Letter: Wilderness Bill is bureaucratic nonsense

Dear Editor:

Well it happened … the Lincoln County commissioners rolling over and playing dead for the Yaak Forest Council or whatever they call themselves, and Sen. Jon Tester’s Wilderness Bill.

The 29,800 acres proposed for wilderness should have had a complete mineral survey to determine if commercial ore deposits could be present. The Cabinet Mountains were designated for wilderness in 1964 but a door was left open for mineral exploration for 20 years. And two world-class ore deposits were discovered as a result – the Montanore and Rock Creek. These ore bodies are more than 100 million tons each. Not one acre of wilderness will be disturbed by these mines; all excavation will be underground.

Anyhow, our county commissioners have been playing footsies with the Yaak Forest Council and allowing them to have their way. The people of Lincoln County in past elections have turned down wilderness by huge margins so I think we should remember them in the next elections.

The 30,000 acres proposed for fire treatment and maybe logging over a 10-year period is a joke of all jokes. If they do any of this when done, they will rip up all the roads old and new. So when the next fires of the future arrive, there will be no access to fight them. All of this is just another example of the bureaucratic idiots who manage the public lands of the country … not one iota of common sense in anything.

Harvey Frederickson

Libby