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Some of the details are finally coming out with the announcment today of Senator Tester's new bill titled "Forest Jobs and Stewardship Bill", and it isn't pretty at all for snowmobilers in western Montana.
Dave
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2009/07/17/top/49st_090717_tester.txt
Tester announces plans for wilderness, recreation, timber
By JENNIFER McKEE - IR State Bureau - 07/17/09
TOWNSEND n U.S. Sen. Jon Tester came to a small timber mill here this afternoon to announce plans to set aside 677,000 acres of Montana wilderness, designate a new national recreation area and create partnerships with timber companies to clean up thousands of overgrown acres.
Calling it his “forest jobs and stewardship bill,” Tester’s effort is the first to designate new wilderness areas in Montana in a generation. Critics say it was crafted “in secret,” although Tester’s office and others say the bill is the result of two years of Montanans’ input.
The Democratic senator’s bill deals with three western Montana forests: the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, the Kootenai and the Lolo national forests.
Federal law restricts activities in formal wilderness areas, which are to be managed in a wild state free from motorized recreation, logging, bicycles — even chainsaws to maintain trails.
Tester’s bill would create 677,000 acres of new wilderness, mostly on Forest Service lands. Most of the new wilderness would be in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
It would create a Big Hole National Recreation Area, which is not a wilderness area but a protected land for recreation in southwest Montana.
But it would also exempt certain roads from wilderness so they can retain their traditional use by mountain bikers and motorized four-wheelers.
It also releases about 76,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management lands currently treated like wilderness, while formally designating about 59,000 acres of BLM lands as wilderness.
Importantly, said Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, one of the groups involved in the bill, it creates a new kind of relationship between timber companies and the Forest Service.
The bill mandates that timber harvests will take place on at least 7,000 acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest every year for ten years. That, according to Tester’s office, gives certainty to area timber mills that logs will be available to them.
Farling said these timber contracts, however, won’t work like old ones. Instead of companies bidding for logs and cutting them down, Tester’s bill would create stewardship contracts with companies. Under these contracts, Farling said, a timber company would bid not just for logs, but also to conduct other kinds of necessary forest improvements, like fixing washed out culverts damaging trout streams. Such work would only happen on previously disturbed lands.
Ed Regan, resource manager for RY Timber, a company with mills in Townsend and Livingston, said the kinds of timber harvests the bill envisions are also not like traditional logging.
Because so much of Montana’s southwestern forests are in the epicenter of an historic pine bark beetle epidemic, a lot of what Regan envisions are thinning projects to both remove dead trees and give the surviving trees a chance to fend off the beetles on their own.
Regan said the harvests called for in Tester’s bill include thinning projects that remove smaller trees to be used in a bio-mass generator or rendered into pulp for cardboard boxes. He also said many beetle-killed trees will have to go and those trees have commercial value.
“Right now, about 90 percent of the logs we (process) are beetle kill,” Regan said.
Farling said Tester’s bill created a new kind of partnership between groups like his who want to preserve resources and companies like Regan’s who rely on harvesting resources to stay in business. It’s a marriage, Farling said, that people have been looking for for a long time.
“There is a yearning for this type of approach out there,” he said. “People are really tired of the shouting.”
Although it was years in the making, Tester’s Friday announcement is only a first step in the process of becoming law and Regan said he thought any new wilderness areas, along with the new stewardship contracts are still years away.
“I think, ultimately, this is going to succeed,” he said. “I’ll go a step further. I think this will become a model that will be used nationwide for breaking gridlock in forest planning around the country.”
The bill doesn’t please everyone.
Paul Richards, a Boulder man who ran against Tester in the 2006 Democratic primary, has said Tester crafted the bill in secret and that it violates a promise Tester made him in May of 2006 when Richards agreed to endorse Tester late in the primary.
“If you look at the secrecy going on concerning this process, it’s really shameful,” he said.
Richards said Tester promised to protect all remaining roadless lands in Montana, but the bill announced this afternoon fails to do that.
“The Tester Logging Bill is a well-orchestrated and well-funded assault upon Montana’s roadless public lands,” Richards wrote in an analysis of the bill prepared this week.
Farling disputed the allegation that the bill was written in secret by a small group of insiders. He said many groups worked on the bill for years; they met with county commissioners in public meetings and several groups posted their involvement in process on their Web sites.
“It’s been very, very transparent,” he said.
The groups involved in working out the deal include the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Wildlife Federation, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Wilderness Society, Troy Snowmobile Club, Pyramid Lumber in Seeley Lake, Roseburg Forest Products in Missoula, Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge and Kootenai Ridge Riders ATV Club.
