Montana's Sen. Jon Tester gave a presentation on a controversial forest bill here that packed in supporters and opponents of the wilderness-for- logging measure, and drew strong responses from both sides.
More than 350 people showed up at the Beier Auditorium on the University of Montana Western campus Saturday to hear directly from Tester about his bill. The visit came after months of criticism from wilderness opponents that Tester was trying to ram the bill through without hearing from people who live in the county most affected by the bill.
The crowd included a diverse array of ranchers, loggers, conservationists and others with sharp opinions on the bill. Several carried signs, including one that read "multiple use, not double talk" and another, "Montana is not a monarchy." But even more proponents of the measure showed up, many of whom wielded signs that read "Thank you, Sen. Tester." Tester told the crowd that Montana's forests are in crisis because of beetle kill, and that it would take the state's logging companies to help solve the problem. The bill was modeled on the "partnership" coalition of timber companies and conservation groups that met and came up with the compromise.
"We have an opportunity to provide a supply of logs to the mills," Tester said. "Just a few states south of us in Colorado they have the same thing in beetle killed trees, but they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it." The bill, called the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, would designate more than 600,000 acres of wilderness area on three national forests. The vast majority of that - more than 500,000 acres - would be on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
But it also includes provisions to increase logging on the forest. The bill mandates that 7,000 acres a year be logged on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, and calls for stewardship contracting to clear out dead timber, repair degraded culverts and other habitat improvements on at least one 50,000-acre "landscape scale" project per year.
Sherm Anderson, owner of Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge who asked Tester to carry the bill, told the crowd that only 5 percent of the timber that goes through his mill comes from Forest Service land. He said the bill was crucial to upping that to help his mill and others in the state survive tough times and stiff competition from other countries.
"The entire logging infrastructure in this state is at risk," he said.
The partnership and other proponents of the measure have called it a revolutionary way of solving years of gridlock over forest management.
But critics n including motorized enthusiasts, miners and ranchers n have said the bill was crafted with only two interests in mind and offers no guarantee that any more logging will occur on national forests because environmental groups can still sue.
Tester did not take questions before the crowd, letting his staff accept verbal and written comments on the bill. But he did stick around to speak with people.
The senator got an earful from some who said they were sharply opposed to new wilderness areas.
Among them was Tex Marchesseault, a Beaverhead County rancher. He said they're dealing with beetle-killed timber on their land and don't need a wilderness area, as proposed in the bill, right next to them.
"Why don't you manage the forest?" he said. "We've got the wilderness right up to our fence and nobody can ever explain why we need wilderness." Yet Sheila Roberts, a Dillon resident, told Tester she and many others in the community support the bill.
And Mark Petroni, a retired Ennis district ranger on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, said while the bill isn't perfect, it's a start to get restoration work done on some key areas. He said the Forest Service proposed some landscape scale restoration projects in the past that included logging, restoring roads that were polluting creeks and brining back aspen groves, while using the receipts from the sales to buy out in-holdings of private land. Those projects were always challenged in court by environmentalists and the Forest Service had to drop them, he said.
"This agency could do a 50,000 acre stewardship project with its eyes closed if it could get through the gridlock," Petroni said. "And we could target those projects in key watersheds that are in dire need of it.
"If we start in those areas and work back, then we have an opportunity to make changes to the forest."
Reporter Nick Gevock may be reached at nick.gevock@mtstandard.com
