Forest partnership plan is not the best solution

By Janine Stewart - 02/19/2008

This is regarding recent letters about the Beaverhead Deerlodge Partnership being the best solution to a very complex public issue. What is truly stunning is the fact that people have not truly looked at what is going on with this plan.

If you enjoy the forest on a dirt bike, ATV, foot or horseback, or think Montana has any future for various types of economic development, then it is time to become informed fully, not just at surface level, and get to the heart of what is at stake. The public will not benefit from the partnership continuing to push for federal legislation that will designate 529,000 acres as wilderness. There are mechanisms in place that manage our forests. We should be supporting the active use of those. The Forest Service is directed to “manage the national forest for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and fish and wildlife purposes” under the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960.

You would think from all the hoopla that collaboration is a newly invented model that was the birth child of the anti-access partnership group. I do not know the exact number of groups this partnership has met with. What I do know is they have less-than-desirable tactics in their “small meetings.” How do I know this? I was invited to attend one of the closed door, informal, let’s get together to look at this ... yada yada yada. Well, they don’t like to take notes at those little closed-door meetings, but I did and I also asked the Montana Wilderness Association rep attending whether or not he would be reporting the outcome to his board and members. “Yes” was his response. Well, then fair is fair and I, too, reported to the membership that I represented what the game plan was. If you don’t agree with the partnership, your ideas don’t count, but you will be counted and it will be “implied” that you supported the plan.

Please folks, do not believe all of what you read and please do not believe that every single member of every organization that this partnership has claimed is supporting the measure is. Truth is the partnership does not want to bring in a large number of multiple use including motorized users to the same table at the same time. How do I know this? I am a member of a number of different groups including the Treasure State Alliance. When the TSA executive director Craig Osterman has proposed such a meeting, the partnership steps back and wants nothing of it. The Beaverhead Deerlodge Partnership is not a good step in the right direction.

What is being promoted now is The Beaver-head-Deerlodge Conservation, Restoration and Stewardship Act of 2007. A limited private interest partnership undermines federal laws, not to mention the public trust. Privatization of public land management is a slippery slope that should be avoided at all costs. The wilderness advocates know that elements of their strategy require Congressional authorization so they have made it very well known that because they have the paid staff to complete the process, big money backing them and political ins, they have been fully engaged with soliciting a Montanan to do their bidding. Contact your congressman and let them know this collaboration is just a starting point. The average Montana resident along with a number of organized interests in Montana has not been represented with this endeavor.

For the public record, the Montana Snowmobile Association and all but one snowmobile club in southwest Montana have gone on record that they do not support the partnership.

— Janine Stewart has enjoyed hiking, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, mountain bike riding and motorized recreation in Montana's outdoors with her family for 50 years. She is a Montana representative for the Snowmobile Alliance of Western States, a board member of the Anaconda Snowmobile Club, member of the Treasure State Alliance, the Montana Snowmobile Association and various other multiple use organizations. She lives west of Anaconda and may be reached at P.O. Box 483, Anaconda, MT 59711.