Senator Tester's Wilderness Bill
S. 1470
SENATOR JON TESTER REVEALS HIS WILDERNESS AGENDA
SENATOR
TESTER'S WILDERNESS BILL FAILS REALITY CHECK
Senator Jon Tester's
"new style jobs and wilderness Bill" introduced July 17 models
the current mode of Congress' handling of legislation:
 | Prepare
the actual bill provisions in secret with only representatives of
selected political supporters at the table.
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| Roll
the Bill out with great political campaign style fanfare and carefully
staged media events.
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| Do
not publicly discuss the actual mandates in the Bill, only
spout selected talking points provided by staff that are
often outright falsehoods or at best half-truths.
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| Push
the Bill through as quickly as possible using political
tactics to squash debate so that other members of Congress and the public
have little opportunity to learn details of the Bill and
opponents have little opportunity to tell their side of the
story.
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Passing legislation
using the current Administration tactics is un-American. Like most
political hype reported in the media, what most people hear is mostly
smoke and mirrors. From the rhetoric to date, it is likely that
Tester, even if he has read his own Bill, doesn't really understand
the actual consequences of mandates in the Bill.
The claim that
the proposals are a product of open public "collaboration"
and "consensus" is just not true. There was no consensus
on the Three Rivers designations on the Kootenai National Forest. Lincoln
County Coalition, which originally developed the Three Rivers part of
this bill eventually morphed into the "Three Rivers Challenge”
specifically to avoid involvement with MFMU.
They promised to look at our proposals and never got back to us.
Much later we learned of the name change.
LCC has never held a truly open meeting.
Tester's Bill violates
the most important principle requested by stakeholders in the Lincoln
County Coalition The principle is a requirement for multiple
use access and timber management with jobs in-place that is just as
permanent as the wilderness designations at the time of any new wilderness
designations. Contrary to this request for equality,
Section 7 of Tester's Bill even requires termination of the timber
harvest targets after 15 years, or earlier if the Bill's timber
harvest targets are actually achieved. Apparently few or none
of the Lincoln County Coalition stakeholders were involved in writing
Tester's Bill except the Wilderness activists who plan to negotiate
another "deal" for more wilderness in the same area after
15 years.
Like the current Three
Rivers Challenge, most "collaboration groups" consisted of
selected people, and many public land "stakeholders" such as
county, State, and Tribal governments, multiple use, mining,
motorized recreation and the general public were often excluded from
participation. Tester’s Bill violates the National Forest
Management Act and many other Federal Statutes that require coordination
with State, local, and Tribal governments.
Many of the "collaboration committee" meetings were not
advertised or open to the public. Most of the
"stakeholders" that did participate in the collaboration
meetings were certainly not consulted on drafting the provisions in
Tester's Bill.
The Bill is not a
"jobs" Bill by any stretch of the imagination. Every
designation in the Bill permanently prohibits any significant future
economic use of the land as mandated in the following provisions:
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actual "Wilderness" designations permanently prohibit any
mechanical equipment for access or development of any kind and doom
the area to the "boom and bust" natural cycles of fuel
buildup, insect attack and decay, and eventual catastrophic fire to
release all the excess carbon buildup, destroy watershed function,
wildlife and wildlife habitat, and pollute air and water with smoke
and soil loss, as well as threaten private property, public
health and safety.
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| The
permanent "Recreation Area" designations have very
restrictive mandates that in effect are
"quasi-wilderness": No new roads, no timber harvests,
no mineral entry or leasing, no new developments of any kind,
nothing for jobs only a black hole of management and protection costs
to taxpayers. Motorized recreation such a snowmobiling or
motorbikes are prohibited on most of the areas. Some motorized
access may be provided on "designated areas or routes" as a
result of maps to be prepared. Some
areas are directed to have a "study" to see if and
where motorized access will be permitted. It is clear the Bill
will only further reduce already inadequate diverse recreation
opportunities for the general public.
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In the general forest
area outside the area designations, there is no guaranteed timber
harvest, only target acres specified that are subject to National
Environmental Policy Act compliance (p.26), appeals, and litigation just
as all timber sales prepared under existing Forest Plans. The
reality is that the Bill provides no improvement over the
existing situation regarding timber harvest to support industry and jobs.
Outside the wilderness
and recreation designations, the Bill actually imposes additional onerous constraints
over and above the existing Forest Plans. For example,
timber sales must use the "Stewardship Contracting
Authority" that returns all timber receipts to the Forest
Service to do their pet projects (like obliterating more public roads),
the local governments get nothing for support of roads and
schools. Most access to National Forest lands use county roads,
and Government employees educate their children in local schools. In
reality the Bill "Stewardship" provisions are "unfunded
mandates" that force local governments to pick up the costs like road
maintenance, law enforcement, search and rescue, and firefighting
resulting from the unmanaged Federal land in the counties subject to the
Bill provisions.
| Construction
of permanent roads for sustained timber production and protection are
prohibited (p.20). Any road built to accommodate a timber sale
or restoration project must be "reclaimed" at expense
to the environment and taxpayers. Removing timber for commercial
purposes from public land with no plan or provisions for future timber
management, only barriers, amounts to unsustainable
"timber mining". There can be no sustainable forestry
without access to annually or periodically remove excess biomass and
insect and disease infested trees, and no access to quickly
suppress fires. In short, the existing problems of unhealthy
forests and high fuel hazard will remain or increase on all the
forest except the relatively few acres that may actually get treated. These
mandates are totally unnecessary and costly, and the long term effect
is to doom the areas to more catastrophic fires.
