Clark Fork Chronicle
December 07, 2006
By John Q Murray

Any Montana wilderness bill should be the product of a bottom-up, grassroots, collaborative effort, Rep. Denny Rehberg told the Chronicle Wednesday.

Previous attempts such as the 1988 Montana wilderness bill and the Lolo-Kootenai Accords failed because they were top-down efforts, he said.

Denny said he has previously discussed with Gordie Sanders at Pyramid Lumber Co. the possibility of a small pilot project—a wilderness bill dealing strictly with the Lolo National Forest. Gordie has also worked with the Blackfoot Challenge, a local collaborative group that includes Pyramid, conservation groups, and local, state, and federal government representatives, he pointed out.

The Chronicle contacted Rep. Rehberg Wednesday as part of a series on potential wilderness bills in the next session of Congress. Previous articles looked at two local areas that environmentalists favor as wilderness areas: the Great Burn and the Lolo Creek IRA.

Bills moving through the current Congress proposing wilderness areas in Nevada, Utah, and Idaho also include provisions for economic development and land transfers of federal lands.

If a grassroots Mineral County group recommended wilderness for the Great Burn area, purchase of Plum Creek lands for a community forest, and designated areas for OHV and snowmobile use, would Rep. Rehberg carry such a bill?

He declined to discuss a theoretical proposal but agreed this is the right time for the grassroots discussions to begin. He also emphasized that everyone has to be involved.

“It can’t be a Washington solution. It has to be a Montana solution. I’m not going to kid anyone, it’s going to be tough,” he said.

“How do you address hard release?” he asked, referring to language in some bills that states that if the land is not designated as wilderness, it is then released from consideration as wilderness and available for development.

“How do you deal with federal water rights versus maintaining water rights at the state and local level?" he asked. "It’s got to be done right. That’s why I tried to do a pilot project in the Seeley Ranger District. It’s going to take compromise on all sides to get something done.”

Denny said he has been working on collaborative efforts since he was appointed lieutenant governor under Stan Stephens. At about that time, Glenn Marx persuaded him to set up an office similar to other states—the office of Dispute Resolution.

“We never felt comfortable with the Office of Dispute Resolution—we wanted to head off disputes ahead of time. We came up with the Consensus Council, and hired Matt McKinney as our first director,” he said. When Marc Racicot and Denny were elected governor and lieutenant governor, they moved Matt to the governor’s office.

“The purpose was to bring a consensus process to natural resource controversies,” he explained. “Knowing that people always divided themselves into corners, we wanted to find areas of commonality or consensus, then deal with the extreme issues.”

Denny said he saw a role for the Consensus Council to be involved in a wilderness bill, but at that time, the office had more success working with water rights, such as on the Ruby River in southwest Montana. “It was a real struggle on the wilderness issue, just because it was more focused in D.C.,” he recalled.

Glenn Marx went on to run the Whitehall weekly newspaper and was recently named executive director of the Montana Association of Land Trusts. He would be a valuable resource to discuss collaborative efforts that involve industry, timber, mining, recreation, hunting, fishing, the environmental community, and protection of private property rights, Denny said.

Beyond hard release, other discussions in Congress regarding wilderness include 50-year or 100-year wilderness designations, with renewal after that time, he said.

As an example of how not to proceed, he pointed to the top-down approach that President Bush took on Social Security. “He should have instead done some consensus planning before saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’" he said.

“It’s wise for you to be asking these kinds of questions and answering some of these questions now, because we’ll start looking at them in January and February,” he said. “You need to start the discussions, start the research, and begin all the things that go into doing it right,” he said. “So again, I use something entirely different—the Social Security issue. Because it was so poorly presented, it never got an adequate or thorough discussion. The Pombo amendment added to the House budget reconciliation bill last month never had a chance because it was so poorly presented,” he said. That amendment would have lifted the Congressional moratorium on the sale of mining claims.

“It’s got to be grassroots, and it’s got to involve all sides. It can’t be something that is crammed down the throats of any interest group. There are so many entities involved,” he said. “I’m always ready, willing, and able to talk, but again, I strongly believe that the only way this is going to work is the consensus process starting from the local level."

Told that the Mineral County Challenge group was just getting underway, he said, “That’s interesting to know. That’s something I’d certainly look at. If they’re willing to come together—the county commissioners, Superior’s mayor, the economic development organization, the Chamber of Commerce, and then you also include hunting and fishing organizations—I’d certainly look at that.”

With the Iraq Study Group report released this week, the Chronicle also asked Rep. Rehberg for his reaction.

He said the members of Congress are insisting on a complete briefing. The leadership was briefed, but the study group should come back to talk with the entire Congress, he said. “We want to be actively involved, since we are the ones that created this study group,” he said. “Hopefully before the end of this week, all the members will have our own briefing telling us their thoughts on any proposal or plan that is going to help us resolve the issues in Iraq.”

Denny, who has been to Iraq several times, said he found that Iraqi political and military leaders wanted the U.S. there. “That ought to be enough to keep us there for a period of time until they don’t want us there anymore because they feel they can do it themselves,” he said.

If the Iraqi president feels they could take over in June, “I’m inclined to believe him,” he said. “At such time as they make the determination that they can do it for themselves, let’s let them do that, and that would be a good time for us to exit. Maybe they’re starting their own timeline,” he said.