Tester's Wilderness Bill will not aid loggers

If there was ever a “pig in a poke” bill it is Jon Tester’s Wilderness Bill that has nothing to do with the expansion of logging in Montana.

This bill puts away a massive 640,000 acres of prime Montana land into wilderness designation.  In exchange, the bill specifies that 100,000 acres of land are ostensibly to be used for logging while the bill also specifies 368,000 acres of “recreation” and special management land. So far, so good.  But when you get into the bill, here is what you find.

Tester’s stance on logging is amply demonstrated by the law in this bill applying to all these recreation and special-management lands except the West Big Hole and I quote: “Timber harvesting shall not be permitted.” So on top of the 640,000 acres of Wilderness land taken away from logging, we have another 270,000 where logging is not permitted — 910,000 acres of land in total. Thank you, Jon Tester.

The next part of the bill designates 70,000 acres of land in Beaverhead and 30,000 acres of land in the Kootenai drainage as land available for “projects.”

In the Kootenai, the bill permits only 3,000 acres a year which is hardly enough to create good, long-lasting jobs. But at least you would think that these jobs would be logging jobs but you would be wrong.

This is Jon Tester at his insidious best. The bill requires that each project on these 100,000 acres, when finished, “shall achieve a road density of 1.5 linear miles per square mile.”  He then goes on to say that the projects must be in areas that have road densities greater than specified.  

Also note that Tester specifically put in this bill an exception to his required road-density limits, which allows for even lower road densities in “an area governed by an interagency grizzly bear conservation plan.”   My friends, this is a road- closure bill.

But Tester isn’t through yet – not by a long ways.  In a very sneaky fashion, he inserts into this bill that in regards to these projects “To the maximum extent practicable, the secretary shall enter into stewardship contracts. ...” Jon, what are stewardship contracts and why did you put them into this bill?

The purpose of stewardship is defined in the law as follow: “the intent of stewardship contracting is to accomplish resource management with a focus on restoration.” To understand where the word and definition of restoration came from read “Citizens Call for Ecological Forest Restoration” created by the most rabid of the eco-nut, far-left coalition and signed by 120 ecological groups. Their stated goal is zero commercial activity on Forest Service property. The stewardship contract has all the elements to make this a reality. I can guarantee that this is as anti-logging as you can get.

So, in this compromise, the far-left gets more than one million acres of prime Forest Service land which  will now forbid timber harvesting and mining and get restoration projects designed to close off more of our lands in the future. And what do the loggers get? They get the ability to cut diseased and insect- infected timber. But they can do that now. So, in effect, loggers get nothing.

What a compromise.

 Jon, let’s get a real compromise – 640,000 acres of wilderness in exchange for 640,000 acres of Forest Service land dedicated to sustained yield logging in  perpetuity.  Now that’s something we could all live with.

 The biggest losers in this process are the citizens of Montana who will continue to have to endure the clouds of smoke from our unmanaged forests poisoning our lungs with particulates nearly as dangerous as asbestos as well as minimal funding for our schools and city and county infrastructure, lack of jobs for our unemployed and children, and damaged forest lands and water sheds.

My fellow Montanans, here is what you need to do. First of all, it is imperative that you call your congressman and Jon Tester’s office and tell him to take this bill and shove it. Secondly, it is vital to get behind Steve Daines and get him elected to the Senate. And, most importantly, we must get behind the effort to end our years of being treated as a second-rate colony and take back our rights as a sovereign state with the right to control our own lands for the benefit of all Montana citizens.  

As for Mr. Tester, let him know it is time for him to move to California or New Jersey where he can live with the people that he represents.

 (Max Agather was born and raised in Libby, graduating in 1966 and part of the AA state championship basketball team. Max’s family has been involved in logging from its earliest days moving to Libby in the early 1930s with the J. Neils Lumber, Co. A resident of Kalispell, Max lives at Bull Lake in the summer. )