Dave
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2009/07/17/top/49st_090717_tester.txt
Tester announces plans for wilderness, recreation, timber
By JENNIFER McKEE - IR State Bureau - 07/17/09
TOWNSEND n U.S. Sen. Jon Tester came to a small timber mill here this afternoon to announce plans to set aside 677,000 acres of Montana wilderness, designate a new national recreation area and create partnerships with timber companies to clean up thousands of overgrown acres.
Calling it his “forest jobs and stewardship bill,” Tester’s effort is the first to designate new wilderness areas in Montana in a generation. Critics say it was crafted “in secret,” although Tester’s office and others say the bill is the result of two years of Montanans’ input.
The Democratic senator’s bill deals with three western Montana forests: the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, the Kootenai and the Lolo national forests.
Federal law restricts activities in formal wilderness areas, which are to be managed in a wild state free from motorized recreation, logging, bicycles — even chainsaws to maintain trails.
Tester’s bill would create 677,000 acres of new wilderness, mostly on Forest Service lands. Most of the new wilderness would be in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
It would create a Big Hole National Recreation Area, which is not a wilderness area but a protected land for recreation in southwest Montana.
But it would also exempt certain roads from wilderness so they can retain their traditional use by mountain bikers and motorized four-wheelers.
It also releases about 76,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management lands currently treated like wilderness, while formally designating about 59,000 acres of BLM lands as wilderness.
Importantly, said Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, one of the groups involved in the bill, it creates a new kind of relationship between timber companies and the Forest Service.
The bill mandates that timber harvests will take place on at least 7,000 acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest every year for ten years. That, according to Tester’s office, gives certainty to area timber mills that logs will be available to them.
Farling said these timber contracts, however, won’t work like old ones. Instead of companies bidding for logs and cutting them down, Tester’s bill would create stewardship contracts with companies. Under these contracts, Farling said, a timber company would bid not just for logs, but also to conduct other kinds of necessary forest improvements, like fixing washed out culverts damaging trout streams. Such work would only happen on previously disturbed lands.
Ed Regan, resource manager for RY Timber, a company with mills in Townsend and Livingston, said the kinds of timber harvests the bill envisions are also not like traditional logging.
Because so much of Montana’s southwestern forests are in the epicenter of an historic pine bark beetle epidemic, a lot of what Regan envisions are thinning projects to both remove dead trees and give the surviving trees a chance to fend off the beetles on their own.
Regan said the harvests called for in Tester’s bill include thinning projects that remove smaller trees to be used in a bio-mass generator or rendered into pulp for cardboard boxes. He also said many beetle-killed trees will have to go and those trees have commercial value.
“Right now, about 90 percent of the logs we (process) are beetle kill,” Regan said.
Farling said Tester’s bill created a new kind of partnership between groups like his who want to preserve resources and companies like Regan’s who rely on harvesting resources to stay in business. It’s a marriage, Farling said, that people have been looking for for a long time.
“There is a yearning for this type of approach out there,” he said. “People are really tired of the shouting.”
Although it was years in the making, Tester’s Friday announcement is only a first step in the process of becoming law and Regan said he thought any new wilderness areas, along with the new stewardship contracts are still years away.
“I think, ultimately, this is going to succeed,” he said. “I’ll go a step further. I think this will become a model that will be used nationwide for breaking gridlock in forest planning around the country.”
The bill doesn’t please everyone.
Paul Richards, a Boulder man who ran against Tester in the 2006 Democratic primary, has said Tester crafted the bill in secret and that it violates a promise Tester made him in May of 2006 when Richards agreed to endorse Tester late in the primary.
“If you look at the secrecy going on concerning this process, it’s really shameful,” he said.
Richards said Tester promised to protect all remaining roadless lands in Montana, but the bill announced this afternoon fails to do that.
“The Tester Logging Bill is a well-orchestrated and well-funded assault upon Montana’s roadless public lands,” Richards wrote in an analysis of the bill prepared this week.
Farling disputed the allegation that the bill was written in secret by a small group of insiders. He said many groups worked on the bill for years; they met with county commissioners in public meetings and several groups posted their involvement in process on their Web sites.
“It’s been very, very transparent,” he said.
The groups involved in working out the deal include the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Wildlife Federation, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Wilderness Society, Troy Snowmobile Club, Pyramid Lumber in Seeley Lake, Roseburg Forest Products in Missoula, Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge and Kootenai Ridge Riders ATV Club.
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