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| In
addition specified maximum road density mandates will mean existing
roads built with public timber money for multiple uses will have to be
obliterated or "decommissioned" to meet the mandate. The
temporary jobs tearing out public roads that could support forest
protection and sustained future timber harvest indefinitely is touted
as "good paying jobs" when the long term effect means loss
of productivity and jobs.
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| On
the Beaverhead/Deerlodge NF the road densities after timber harvest
must be reduced to a total maximum of 1.5 miles/ sq mi., which is less
than the science most often quoted for grizzly bear road road density
standards. This is the
South Fork study which drives Amendment 19 on the Flathead NF and
requires a total maximum of 2 sq. mi/ sq. mi. of road
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| Other
unnecessary and vague prescriptive language in the Bill are
invitations for litigation and abuse. On p.21, "...ensure
that timber harvest activities are limited to stewardship areas."
This invites "stewardship areas" to be gerrymandered to
exclude areas that existing Forest Plans designate suitable.
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There is a
long-standing Congressional Protocol that Congress does not impose
wilderness designations on States. Congress traditionally
has approved wilderness designations that are agreed upon by
that State's entire elected delegation. Freshman Senator Tester
apparently doesn't agree or care to achieve consensus of Montana's elected
delegation. Tester's Bill should be defeated on that basis alone.
Due to the facts
presented above, Senator Tester's "Jobs and Wilderness Bill" is
bad for Montana's economy, environment, and citizens' quality of life.
Going back on his
promise to stay neutral on this bill Senator Baucus has recently come out
in support and signed on as a co-sponsor.
We need to flood Baucus with protests about his waffling and insist
that he remove his support.
Fred D. Hodgeboom,
President and Gary Hall
Montanans For Multiple Use
MFMU TAKES THE FIELD
AGAINST S. 1470
At the Troy, MT open house, MT Representative Chas Vincent tried to get Tester to allow public questions and comments but Tester refused. Then Chas asked Tester to recognize him at the end of Tester's show so Chas could announce opportunity for folks to make public statements but Tester didn't and the meeting broke up. After Chas talked to him again, Tester turned on the mic and made a quick announcement amid the end of meeting din that few understood. Needless to say very few people hung around to make a statement. Representative Chas Vincent was a participant in the "collaboration group" that Tester claims agreed on the 3-rivers portion of his Bill. Chas can attest that the most important provision for the multiple use and timber management part of the Forest have equal assurance of permanence as the wilderness designations were left out of the Bill and that multiple use advocates were not consulted in writing S1470.
Here is what MFMU has done to date to fight the Bill that designates nearly 700,000 acres of permanent wilderness and nearly 600,000 acres of permanent "Recreation Areas", Special Management Areas", and "Protection Areas" that has prescriptive language requiring to the areas to be managed nearly the same as big Wilderness.
MFMU prepared an analysis of S1470 that exposed some of the wilderness-like mandates in the bill that are imposed on timber management areas outside the designated areas, as well as the restrictive mandates on the "special area designations". The NFMU position paper has been published in several newspapers, posted on websites, and handed out at Tester's "open house" meetings. (See the article "Tester's Wilderness Bill Fails Reality Check" in this newsletter.)
MFMU partnered with several other multiple use and motorized groups across the state to organize and get local elected officials to sponsor a "field hearing" on the bill at the University of Montana on September 11, 2009. Petitions were circulated and about 2300 signatures were packaged for the hearing that included several hundred MFMU member collected at fairs and other events. Several MFMU members presented public testimony. The petitions and videos were sent to all MT Congressional offices as well as the Senate Natural Resource Committee that must consider the bill.
MFMU handed out stick-on badges that showed S1470 with the red slash through it at Tester's Dillon and Troy, MT meetings. MFMU VP Jerry Oneil attended the Tester meeting in Dillon. Several MFMU members attended the Troy meeting and expressed opposition.
Future actions are planned to continue fighting the Bill:
MFMU is proposing to partner with other Multiple Use groups across the State to prepare a professional powerpoint program to counter Tester's false statements and expose the truth contained in the actual Bill. Contact information and recommendations on how to express opposition will be displayed and the program can be printed out for distribution. The CD's can be easily duplicated and distributed to individuals and groups all across the State and Nation that will present the program at public meetings, club meetings, etc. The content of the program can be used for ads by all who want to sponsor ads in the media.
MFMU will sponsor some ads in the Flathead opposing the Bill.
MFMU continues to collect petition signatures opposing the Bill and submit them to Tester and the Senate Natural Resource Committee.
MFMU will help notify people through e-mails and ads when the Bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Natural resource committee with contact information so people can call and write opposition.
FOR MORE INFO ON THE BILL GO TO
www.mtmultipleuse.org/political/watchlist.htm
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