Montana Senator Jon Tester taking with Seeley Lake Elementary (SLE) junior high students at his press conference announcing the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act Feb. 22 at the Rich Ranch. SLE teacher Duane Schlabach said he brought his students to the event to see how the process of introducing legislation at the federal level works. "We are looking at both the components and the process," said Schlabach. "The students are already very familiar with how the process of making a law in the state works so all I'm doing is bringing in a different level of government. They don't often get to see the federal level face-to-face and what it looks like here."
Owner of the Rich Ranch Jack Rich visits with Senator Tester and gives him a copy of the book written by father C.B. Rich "Life, Times & Poetry of C.B. Rich."
Many locals who have worked on the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project and been a part of the process came out to the Rich Ranch to hear the new proposed legislation sponsored by Montana Senator Jon Tester.
SEELEY LAKE - U.S. Senator Jon Tester announced the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) at the Rich Ranch Feb. 22. While collaborators and supporters gathered to voice their support, not everyone believes the legislation goes far enough to protect motorized recreation opportunities.
The BCSA designates more than 79,000 acres of additional wilderness to the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Mission Mountains Wildernesses and establishes the 3,835-acre Spread Mountain Recreation Area and the 2,031-acre Otatsy Recreation Management Area. The recreation areas open up 2,200 acres of land to snowmobiling and protects access to 3,800 acres for mountain biking.
The BCSA is the result of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project (BCSP), a decade of collaboration between the timber industry, sportsmen and women, ranchers and business owners who wanted to find solutions to Montana's land management challenges.
"This Blackfoot Clearwater Valley surrounding us has become a global role model of how successful collaboration works," said Rich's Montana Guest Ranch Owner Jack Rich.
This legislation will create jobs, strengthen the local economy and preserve our outdoor way of life for future generations," said Tester.
In 2009, Tester introduced the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act that, among other things, allowed for timber harvest, forest restoration work, watershed protections, wilderness and recreation designations in the Upper Blackfoot-Clearwater valley.
Since that time, Tester helped secure $19 million in federal funding to implement much of the restoration work, creating and sustaining more than 100 jobs, spurring a $33 million investment into the local economy. However, the recreation and wilderness aspects of the legislation never came to fruition.
At the request of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project and with the support of the local timber industry, Tester is moving forward with legislation to implement the remaining recreation and wilderness designations.
Conservationists, outfitters, hunters, anglers, mountain bikers, ranchers and local business owners praised the BCSA.
"Whether you raise cows or cut trees or snowmobile or bike or all the reasons that we live in this great place it is about neighboring up," said Rolling Stone ranch owner Jim Stone. "It's about respect. It's about the passion."
"Pyramid Mountain Lumber has been a citizen of the upper Blackfoot since the 1940's," said Chief Operating Officer of Pyramid Mountain Lumber Loren Rose. "While collaboration was in the dictionary back then, it was not in our vernacular, yet it is what all of us in the upper Blackfoot have always done. Everyone who collaborates does so with the expectations that they will get something out of the arrangement, something they might not otherwise get like logs on trucks. Senator Tester has put forth the legislation to affirm all those discussions of collaboration."
"Wilderness is extremely important to the communities that surround it, for the jobs and businesses it creates and it's really great for the economy," said Connie Long, owner of Bob Marshall Outfitters. "I have a real privilege of taking folks from all around the world into this place we call the wilderness."
Long called the wilderness "a rejuvenating place" and a "spa for the mind." She is excited to see the proposed wilderness boundary moved down to where she feels it naturally begins.
Lee Boman, President of the Montana Wilderness Association and Seeley Lake resident, spoke to the tourism potential that the BCSA offers.
"Twelve million visitors came to Montana last year. They didn't come to see our Walmarts! They came to see our prairies, our mountains, our streams and our lakes. Our twelve million guests came to Montana to experience the magic of Montana, and the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project helps ensure the magic of Montana will remain strong forever," said Boman.
Boman said the BCSP championed the sustainable timber industry and helped add $33 million to the local economy through noxious weed treatments, stream restoration and maintenance of multiple use trails.
"The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project will produce immediate benefits, but will become more valuable as decades pass," said Boman. "It is a visionary step that helps ensure that those yet unborn will enjoy healthy forest, recreation and wildlife."
"[In addition to natural resources] Access and multiple use are important too. The Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project represents that balance," said Missoula County Commissioner Jean Curtiss. "This legislation is key to fulfilling the goals of this project, that's a made in Montana project, achieving that balanced approach. I think it can be a model across the country."
While visitors were welcomed with a map of the proposed lands propped on a snowmobile and those in attendance held signs reading "Snowmobilers Support BCSP," not all motorized users support the legislation.
"It doesn't go far enough," said Curtis Friede, owner of Kurt's Polaris and collaborator who initially helped draft the language of the legislation but no longer supports it.
In Section 203 Trail-Based Recreation it states: "If a local collaborative group submits to the Secretary [of Agriculture], by not later than five years after the date of enactment of this Act, a collaboratively developed proposal to improve motorized and non-motorized recreational trail opportunities within the [Seeley Lake Ranger] District, the Secretary [of Agriculture] shall analyze the proposal in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and...may provide for the construction of any of the routes included in the proposal."
Friede feels that even though Congress will suggest to the US Forest Service that they need to look at putting in a trails system, special interest groups could easily tie it up in court eliminating the possibility for creating motorized trails.
While the Seeley Lake Driftriders Snowmobile Club was represented on the steering committee and is listed as a supporter on the BCSP website (www.blackfootclearwater.org), Friede said that the club has never taken a vote to support or oppose the legislation. He does not feel that individual members of the club should speak for the club without an official vote.
"All it does is guarantee they get wilderness. It doesn't guarantee trails," said Friede. "We will get the US Forest Service to look at trails which doesn't go far enough."
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