Pat Williams - December 06, 2005
Wild Lands
PAT WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 2005
It’s déjà vu — again. In Missoula last week U.S. Senator Conrad Burns picked up on a continuing issue that is now more than a quarter century old — and still unresolved.
Montana’s wild, unroaded public lands have undergone more scrutiny, more debate, more hearings, disagreement, agreement and general consideration than any other public lands any where else in the United States.
In Missoula last Friday Conrad Burns, whose Senate career was in large part spawned by this very issue 21 years ago, wanted to hear even more about the Forest Service planning process for the roadless, still wild but increasingly jeopardized public land here in Montana.
These are the same lands that the Congress and presidents began considering back in the 1970s. These are the same public lands about which nearly two dozen bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress. Two dozen bills, trying to designate some of these lands as wilderness while releasing most of the acres for other multiple uses, including protection.
These are the same lands that were wisely declared roadless by Bill Clinton following the most extensive pubic lands hearings in American history.
The process of deciding how, or if, to preserve these wild places has now been going on for almost 30 years.
During those years every state has made their land decisions and moved on. Well, every state that is except two: Idaho and Montana. And the Idaho congressional delegation has been working diligently for the past three years to get the various designations for their lands resolved.
So that leaves Montana, with six million acres of last best place; tragically alone as the one state that can’t or won’t decide how to protect our remaining wild land base. And this issue can only and finally be decided by the U.S. Congress.
So there was my former colleague and friend, Conrad Burns, in Missoula asking questions about what the Forest Service planning process was going to recommend next for these lands: mining, timber cutting, road building, motorized use, or simply assuring that much of the land shall remain as it is today—wild and unroaded.
Although, Montana, with our really wonderful history of early conservation initiatives, is now frankly embarrassed to be the last state in the nation to move toward land designation protections, the Burns hearing was frankly more of the same. As I noted at the beginning of this commentary, déjà vu all over again.
There it was at that hearing just as it had been throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Bus loads of protesters, people waving signs, and a high elected official badgering the Forest Service.
After almost a quarter century of unnecessary rancor, demagogy, and intentional misunderstandings about these roadless lands, can’t our congressional delegation, all friends of mine, but can’t they bring people together in a manner that sets aside the campaign strategy of next year’s elections, avoid the funneling of protest dollars to the special interest lobbyists for sign making and bus trips, and instead have a series of rational discussions, including meaningful congressional hearings.
The issue of protecting the best of our last remaining public lands is too important to continue using it as a political football. And the issue has continued unresolved for far, far too long.
Let me put that this way: My wife Carol and I recently became grandparents to a baby girl. Her mother, our daughter, is now in her thirties. She was in the 4th grade when this issue first came to the Congress in the late ‘70s.
Frankly, Conrad Burns used this issue to help himself get elected back then. And he said he would solve the problem—that was more than 20 years ago. And the Burns hearing last week in Missoula apparently had as its purpose the opening of old wounds rather than the completion of this matter the way every other state in America has done.
For heavens sake, let’s get about leading Montana to reclaim the mantel of conservation leadership and abandon our ugly habit, at least on this issue, of confrontation and disagreement.
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