By Michael Howell
On December 12, the U.S. Senate gave its stamp of approval to the historic public lands agreement negotiated by Montana’s Congressional delegation.
Senators Jon Tester and John Walsh worked with Senator-elect Steve Daines to include eight Montana lands bills in a broader lands package that passed the Senate 89 to 11.
“I am proud of this historic agreement, and I am particularly proud today to be a Montanan,” Tester said on the Senate floor. “Montana is home to sky-touching mountains and beautiful plains. It’s home to hard-working men and women and to Native Americans with deep connections to the land. But it’s The Last Best Place because we are all of these things and because we are willing to work together to preserve and strengthen them.”
“Montana’s congressional delegation was able to put aside political differences by following the example set by of our fellow citizens,” Walsh said. “Passage of the North Fork withdrawal caps 40 years of Montanans working together to protect our outdoor heritage and strengthen the economy of the Flathead.”
The lands package is part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
“As a Senator from Montana, it’s my responsibility to make sure we preserve these treasured places. And that we responsibly use our lands to advance the interests of our state,” Tester said. “These bills are the product of compromise led by folks on the ground and Montana’s Congressional delegation working together to move our state forward.”
The package includes:
• Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act
Protects public access along the Front for hunters, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts, designates 208,000 acres as a Conservation Management Area, adds 67,000 acres to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, supports a noxious weed management plan, and allows for continued grazing access for Montana ranchers. Additionally, the bill releases approximately 14,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas in southeastern Montana and requires a new assessment of oil and gas potential in the Bridge Coulee and Musselshell Breaks Wilderness Study Areas.
• North Fork Watershed Protection Act
Permanently protects the American side of the North Fork of the Flathead River Watershed by barring future mining or drilling on the affected 430,000 acres which lie adjacent to Glacier National Park.
• Northern Cheyenne Lands Act
Restores to the Northern Cheyenne tribe the mineral rights to 5,000 acres containing coal deposits within their Tribal boundary and strengthens the tribe’s control over its land base, natural resources and trust funds. Restoring these rights corrects a federal error made over 100 years ago.
• Cabin Fee Act
Provides certainty for about 700 Montana cabin owners on Forest Service land by establishing a fair and predictable system for setting cabin fees.
• East Bench Irrigation District Act
Authorizes the Interior Department to extend the water contract between the U.S. and the East Bench Irrigation District for six more years.
• Bureau of Reclamation Conduit Hydropower Development Equity and Jobs Act
Removes outdated federal statutes that currently prevent irrigation districts in Montana and other western states from developing hydropower on Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) canals, ditches, and conduits—four of which are in Montana.
Many Montana groups, businesses and individuals applauded the Senate’s approval.
Dusty Crary, who works the family ranch outside of Choteau, Montana as well as an outfitter/guiding service, said, “The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act is an insurance policy for those who come after us. This legislation does just what it needs to and not one thing more. I’m very proud to have been a part of creating the bill, and I am incredibly grateful to our delegation for coming together and getting this made-in-Montana bill signed into law.”
Jim Klug, founder of Yellow Dog Flyfishing and a member of Business for Montana’s Outdoors, said, “Businesses that rely on Montana’s outdoors will closely watch the progress of this important legislation and we thank our congressional delegation for casting politics aside to do right by our public lands and the jobs that rely on them. These bills are a product of Montana, and they are right for Montana. Our economy cannot afford to keep these measures on the sidelines of Congress.”
John Norman Maclean, a journalist, writer and cabin owner with deep Montana roots, and the son of the author of “A River Runs Through It,” Norman Maclean, said, “The Maclean cabin on Seeley Lake has served as a writing place and inspiration for over half a dozen books, including “A River Runs through It” and “Fire on the Mountain,” that enhance the history and culture of Montana. With the passage of the Cabin Fee Act, thanks to Sen. Tester’s leadership and the support of the Montana Congressional delegation, our family will have use of the cabin for present and future generations and hopefully add to this tradition, to everyone’s benefit.”
Not everyone supports the bill, however.
Mathew Koehler of Wild West Institute believes the bill represents a big giveaway of public lands to development interests. He quotes the Sierra Club, saying, “We’re not happy about how this thing unfolded. The losses far outweigh the wins. We should not be privatizing federal lands at the behest of a mining company. We should not be privatizing public lands that are sacred to Native Americans.”
According to Koehler, there are a total of 6,397,000 unprotected Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in Montana. This public lands rider would protect only 67,000 acres in Montana as Wilderness. That means that this “historic” “new hope for Wilderness” would amount to protecting just 1% of the total Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in Montana as Wilderness. He calls the number of new acres protected nationally as “even more pitiful” at .02 %.
He notes that the new legislation also mandates that grazing on public lands continue. He claims it “ties the hands of the Forest Service by mandating the government must keep a private, commercial enterprise operating on public lands into perpetuity, regardless of the ecological consequences.
The Montana Environmental Information Center has pointed out in a blog post that Senator Tester and Rep. Daines’ last minute change to the RMFHA now includes the release of two Wilderness Study Areas near Otter Creek, which is nearly 500 miles away from the Rocky Mountain Front. Plus they snuck into the RMFHA (again with no public input or process) a provision that will likely release another 14,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas in eastern Montana near the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas development. These Wilderness Study Areas are about 350 miles from the Rocky Mountain Front.
Both groups also claim that the bill contains huge giveaways to the coal and logging industries. The bottom line, according to Koehler, is “this public lands package attached as a rider to an unrelated National Defense Authorization Act will mean more public lands grazing, mining, oil and gas development and logging…and less public input, less protection for wildlife species and less science-based management overall.”
President Obama signed the bill into law on Friday, December 19, 2014.