Clark Fork Chronicle
December 21, 2006
By John Q. Murray

Wilderness bills have changed since the Democrats last gained control of the U.S. Congress two decades ago. Where once statewide bills were all about locking up lands, there are now local, bipartisan bills that also include economic benefits for the local rural communities.

“What we’re looking for,” said Gordy Sanders of Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, “is the same level of certainty that the proponents of wilderness are looking for.”

Just as wilderness proponents seek the certainty of Congressional protection, local community members are looking for guaranteed access to the timber supply, through such tools as 10-year stewardship contracts.

Gordy confirmed what Rep. Denny Rehberg told the Chronicle earlier this month—that community members in the Seeley Ranger District have been quietly laying the groundwork for a community-wide discussion of a wilderness bill involving the upper Blackfoot.

The overall package would also include restoration, as well as a long-term guaranteed source of timber for the local mill.

“A number of conservation community folks have been involved in the discussion,” he said. ‘We’ve spent a couple of years visiting about how to make things work.”

The discussions started during the forest plan revisions, he said. “It’s one thing to have a plan, but a plan has no value if it doesn’t translate into doing the right things on the ground for the right reasons,” he explained.

“That really is the incentive for all parties interested,” he said. “There’s a lot of fear about bad things that are going to happen out there on the landscape, and the tendency is, nothing happens.”

With no action, the resulting gridlock in the public agencies is not responsive to the public and not good for the forest, fisheries, or the wildlife, he said. “I think everybody that is in the mainstream recognizes that we have the same interests and we want to work together to see the right things done on the ground,” he said.

In the Seeley Ranger District, the discussion focused on what could be done to provide a wide range of benefits for a variety of different interests—including family-owned sawmills like Pyramid, which create economic benefits for rural communities.

“We’re trying to craft new ways of thinking that allow for good work to get done on the ground,” he said. “Some of this restoration work is expensive work. The dollars have to come from somewhere and it is not all going to be available through Congress. That’s just not going to happen,” Gordy said. But you can generate value through stewardship contracts, he said.

There is also an opportunity to roll in matching dollars through private foundations that have an interest in restoration, he said.

The Forest Service has the authority to produce 10-year stewardship contracts. Before last Friday, the only such long-term stewardship contract was on the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest.

Last week the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, headquartered in Missoula, announced that it was signing a 10-year stewardship contract with the Forest Service to improve wildlife habitat on 85,000 acres of Forest Service Land bordering the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management Area near Ovando. Another stewardship contract affects 174,000 acres of BLM land in Wyoming.

Gordy said the local effort to craft a long-term stewardship project in the Blackfoot is still in the early, formative phases. But the successes of the Elk Foundation and the local Blackfoot Challenge group create a “huge opportunity for incorporating landscape-level treatments that are tied to stewardship and restoration efforts,” he said.

With matching grant dollars from organizations and opportunities for service work, there’s great opportunity to do good things. “We’re going to pursue this and see if we can craft something that is successful,” he said.

The goal is to create a model that can be replicated elsewhere that implements forest plans and causes the right things to be done on the ground for the right reasons.

Working at a landscape scale is new and requires that a lot of folks change their mindset to think in those terms, he said.

He advocated a planning model that starts immediately, with a single project of a manageable size.

Rather than analyzing the entire area, which would take years and do nothing on the ground, the group hopes to start with one specific area, launching a project, and while that project is underway, starting analysis on the next piece. Each subsequent decision must take into account all of the previous actions on the ground.

“You could have a number of different contracts and ways of analyzing utilizing the NEPA to come up with decisions and add to a contract. We’ve been involved in doing all kinds of things we never thought we would under stewardship contracts,” Gordy said.

An important piece of any such contract is the monitoring component, he said. A group of professionals and experts follow the project to ensure it is accomplishing what it set out to accomplish, and work together to resolve issues and problems. That provides transparency to the public, he said.

Gordy and the conservation members plan a series of public meetings this winter, he said.

“There will be those that philosophically don’t believe we need any wilderness, period, and those that want everything to be wilderness. That won’t go away, but I think we’re really talking about crafting a ‘Made in Montana’ solution,” he said.

“Strong local public support is absolutely necessary for things to go forward.”
Collaborative efforts take time, but a lot of folks in the Blackfoot already have been working together and building trust. “We know we can work together—it’s just a matter of coming up with solutions that make good sense out on the ground,” he said. “The focus has really shifted to what happens on the ground, not in some hypothetical arena or in an office or a conference room. It’s all about on-the-ground,” he said.

Once the legislation is before Congress, other issues will surely come up. But as long as Montana’s congressional delegation sticks together, “I fully expect we can be successful here,” Gordy said.