SAWMILLS AND GREEN SCAMMERS

Southwest Montana Proposal Causes Nasty Split Among Green Groups

By Bill Schneider, 5-12-06

For months, three major green groups and have deep in negotiations with sawmill operators and other forest product companies over timber production and wilderness designation on the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest, which sprawls over most of southwestern Montana. The resulting proposal has caused a serious split among pro-wilderness groups.

The Forest Service is not compelled to accept the proposed new direction for its forest plan, but the agency will find it difficult to ignore a historic consensus between people normally on opposite sides of most forest management issues, even though the public comment period on the forest plan has long ago ended. And if the FS does adopt this new “Partnership Strategy” for the national forest, the Montana congressional delegation is likely pick up on the idea, too, which could lead to the first Wilderness bill in twenty-seven years.

You’d think Wilderness groups—all of them—would strongly support the long overdue end of what I’ve frequently called “Montana’s Wilderness drought,” but no. Instead, we have an openly bitter, no-holds-barred debate.

Like any other slice of society, green groups disagree on many issues, but normally this stays inside. Not only have I never seen such polarization among normally agreeable enviros, but I have never seen it purposely taken into a public forum, starting last week when the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR) purchased large ads in two independent newspapers, Helena’s Queen City News and the Missoula Independent, calling the green groups (Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation, and Trout Unlimited) involved the partnership “Green Scammers.”

“Behind closed doors,” the ad reads, “self-appointed interlopers sold out the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest!”

The ad claims the “green scammers” unilaterally gave away public resources, sacrificed 200,000 acres of roadless land, allowed 700 miles of new roads, promoted ATV damage and ruination of trout and elk habitat.

In the ad, the AWR and five other smaller green groups push for support for its alternative, the Rockies Prosperity Act (HR 1204), legislation currently introduced into the U.S. House of Representative with 188 sponsors, but none from the northern Rockies. On its website, the AWR lists 122 green groups (including, ironically, the Flathead-Kootenai chapter of Montana Wilderness Assn.) as members of its alliance.

When asked about the ad, Michael Garrity, executive director of AWR said, “I think it’s important to have a public debate. These are public lands and they deserve to have a public debate.”

“I totally agree that we should all work together….We should all be on the same side working for wilderness,” Garrity concedes, “but they are not our allies. They are proposing logging 200,000 of roadless lands. They are not on the same side of this issue as we are. They (the Montana Wilderness Association) are not a wilderness group. They are a wilderness logging group.”

Here are the numbers that matter. At 3.1 million acres, the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge is the largest national forest in Montana, larger that Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks combined. More than half of it, 1.9 million acres, is still officially inventoried roadless land, so deciding its future is hardly a trivial undertaking. The current FS plan calls for 249,000 acres of Wilderness, but there seems to be little support for that number. The Partnership Strategy calls for about one-third of that roadless land (573,000 acres) becoming officially designated Wilderness, and HR 1204 would protect all of it as Wilderness. Hence, the main source of the disagreement.

In recent years, this collaborative approach has led to new Wilderness areas in several western states, but Montana has resisted further compromising away roadless lands just to get big “W.” Other states have also experienced the same disagreement among Wilderness supporters, but they did not air their disagreement so publicly.

“HR 1202 is a show bill,” says John Gatchell, conservation director for the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA) and one of the key negotiators of the Partnership Strategy, “not a serious piece of legislation. It’s been introduced for 18 years without a single vote.”

“We aren’t against this bill,” Gatchell says, “but it’s not going to happen. This is mythology, feeling good because we supported a bill that’s DOA, that will never be voted on.”

AWR executive director Michael Garrity, says his group strongly disagrees with the compromise and instead agrees with Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath who has filed suit to protect all roadless lands. “The result of the compromise is more political pressure for logging roadless areas,” Garrity insists, “and there is no indication any wilderness will result from it. They (MWA) don’t have a bill, and they haven’t had a bill for a long time.”

“I’m all for new Wilderness, “Garrity assures, “and if somebody would introduce a smaller bill, we’ll support it.”

But he is clearly not in favor of compromising away anything at the beginning, as he claims the Partnership Strategy does. “Over 200,000 acres of roadless lands will be lost. Temporary roads are not temporary. They become unofficial ATV roads.”

“It’s compromise,” Gatchell admits. “It involves more timber harvest than currently planned and some new roads, but we’re not going to lose roadless lands. It means 10-15% of inventoried roadless areas already with lots of user-created jeep roads…I call them impaired roadless areas…will be logged, but these roads will be reclaimed, not those gated roads that everybody hates. There will be some stumps in a few roadless areas, but no permanent roads. Our plan states that there will be a net reduction in roads, especially in key elk hunting areas.”

Basically, what we have is a disagreement on strategy. The members of this new partnership have decided to do the compromising at the beginning because they view this as the only chance they have of ever getting the conservative, mostly anti-Wilderness northern Rockies congressional delegation to hold hearings and allow a vote on a bill. “We want to have something that has a chance of passing,” Gatchell points out.

Contrarily, supporters of the Rockies Prosperity Act suffer no illusion about getting the entire acreage supported in the bill. “You don’t do your compromising at 8 am,” Garrity argues. “You do that at 11:59 pm.”

Garrity clearly believes he has the right track. “We have more sponsors than any other Wilderness bill in Congress,” he boosts. “Nancy Pelosi (D-CA, minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives) told us its one of the three highest priority environmental bills for the next session. If the democrats take the House next election, we’ll get a hearing and a vote.”

And MWA clearly believes AWR’s approach is flawed. “The MWA council has decided that we can’t go on without protected some of our Wilderness,” Gatchell explains. “We think its time for a new approach, for a bipartisan approach, something Congress will pass.’

But I’m sure Garrity and all other Wilderness supporters would agree with Gatchell when he says, “It’s shameful how much of Montana’s wilderness is protected, only 4% of the state, less than Idaho, Wyoming and British Columbia. This is nothing for a state like Montana. It’s what you’d expect in New Jersey.”

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