Guest Column

Last week, Congress turned to an unlikely group to explain how public lands management and policy are affecting rural jobs and communities – people who are actually tied to the land. Not lobbyists or lawyers, but real people from places a long way from nowhere like Condon, Mont., and Salmon, Idaho.

They came at the request of Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), chair of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. Grijalva is frustrated with a national dialog that he said has erroneously put forward a false choice between economic development and conservation in rural places.

The testimony at the subcommittee’s hearing was hopeful and solution-oriented, but laced with a dire urgency to reverse the gridlock and contention that have eroded both livelihoods and landscapes in the West.

SIGNATURE GATHERING ENDS TODAY

Updated July 20, 8 pm: Montana Secretary of State Linda McColloch announced today that I-161 did indeed qualify for the general election ballot and the voters will decide its fate on November 2.

The controversial initiative that would eliminate outfitter set-aside big game licenses is breathtakingly close to making it on the ballot for the November 2 general election.

Disptach from Polson

On one side of the Ninepipes Museum in Charlo, at the heart of the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana, the display is dominated by Indian jewelry, blankets and traditional beaded moccasins. On the other side, it’s a collection of cowboy hats and paintings of white men on horses.

Indians and settlers have lived side by side on this reservation for 100 years, but at the museum – and in the community – the division between them is still evident.

This year is the centennial anniversary of the Flathead Indian Reservation being opened to settlers. In 1910, under the Homestead Act, settlers were allowed to claim land that had been set aside for the Kootenai, Salish and Pend d’Oreille tribes. Though the natives and non-natives didn’t share cultures, beliefs or lifestyles, they now share this history – which both groups are striving to preserve and re-tell.

Lois Hart, the president of the Polson Flathead Historical Museum, began planning for the events two years ago, and asked the tribes for their support. They agreed at first, then decided they wanted no part in the commencement. 

“We wanted the unblemished history to be told unfettered once and for all,” says Rob McDonald, the spokesman for the Salish-Kootenai tribes. “But it was not coming together that way, and people were on the verge of being very upset. They were afraid it would turn into the whitewashing of history and become a celebration of the beginning of the tribal holocaust story.”

Hart has since decided to scale down the event, which she is calling a “Polson Centennial,” acknowledging the creation of the town with the Homestead Act. The centennial will take place through August and was kicked off with a July Fourth parade and ice-cream social.

“I admit the tone is different than when it was going to be a commemoration,” Hart says. “But I won’t use the word celebration. The lives of the homesteaders were not easy, and a lot of our (historical) programs will be sobering.”

IT'S ABOUT TIME OBAMA DID SOMETHING GREEN

Back in February somebody leaked seven pages of a “vision document” conceived within the Department of the Interior and created quite a political uproar. OMG! Top brass in the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service (all Interior Department agencies) and a few green groups were actually discussing the idea of creating 14 new national monuments using the same end-run strategy employed by President Bill Clinton when--only three days before turning over the keys to the White House to George W. Bush--he used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the 377,000-acre Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument in north central Montana and 12 more monuments in other states.

Now, it appears as if President Obama might do the same thing, even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar claims it’s all “false rumors.” But in an excellent analysis (click here), Great Falls Tribune capital bureau reporter John S. Adams verifies that Interior Department higher-ups have indeed been seriously chatting up the monument idea. Salazar should have been proud to admit it.

Wildlife

The recent and controversial wolf-hunt announcements in Idaho, where officials plan to allow hunters to use electronic calls and traps, and the proposed doubling of the quota in Montana’s hunt are getting plenty of play throughout the Rockies.

But hunts in both states still await a decision by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Montana.  He’ll be making a ruling this summer in the lawsuit brought by Defenders of Wildlife to restore wolves to endangered status in both states.

In t he meantime, Montana will start selling wolf tags on Aug. 23 with a quota of 186 wolves. Dates for Idaho have not been set.

With the number of wolves estimated at 835 in Idaho and 524 in Montana, wolf hunters and ranchers see greater opportunity to cull a threatening killer of livestock and Elk. Pro-wolf activists see those numbers as low and want wolves back on the Endangered Species Act.

The gulf between zero and 800 is wide, and there have been years of hot words exchanged between opponents.

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Congress last had a pay cut in April 1933, during the worst of the Great Depression.

A bill to end that 77-year-long era, H.R. 4720, sponsored by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz. and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers was introduced in the House of Representatives in March.

If the bill becomes law, salaries for all senators and representatives would be cut by 5 percent, which would save $4.7 million, and block automatic increases in congressional salaries for 2011.

“The American people have had enough of Washington politicians refusing to live up to their responsibilities,” said Rep. Kirkpatrick. “If elected officials are going to say that this country is facing its most difficult economic times in generations, then they need to act like it.”

VILSACK TO MAKE ANNOUNCEMENT JULY 8

Updated July 7, 1 am: Baucus Continues to Support Open Fields.

Nobody ever accused the federal government of moving rapidly, even with congressionally mandated programs. And the long-ago approved new hunting access program called Open Fields is excellent testimony to that axiom.

After an extensive lobbying campaign by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited and many other conservation groups, Congress included $50 million in the 2008 Farm Bill for Open Fields, a new, innovative program to help fund dwindling public access to private lands, perhaps the greatest threat to the sport of hunting in this country. 

Political Influence

The Western Governor’s Association meeting in Whitefish, Mont., ended Tuesday, with the near half-milllion dollar cost of the conference mostly paid for by sponsors that include corporations –British Petroleum among them --- as well as trade associations and other special interests.

The event included a “Sunset Train Ride” paid for by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway but which was “not an official WGA sponsored event,” the agenda notes in small type. WGA chair Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and the event’s communications director, Karen Dieke, spun the concept that taxpayers didn’t have to pay for the three-day meeting because of the generosity of sponsors.

But high levels of mistrust of politicians – and corporations like BP - shows we are not fooled by that sort of thing anymore.

Building a brand

A few years ago North Dakota erected some clever signs at its border with Montana. One sign advised anyone headed west to remember what happened to a certain long haired cavalry commander who left North Dakota in 1876 and ended up in a sorry state on the banks of the Little Big Horn in Montana.

With all due respect to North Dakota, given a choice, does Montana sound like a lot more interesting place - to visit, to live, to work?

George Custer didn’t live to contemplate what I think of, and many others think of, as the allure of Montana. It has always fascinated me that the land of the Big Sky has a certain “brand” that states like Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado - not to mention North Dakota - never seem able to match. Maybe its because Montana has been building the brand since that fateful day in June of 1876 when the tourist from North Dakota misjudged his welcoming committee.

I got to thinking about what the Montana “brand” means to the economics and, perhaps more importantly, the image of the state while reflecting on two recent pieces of information.

The first was a program at Boise’s City Club a while back that focused on the “creative economy,” often identified as the critical mass in an area of artists, cultural non-profits and cutting edge businesses. Amoung the laments before the City Club was that 30-to 45-year olds are in danger of - or actually are - picking up and leaving Idaho, while an emphasis on developing home-grown entrepreneurs is waning.

Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act

Now, it’s four out of four in Idaho and Montana.

On Friday, Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) joined Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Montana’s Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, in co-sponsoring S. 868, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act, which would repeal most provisions of the Federal Lands Recreational Enhancement Act (FLREA), the law federal agencies use to charge fees for accessing public lands.