Galton project on Kootenai: Is it just another play for wilderness?

In January of 2008 the Kootenai National Forest announced that the Fortine Ranger District  was in the early stages of developing a project entitled Galton — named for a previously little known mountain range overlooking the Tobacco Valley. 

It did not take long for residents to recognize that the project area included their popular recreational area long known to them as the Ten Lakes. Most were unaware that a 2007 lawsuit settlement agreement with the Montana Wilderness Association had committed the Forest Service to develop summer and winter travel plans for the Ten Lakes Study Area.

A series of public meetings followed and much public testimony was submitted. That public testimony should be available on DVDs at the Murphy Lake District office. In 2009 a detailed resolution stating reasons for opposing the project passed the Montana Senate but fell victim to political games in the House. About that same time over 1,600 people signed petitions exhorting Montana’s congressional delegation to protect continued access to those public lands for multiple uses.

Perhaps the most convincing argument made in the 2009 resolution hinged on the fact that the Kootenai is a multiple-use forest under the Multiple-use Sustained Yield Act of 1960. Dependence on these multiple uses have become integral elements of the heritage, customs and culture of Northwest Montana citizens: logging, milling, Christmas tree harvesting, hiking, boating, snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, firewood collecting, berry picking, swimming, fishing, hunting and scenic access by roads, off-road vehicles, and horseback riding — all have enhanced the lifestyles of young and old alike.

The 6,541-acre Ten Lakes Scenic Area near the Canadian Boundary, established in 1964, miraculously grew to 34,000 acres, which later was included in the 81,000 acres to be studied for wilderness suitability under the Montana Wilderness Study Act of 1977. These studies have extended approximately 25 years past the deadline when conclusions were to have been reached from those studies. The wilderness study status has resulted in lack of management which has resulted in a de facto wilderness area without any such designation having been made.

Fast forward to 2013.

On Jan. 3, District Ranger Betty Holder e-mailed a solicitation to 22 individuals stating her intent to hold a meeting with “interested stakeholders”  regarding the Galton Planning Area. It should be noted that “stakeholder” has taken on a much broader connotation according to Paul Bradford, supervisor of the Kootenai. He says, “We have a wide range of individuals and groups from many different locations who have expressed interest in the Forest, and, in our view, are Forest stakeholders.” That explains the fact that interests reflected in the mailing range from a logging association to wilderness advocacy groups — although Holder has emphatically stated that the study is not about wilderness.  Holder’s stated intent was to “see if “stakeholders” desired to work together to create an alternative that all could live with.”

Interestingly enough, those invited initially were elected officials, agency personnel and special interests — no property owners per se, although 42,920 acres of the study area is in private ownership. Yet the directive going out on Jan. 4 from the facilitator contracted by the Forest Service stated that: “this process provides individual stakeholders an opportunity to take an ownership role which avoids litigation and court mandates.” 

Suffice it to say that the Forest Service has developed a way to circumvent the public hearing requirements of the Endangered Species Act and other federal statutes by providing collaborative workshops which can operate beneath the radar of public notice and, as Ranger Holder states, “do not have to conform to Montana’s open meeting laws.”

With the aid of facilitators, this collaborative  group expects to compile a list of management recommendations to submit to Congress which will have been agreed upon by a “consensus” reached by those participating in the process.  Along with a projected consensus comes information from the Kootenai Supervisor’s Office which states that a Draft Environmental Impact Statement will be released to the public for comment quite soon, and a Final Environmental Impact Statement  and a Record of Decision will be released this fall. The Record of Decision will be subject to objections by the public.

But after seven meetings, some are calling it quits!

Collaborative agreements have been used successfully elsewhere in Montana to convince former congressional delegations that their work product represents an overwhelming majority of public opinion. A major goal of the Montana Wilderness Association has long been to designate 171,000 acres of the Galton Study Area as permanent wilderness — regardless of the fact that most of it does not meet wilderness criteria.

Wilderness advocates are well represented within the Galton Collaborative Group and that is why the withdrawal of Headwaters Montana from the Galton Stakeholders’ Collaborative comes as a shock to some observers.

From the withdrawal statement signed by President Edwin Fields and Director Dave Hadden, interested parties will be watching to see how the “more wilderness” game plan is modified to place additional pressure upon the Forest Service to advance their primary goal in Northwest Montana.

Curtiss is a former longtime Republican legislator from Fortine.