applies, as this has been under development since the 1970s.

Over the decades, our legendary Blackfoot River has seen a steady increase in recreational use along its entire length.  Damage to this pristine, unique waterway has increased at a similar pace. RRAFT’s goal was to recommend new rules and regulations to stem the damage and to protect and restore this national gem.

The RRAFT committee held over 30 meetings during its tenure, expending 2,000 man hours of volunteer effort discussing and debating the many issues and defining the best solutions to the growing problems. In spring 2009 we issued our draft plan that incorporated a detailed set of new recommended regulations.
FWP, after some in-house editing, produced a watered down version of the draft plan this past fall. They held three public hearings and received public comment, concluding in November 2009.

This week, FWP released the official “Final Plan.” In it, virtually every recommendation in the RRAFT draft has been deleted. The net effect is that there will be virtually no change in rules, regulations, or management direction in the future. Any future changes will require “further public involvement,” bureaucratic slang for a 5-10 year delay followed by more useless citizen advisory committees.

Meanwhile, one of the last, best watersheds in America will continue to degrade as failed past management practices continue on into the future.

Clearly, the FWP decision is terribly flawed.  Just as importantly, the process used to develop this decision is equally flawed.  Here are just a few examples:

• About 2,000 person hours went into the draft plan. However, FWP’s Final Plan instead relied primarily on the few dozen public responses to the draft plan. Each responder had about an hour of public hearing to evaluate the issues vs. the thousands of hours invested by the committee, yet those opinions outweighed ours.
• A recommendation to allow for a permit system in the most sensitive stretches of the river should usage exceed certain trigger points was eliminated. FWP stated this was because “the public was not supportive of that idea at all.” However, FWP got only 71 comments on the topic, of which only 17 were against a permitting plan, with 46 being concerned about its details.
• FWP placed only two Blackfoot River valley residents on RRAFT (one quit after 2 weeks). The remainder were selected from outside the valley, ranging as far away as Alberton and Hamilton.
• FWP Rules require that less restrictive efforts be used to fix problems before moving on to more restrictive steps. In 20+ years FWP has never moved beyond the least restrictive rules despite continually growing problems. Once again, the Final Plan calls for only the least restrictive efforts going forward.
• FWP requires statistics to support any increased regulations. Although FWP has been gathering Blackfoot recreation statistics for decades, they could provide RRAFT with only two years of limited statistics. Noting this failing, the draft plan called for formal, statistically significant data gathering efforts going forward, but the Final Plan calls only for an ill-defined continuance of past data gathering practices.
• Heavy use has damaged the fisheries in certain areas of the river. However, the plan omits this issue because fisheries issues are handled by a different arm of FWP (“fishing” is not considered “recreation” at FWP.) FWP Fisheries had no representatives involved in RRAFT discussions, nor did we receive any fisheries data during our deliberations.

To summarize, the Blackfoot River Recreation Management Plan is a farce, more concerned with avoiding controversy and politically sensitive issues than with fixing problems. Its official mandate to protect and preserve one of our most valued resources is being ignored.

Several years of dedicated efforts by an amazing group of well-meaning citizens have been wasted. It’s an unforgivable disgrace, an insult to Montanans, and nothing less than dereliction of FWP’s duty under Montana law.

If you wish to add your name to the growing list of Montanans who are joining in an official protest of this plan, email your name and address to joconnell@blackfoot.net.

O’Connell is a member of the River Recreation Advisory For Tomorrow (RRAFT) committee.

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