Montana Wilderness News: Letters to the Editor

It truly is an exciting time to be in Montana. With Sen. Tester’s recently introduced forest bill, Montanans can be excited about preserving our natural heritage, protecting our hunting and fishing traditions, and prolonging our backcountry experiences. It’s not every day that we Montanans get to decide the fate of the lands in our state; it’s not every day that people can come together and break the gridlock; it’s not every day that our elected officials capture the efforts of people on the ground and run with it.

Sen. Jon Tester's jobs and recreation bill protects and improves some of the best hunting and fishing habitat in America. That's why Billings-area hunters and anglers who hunt or fish the Lolo, Beaverhead Deerlodge or Kootenai forests should support it.

I want to commend Sen. Jon Tester for the introduction to the Senate of S 1470 "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009." As the bill itself says, this is "a bill to sustain the economic development and recreational use of National Forest System land and other public land in the state of Montana, to add certain land to the National Wilderness Preservation System, to release certain wilderness study areas, to designate new areas for recreation, and for other purposes ..."

As a sportsman who spends much of my free time hunting and fishing, Sen. John Tester's new forest bill was a very welcome announcement. Fishing and hunting are important Montana traditions that need to be passed onto the next generation, but we can't do this without a lot of big wild country that is full of elk and deer or clean watersheds that are full of trout.

If you want to read a beautiful piece of legislation, consider reading Senate Bill 1470, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act (tester.senate.gov/forest). In large type, it clearly addresses the issues before us with solutions that are home-grown. Thank you first to the men and women who through many meetings, over many years, came to see and respect each others’ interest. These association leaders represent the will of tens of thousands of Montanans. Thank you for showing up at the table. Sen. Tester, thank you for listening and acting. Rep. Rehberg and Sen.

Wilderness has been the flashpoint between environmentalists and the timber industry for 40 years. For most of those years, the timber industry wanted to run three shifts at the mill, the Forest Service wanted to meet unrealistic and destructive targets for board feet, and environmentalists wanted it all. What we got was gridlock, and winning was defined by preventing the other guys from getting what they wanted.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sen. Jon Tester for introducing his Forest Bill. This bill shows a willingness to work closely with traditionally opposing forest user groups and comes at a crucial time with current threats from beetle kill and the state of the economy. It also helps ensure Montana’s backcountry traditions and access to public land while also providing forest related jobs.

Nick Sovner
312 Blake St.

We Montanans don’t like it when someone from Washington tries to tell us how to do things in Montana, and rightly so. That’s why I was so pleased to see that Sen. Tester has taken three grassroots collaborations from around the state and brought them together in his recently introduced legislation. These three projects are all the result of years of Montanans openly working with other Montanans to build a robust economy and conserve our natural resources.

As one of the many thousands of Montanans who recreate on our public lands, I would like to thank Sen. Tester for his new bill. Tester’s bill focuses on creating jobs in the timber industry and forest restoration projects. The bill also includes several areas that are managed for specific uses.

Every now and then people are willing to sit across the table from one another and make compromises that benefit a wide variety of folks. Sen. Jon Tester did Montana a big favor on July 17 by drafting his “Forest Jobs and Recreations Act” that says he honors that kind of cooperation. The Forest Service plan that was the backbone of this legislation was the hard, thoughtful work of many people including hunters, anglers, motorized users, conservationists, loggers and mill and wood workers. It was this level of diversity that caught the attention of Sen. Tester.