Sen. Daines considering commissioners' request to add Ten Lakes WSA to bill

By BENJAMIN KIBBEY

The Western News

The Lincoln County Commission’s request to have the Ten Lakes Wilderness Study Area added to a bill that would remove the WSA designation is being considered by the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Steve Daines.

The addition of Ten Lakes to the bill has been delayed by concerns removing the WSA designation could lead to greater restrictions on how the land is used, Daines said.

In a letter dated Dec. 29, 2017 and approved Jan. 3, 2018, Commissioners Jerry Bennett, Mike Cole and Mark Peck all expressed support for Daines’ “Protect Public Use of Public Lands,” Senate Bill 2206. They also requested that Ten Lakes WSA be added to the bill.

The Ten Lakes Wilderness Study Area and others like it were established by the Montana Wilderness Study Act of 1977, which “required the study of certain lands to determine their suitability for designation as wilderness in accordance with the Wilderness Act of 1964,” according to a Jan. 2003 U.S. Forest Service document that assessed the 34,200-acre area’s “wilderness characteristic.”

Senate Bill 2206 would remove the WSA designation from 449,500 acres of federal land in Montana, according to a Dec. 7, 2017 press release from Daines’ office. The various sections of land across the state would continue to be managed by the federal agency responsible — whether the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

In the case of Ten Lakes, management would fall to the discretion of the Forest Service.

The input Daines has heard from the local community is that if anything they would like more access to the land, not less, he said.

State Rep. Mike Cuffe is a resident of the Eureka area and a supporter of Senate Bill 2206. He has been discussing the future of Ten Lakes with the Forest Service, he said.

From discussions with Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Chris Savage, Cuffe said that the different parties may have reached an understanding. As he understands it so far, the intention of the U.S. Forest Service would be to designate Ten Lakes as a Recommended Wilderness and maintain all the uses and restrictions currently in place.

The key difference is that discretion of how Ten Lakes is managed would be up to the Forest Service in the future, rather than Congress, Cuffe said.

Most of the support for removing Ten Lakes as a WSA has been related to maintaining the access to snowmobilers that predates the designation as a WSA, Daines said.

Any uses that were permitted in 1977 when Ten Lakes was designated as a WSA continue to be permitted, Cuffe said. Ever since the loss of mining and logging in the area, tourism generated by snowmobilers coming from Canada and the U.S. has been a major economic factor in the winter.

Cuffe said that he has encountered a lot of support from the local community around Eureka for removing the WSA designation. However, the support is primarily for maintaining recreational use as it is.

Any kind of large scale harvesting of natural resources, such as clear cutting timber, would be in conflict with what supporters of removing the WSA designation want for the area, Cuffe said.

“What we would like to see is some kind of protected area — whether it’s a scenic area, a recreation area,” he said.

Daines said that with all of the WSAs in Montana, he wants the concerns and desires of local communities closest to the areas to be heard.

“We need to continue to have thoughtful conversations getting local input from all the various stakeholders to come up with a solution that’s going to be right for northwest Montana,” he said.

Senate Bill 2206 had a hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining on Feb. 7, the day it was introduced to the Senate.

There is no date set for when the next action will take place on the bill, Daines said.