The Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act is the best way forward

Emigrant Peak in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest (Photo by Jacob Frank | National Park Service | Flickr).

For more than 50 years, generations of passionate, persistent citizens worked hard to ensure the Gallatin and Madison Ranges continue providing vital wildlife habitat, clean water and wild places for people to find adventure and solace.

Today’s debate about the future of these mountains stands on this legacy, and for that we are deeply grateful. These mountains are among the wildest places left in the lower 48.

As veterans of earlier efforts to protect the Gallatin and Madison Ranges, we support the Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act proposed by the Gallatin Forest Partnership . This legislation – which will secure 250,000 acres of public land in these two mountain ranges for future generations – is a realistic and broadly supported proposal that represents the next (though certainly not the last) conservation step forward for these wild lands.

The act will designate the nearly 102,000-acre Gallatin Wilderness Area, extending from the base of Hyalite Peak south to the boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

Checkerboarded land, where timber companies owned every other square mile, once prevented the Gallatin Range from being considered for wilderness designation. More than 25 years ago, Montanans worked together to consolidate these private lands into public ownership. In that spirit of collaboration, today’s proposal builds on these earlier efforts, taking the next logical step to permanently protect the Gallatin Range for future generations.

The act will also add 22,000 acres to the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, including Cowboy Heaven – the missing link to finally connect the Spanish Peaks and Bear Trap Wildernesses. Past efforts to designate Cowboy Heaven failed. We now have a chance to finally protect this wildlife-rich area, creating a unique wilderness that goes from the tops of the Spanish Peaks to the Madison River.

In total, the Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act will protect nearly 124,000 acres of new Wilderness in the Madison and Gallatin ranges. Legislative efforts in the late 1980s and early 1990s would have only designated 63,000 acres of wilderness in the Gallatin Range.

Using a suite of additional designations, this act will protect another 125,000 acres of wild country from new development that threatens important habitats while maintaining existing recreation access for bikers and snowmobilers. West Pine in the northern Gallatin Range and Porcupine-Buffalo Horn, close to Big Sky, will remain as they are today.

This represents a major win from our perspective: For wildlife needing room to roam, people seeking to explore remote places on foot or horse, and bikers and snowmobilers accessing trails that have been open to them since before 1977, when Congress designated Wilderness Study Areas in both mountain ranges.

Growing recreation pressure and a lack of enforcement by the Forest Service allowed motorized recreation to expand throughout the Gallatin Range, in conflict with Congress’ direction to maintain the wild character that existed in 1977. After years of litigation, the Forest Service implemented the current travel management plan for the WSA, creating the system of recreational access we experience today.

This legislation will maintain this established access and prevent the recreation footprint from expanding, ensuring wildlife in need of wild places will continue to thrive.

Charting the path toward permanent protection for our wild backyard has been challenging and elusive. And passing wilderness legislation has always been about the art of the possible.

The Gallatin Forest Partnership crafted a realistic proposal to protect 250,000 acres of wild, undeveloped, unfragmented country. This laudable effort builds on past success and sets future conservation up well.

And, just in time, as Montana is rapidly growing and changing. We can’t wait another decade to secure permanent protection for this important corner of Greater Yellowstone.

We should act quickly to pass the Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act. Future generations will be as grateful as we are to those who led earlier efforts to protect our wild backyard.

Michael Scott and Tim Stevens are long time Montana conservation leaders, having worked with many area conservation organizations, as staff, board members, and volunteers.