KEEPING IT WILD!
IN DEFENSE OF AMERICA’S PUBLIC WILDLANDS
United by our common understanding that Montana’s wild country is its greatest treasure;
And, that once degraded or impaired, this wild country can never be restored or replaced;
And, cognizant of Thoreau’s belief that “In wildness is the preservation of the world”;
And, schooled by Aldo Leopold who long ago warned that wilderness can only shrink and not grow;
And, keenly aware of the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964 as being “untrammeled by man”, where “man himself is a visitor who does not remain”;
And, fully recognizing that the Northern Rockies ecosystem is the only functioning ecosystem in the lower 48 states where all native species still reside;
And, being of one mind in our desire and determination to protect and preserve what remains of our public wildlands to the greatest extent possible;
We hereby state our intention to work together to achieve the most inclusive and comprehensive protection under the law for all remaining publicly-owned de facto wilderness in Montana.
In affirmation of our purpose stated above, and after having made a genuine effort to improve it, we unanimously oppose Senator Tester’s Bill 1470, the so-called “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009.” The basis for our opposition is exhaustively catalogued in a separate paper, but we wish to articulate in this foundational document the chief objections we have in concise form. They are as follows:
1. The Tester bill specifically eliminates from mandated protection large portions of the late Senator Lee Metcalf’s wildlands legacy, Congressionally-designated as Wilderness Study Areas in 1977 by his farsighted bill Senate Bill 393. By eliminating this protection, the Tester bill opens these priceless public wildlands for road building, logging, and other development.
2. The Tester bill undermines the nationally overwhelmingly popular Clinton Roadless Rule and Obama Roadless Initiative. Over one million acres of federally inventoried roadless wildlands protected under the Roadless Rule and the Roadless Initiative would be classified as “Timber Suitable or Open to Harvest.”
3. The Tester Bill surrenders decisions about national forests to a handful of local bureaucrats and commercial interests and thereby promotes balkanization/fragmentation of America’s national public land legacy into locally controlled fiefdoms.
4. The Tester bill undermines the National Environmental Policy Act by imposing an unrealistic arbitrary requirement for the Forest service to complete Environmental Impact statements in twelve months rather than the usual two to three years.
5. The Tester bill mandates unsustainable logging regardless of environmental costs, and thereby jeopardizes the protections afforded to National Forests in Montana by the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Wilderness Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
6. In its effort to isolate decisions to log wildlands from national attention, the Tester bill disenfranchises public lands stakeholders, by overriding legitimate, science based forest planning that involves full public information and participation. The public at large must be included in decision-making concerning its own land.
7. The Tester bill mandates logging of 100,000 acres over ten years: 7,000 acres per year for ten years in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, where 500 acres per year is the sustainable cut level according to the Forest Service; and 3,000 acres per year for ten years in fragile Yaak grizzly bear habitat, already severely damaged by decades of overcutting. While timber cutting would be mandatory, the Tester bill contains no accompanying mandates for restoration, leaving all post-logging reclamation and forest restoration of our public lands strictly optional.
8. The Tester bill fails to address at least $100 million in costs to U.S. taxpayers that would be incurred by the Forest Service for subsidizing “below-cost” timber sales and power plants for the few specially privileged timber companies involved. The bill interferes with free enterprise by mandating these favored private timber mills be subsidized with perpetual supplies of National Forest trees, at huge economic costs to U.S. taxpayers. The bill also fails to address the financial realities that the United States is currently in economic crises and a lumber “depression,” with demands for timber down 55 percent and new home construction down 70 percent.
9. The Tester bill proposes unsustainable industrial-scale logging that would wreak irrevocable harm to habitat of species that characterize the wild nature of the northern Rockies, such as the gray wolf, bull trout, cutthroat trout (Montana’s official state fish), otter, mountain goat, mountain sheep, elk, arctic grayling, northern goshawk, boreal owl, pileated woodpecker, ferruginous hawk, Montana vole, sage thrasher, wild bison, peregrine falcon, bald eagle, pine marten, fisher, lynx, wolverine, and grizzly bear (Montana’s official state animal).
10. The “wilderness” proposed by the Tester bill would merely protect fragmented and unconnected islands of largely “rocks and ice,” with limited biological integrity and potential for sustaining biodiversity. The minimal “wilderness” designated would fail to protect different elevation habitats and their dependent species with core areas, buffer zones, and connecting biological corridors. The bill promotes numerous abuses that are clearly incompatible with the 1964 Wilderness Act, including motorized access into and through “wilderness,” military aircraft landings in “wilderness,” possible “wilderness” logging, and other intrusive violations of the principles of Wilderness.
These elements comprise the core of our opposition to the Tester bill and we intend to see that it is not approved and enacted by Congress.
We will continue to work together, instead, for a scientifically-sound, ecologically-based Wilderness Bill that preserves the greatest amount of our priceless and rapidly vanishing public roadless wildlands in Montana.
We are conservation organizations and citizens dedicated to Wilderness preservation and the sound management of our federal, public lands. Our coalition includes small business owners, hikers, backpackers, hunters, anglers, scientists, outfitters and guides, teachers, veterans, retired Forest Service rangers, restoration practitioners, farmers, craftsmen and conservationists who are all stakeholders in managing America's public wildlands.