Emigrant Peak Trail in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest (Photo by Jacob W. Frank of the National Park Service).
Lately, recreation interests are pushing for legislation to divide up the wilderness-quality roadless lands in the Custer Gallatin National Forest among themselves. Wildlife have no voice in their calculations. When the idea of “collaboration” was formed in 2012, representatives of three local non-profits said “we’re not going to lose this one” by watering down land protections so much that no user group could object. Not the logging industry, not the recreation industry, not even politicians who might favor the transfer of public lands to private ownership. Everyone would get a piece of the pie. Private pilots from Florida weighed in with how they could set up private hovercraft flights into pristine meadows that had always been intended as Wilderness.
The Forest Service welcomed and funded the “multiple use” proposal, and said they would favor it in their Forest Plan Revision of 2020. They did, ignoring local independent wildlife biologists who said wildlife would have nowhere else to go when displaced by recreationists. (See report by F. Lance Craighead in 2015: “Wilderness, Wildlife and Ecological Values of the Hyalite-Porcupine Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area.”)
Climate change is pressuring the amazing wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to adapt to disappearing food sources and diminished water. The focus by the Gallatin Forest Partnership on human desires for play space in the backcountry should be downright embarrassing to anyone who claims to appreciate wilderness for its own sake. Only 2.7% of the roadless lands in the lower 48 are Wilderness, and visionary Montana leaders of past decades recognized the Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area as the most obvious and perfect example to set aside.
The facts: the Custer Gallatin National Forest lost a lawsuit over the 2006 Travel Plan. Existing motorized and mechanized uses were recognized as illegal. The 1977 law creating the HPBH WSA said that those 155,000 acres be managed to “maintain their presently existing wilderness character and potential for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.” But instead of shutting down those illegal uses, the Supervisor said she used agency “discretion” to change around the motorized use and to increase mountain biking. Mountain bikes weren’t a thing in 1977. The Big Sky Recreational National Scenic Trail for snowmobiles had been designated by a single official in 1994.
True advocates for wildlife and wilderness mapped 230,000 acres in the Gallatin Forest alone as eligible for protection as “wilderness,” and the Forest Service accepted that plan as “Alternative D” in forest plan revision. Sadly, the moneyed interests had more sway, as they calculated from the start in 2012.
But it is not too late. To preserve the ecological integrity of the Northern Rockies ecosystem, The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) , S. 1531, designates as wilderness more than 6 million acres of wilderness in Montana, 9 million acres of wilderness in Idaho, 5 million acres of wilderness in Wyoming, 750,000 acres in eastern Oregon, and 500,000 acres in eastern Washington – all on federal public land. In addition, NREPA will protect more than 3 million wilderness acres in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/ 118th-congress/senate-bill/ 1531/text
At a minimum, The Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area of 155,000 acres must not be reduced. Generations of Montana leaders and the public approved proposed Wilderness for the WSA decades ago, and to ignore that support dishonors our democratic traditions.
Nancy Ostlie is a board member of Gallatin Wildlife Association and is former leader of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Bozeman Broadband.
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