Commission asks Sen. Daines to remove wilderness study designation from Ten Lakes
By JOHN BLODGETT
The Western News
The Lincoln County Commission has sent a letter to Sen. Steve Daines, stating its support for the senator’s proposed “Protect Public Use of Public Lands Act” and asking him to include in it a wilderness study area established in Lincoln County over 40 years ago.
Commissioners Jerry Bennett, Mike Cole and Mark Peck on Jan. 3 unanimously approved the letter that asks Daines to include the Ten Lakes Wilderness Study Area in S. 2206, the legislation he proposed Dec. 7, 2017.
Inclusion in the act would mean that, if the act is passed, the WSA designation would be lifted from the Ten Lakes area, potentially opening it up to recreational and other uses.
Daines’ proposed act is “to protect public access and use of Montana’s public lands by implementing the Forest Service’s recommendation to release 449,500 acres of Wilderness Study Areas in Montana,” according to a Dec. 7 news release from Daines’ office.
The proposed legislation refers to WSAs in a handful of Montana counties — including Beaverhead, Ravalli and Judith Basin — along with letters of support from the respective county commissions.
“Forty years of D.C. paralysis has frozen our access and use of public lands,” Daines was quoted as saying in the news release. “It’s time to keep public lands in public hands.”
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 Forest Service document that assessed the 34,200-acre area’s “wilderness characteristic.”
In their letter, the commissioners note the Ten Lakes WSA’s “significant social, economic and historic importance to the citizens of Lincoln County,” especially in light of “the devastation of the timber and mining industries” in the area.
They also refer to the “long, documented, controversial history … riddled with litigations and contentious attempts” to try to determine whether the area — in whole or in part — is worthy of wilderness designation.
“Congress’s failure to act for 40 years on a process they alone put into place has created an impossible management situation,” the letter states.
The commissioners requested that the entire area be added to Daines’ proposed legislation.