Daily Montanan
Monday, September 23, 2024 4:15 am
COMMENTARY
First things first: Designate all Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Study area as wilderness
The source of the controversy is the Gallatin Conservation and Recreation Act being promoted by three big money groups: The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and the Montana Wilderness Association (now doing business as Wild Montana). Ironically, they use the name, but they’ve changed their game, and under their proposal these lands would be chopped up and opened for motorized, mechanical, and industrial “wreckcreation” and even more logging by the rapacious timber industry.
They claim that commercial logging will be prohibited in much of the area, but they neglect to tell the public that their loophole is big enough to drive a logging truck through and allows the Forest Service to bulldoze logging roads if the Forest Service claims it has to log for “forest health.” The dirty little secret is that now almost every Forest Service logging proposal is for “forest health” or as retired Forest Service Gardiner District Ranger Hank Rate called it: “No tree left behind.”
The proposal is facing significant opposition not only from long-time wilderness advocates but the former Superintendent of Yellowstone Park and a number of former staffers and board members of the groups. Since the proposal has no sponsor and has not been introduced in Congress, “act” is perhaps the most pertinent word in the title since they act like they’re protecting wilderness, but are actually throwing wilderness quality lands open to degradation from any number of uses and abuses.
The simplest, most sensible, and least controversial way forward is to first designate the existing Wilderness Study Areas as full-on Wilderness since, by law, they’re already being managed as wilderness. If they really want to protect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they would likewise support wilderness designation for all the remaining roadless lands as does the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531, which is a bill before Congress. NREPA has 12 sponsors in the Senate and protects the vital biological corridors connecting the ecosystems in this region and ensures the continued existence of threatened animals such as wolverines, lynx and grizzly bears for future generations.
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