No thanks, Sen. Tester: We don't buy it

Montana’s letters and editorial pages have been flooded with praise for Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, or FJRA.

Well, here’s some criticism: To begin with, the name is all wrong. FJRA is first, foremost, and only a wilderness bill, which would immediately lock away a million acres (660,000 acres of big-W wilderness and another 300,000 or so of “recreation areas”) from all uses except primitive recreation.

In return for this million-acre lockup, FJRA’s propagandists promise a tidal wave of “jobs and recreation” to follow — someday, maybe, perhaps — an empty promise.

Ranchers know from bitter experience that grazing rights always go backwards after wilderness designations. Mining, in some of the most mineral rich areas of Montana? Never — forever.

Nor does wilderness do “jobs” through “recreation.” Never has, never will. Only 2 percent of public land recreation visitor days are “primitive recreation” based — and fully half are hunters. FJRA would write off the other 98 percent, who use wheels and motors for modern recreation, as potential customers and visitors — a terrible business model.

What about the forestry “jobs” that FJRA allegedly “creates?” Using accepted Montana average harvest and employment formulas, FJRA would produce 55 million board feet per year for 10 years total, at best (if nobody sues). Sun Mountain alone has 50 million feet capacity, with R-Y able to run 165 million feet per year. That doesn’t count the other “partners,” Roseburg and Pyramid. Clearly, FJRA provides nowhere near what these mills could use to “maintain,” much less “create,” jobs.

All Montanans know the Forest Service’s historic multiple-use mission has been completely wrecked by environmentalist litigation, enabled by lousy federal law. Multiple-use will stay wrecked until Congress has the guts for substantial reform. But Tester’s only attempt at slowing the legal monkeywrenching is a passing mention of the 2003 Healthy Forests Act’s judicial review language. Have you seen any significant part of Montana’s forest mess improved by that law since it passed? Nope.

Finally, what about the fundamental health of these public lands, which all Americans own and dearly want well-managed and productive? FJRA would allow projects on 1.9 million acres of “suitable” forest on the Beaverhead/Deerlodge. Trouble is, if FJRA isn’t sued to a halt (a huge if), we’ll still be stuck with 1.83 million acres of red and mostly-dead on the B/D 15 years from now — over 96 percent, still a disaster.

In the Swan, the bill creates 88,000 acres of new wilderness in trade for roughly two sections worth of “recreation” area – none of which has been funded or mapped, much less built. This is compromise?

With no guarantees for anyone else, FJRA guarantees a million acres of up-front wilderness. The only guaranteed “winners” are Greens. Given past behavior, Greens will almost certainly abandon their timber “partners” to legalistic oblivion as they move on to their next closed-doors “collaboration” — such as the Rocky Mountain Front.

After almost 50 years, honest Montanans deserve, and demand, legislation that will honestly and fairly settle the wilderness issue. How could the “logjam” be broken, honestly and fairly?

First, outstanding, legitimate wilderness, period: Study areas repeatedly found suitable by multiple agency reviews deserve designation, but the rest, found lacking time and again, should be permanently released back to multiple use.

Second, permanent protection of multiple-use equal to wilderness: Decades of obstructionist litigation (enabled by negligent law) have wrecked huge chunks of both our forests and our economy. Congress simply must end our courtroom torture. How? Loser-pays/bonding requirements; language establishing a process as “legally sufficient;” and language holding wilderness designation back for the duration of the “pilot program.”

Third, jobs and recreation first, then wilderness: To prevent any political and/or legalistic bad faith on the part of extremists AND calculating “mainstream” environmental groups, designation of wilderness should be conditional — on the creation of real jobs, real recreation, with real results benefiting both Montana’s landscape and economy over the long haul.

Until Sen. Tester (or anyone else) writes legislation with teeth, ensuring that the promised “jobs” and “recreation” are just as permanent as the wilderness — no thanks.

Fred Hodgeboom of Bigfork is a retired Forest Service forester and immediate past president of Montanans for Multiple Use. State Sens. Greg Hinkle of Thompson Falls and Verdell Jackson of Kalispell serve on the Montana Senate’s Natural Resources Committee. Daniel Zolnikov, a Billings outdoor enthusiast, is executive director of Families for Outdoor Recreation.