Beartooth Range, Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
The Wilderness Society, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and the Montana Wilderness Association, now rebranded “Wild Montana,” all claim they support the Roadless Rule and have been asking people for donations to oppose efforts to repeal it. But a review of the record shows that these “conservation” groups have supported opening 1,585,000 acres or Roadless and Wilderness Study Areas to logging and road building since the roadless rule went into effect in 2001.
Tracy Stone-Manning, now the President of The Wilderness Society, has been widely quoted as supporting the Roadless Rule. But while working as a top environmental advisor for former Montana Senator Jon Tester, she strongly supported his 2009 Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. The Montana Wilderness Association, now doing business as Wild Montana, was also one of the main cheerleaders for Tester’s bill
Although the bill never passed, it would have opened one million acres of roadless lands in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwest Montana and mandated logging 10,000 acres per year for 10 years in the Beaverhead and Kootenai National Forests. The Kootenai contains the smallest, most threatened grizzly population in the world in the Cabinet-Yaak. Since most grizzly bears are killed within 1/3 of a mile of a road, more logging means more logging roads would be bulldozed into grizzly habitat, resulting in more dead grizzly bears. The measure was so extreme even the Forest Service opposed it.
The groups also strongly supported former Montana Senator Max Baucus’ Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, passed as a rider on the 2014 defense spending bill. The measure opened 208,000 acres of roadless lands to logging and road-building and guaranteed grazing in perpetuity with no environmental analysis or public review. The pitiful 67,000 acres of wilderness tack-ons also required the sacrifice of four Wilderness Study Areas in Eastern Montana, opening 29,000 acres to oil and gas exploration and development.
Then came Tester’s 2017 Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act that carved up 50,000 acres of an Inventoried Roadless Areas contiguous to the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wilderness Areas. The measure also allowed loggers to decide where to build roads and designated 5,000 acres as a play area for snowmobiles and mountain bikes.
The bill didn’t even make it out of committee, but now these same groups have renamed it “A River Runs Through It Act” — although there is no sponsor and no “act.” In addition to the roadless lands Tester’s bill would have destroyed, it turns over management of 70,000 acres in grizzly, lynx and wolverine habitat in the Ogden Mountain Roadless Area northwest of Lincoln Montana to the timber industry. It also converts 130,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas into play areas for motorized recreation and mountain bikers.
The clearcutting, bulldozing new logging roads, and motorized recreation in roadless areas will send tons of sediment into the Blackfoot River which has been designated critical habitat for bull trout, a threatened species. It should be called “A Clearcut Runs Through It Act.”
Finally, all three groups support the Greater Yellowstone Conservation And Recreation proposal. There is no sponsor and no bill, but the proposal opens much of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Study Area and other Inventoried Roadless Areas to motorized recreation, logging and road building. While adding only 102,000 acres as wilderness — less than half of the 250,000 acres that qualify for wilderness designation — it also significantly reduces the 155,000 acre Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area by 53,000 acres.
Don’t fall for the con. The record is clear: these groups have supported reducing, not protecting Inventoried Roadless Areas in the past and are doing so now.
Please consider helping us get the only bill before Congress that would designate all 23 million acres of roadless in the Northern Rockies designated as wilderness, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. Please also consider donating to Counterpunch to help them continue exposing hypocrites.