Wilderness bill a good start

Sen. Max Baucus took a big step with his recent announcement to proceed with wilderness legislation for the Rocky Mountain Front, but the question is how many more steps will he be able to make in advancing it.

We've been to this show before - with wilderness proposals stretching back to late 1980s that were stalled for one reason or another. The devil is always in the details, and as specifics of the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage plan develop (it hasn't been introduced yet) critics will begin to emerge and some may have worthy positions.

As envisioned now, the act would add 67,000 acres of new wilderness along the front, converting buffer lands outside the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex that are managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Obviously, the idea is to extend permanent protections from development to those lands that were already protected from oil and gas development under Baucus legislation that passed in 2006.

But Baucus's "wilderness" proposal is not absolute; it includes an additional 206,000 acres that would be designated as conservation management areas, where traditional uses such as logging, grazing and motorized routes would be maintained to provide continuing access to the Bob Marshall. It's an innovative approach to a landscape that will require custom solutions rather than blanket wilderness designations.

But is it enough compromise and innovation to quell critics and get through Congress? Baucus is optimistic.

"There are no conflicts of any significant degrees," he declared in announcing his plans for the legislation. "And we have minimized conflicts as much as possible."

Again, we've seen this kind of confidence before, most recently with Sen. Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which included 666,000 acres in wilderness designation and other provisions such as "releasing" wilderness study areas that have been de facto wilderness areas to multiple-use management. Those tradeoffs were developed through a supposed consensus of diverse interest groups, but still Tester's bill was met with stiff resistance among some quarters in Montana and has failed to advance in Congress even though it was lumped in with an appropriations bill, a move intended to make it easier to pass.

Baucus wants to move his legislation directly through the committee process, which can be bumpy, particularly when some advocates for Rocky Mountain Front conversion have already voiced opposition to it, saying it does not provide bold enough protections.

Baucus defends his approach, saying past wilderness proposals have been too sweeping and that a more modest approach is necessary. He may be right, but we'll have to wait and see if his approach is modest enough to avoid noisy resistance.