LINCOLN COUNTY COALITION

TRADING WILDERNESS FOR JOBS AND RECREATION

Lincoln County Coalition

The Yaak Valley Forest Council has been working to bring new wilderness to the Yaak for at least three years. Congress has an unwritten policy that no wilderness bill will pass without approval of the congressional delegation from that area. When our congressmen stick their finger in the wind they feel the hot breath of out of work loggers and stranded snowmobilers. YVFC realized that the main stumbling block to new congressionally designated wilderness is the approval of local residents.

In due time, these environmentalists in the Yaak decided to find some desperate folks who might agree to trade wilderness for jobs and recreation. Presto! The Lincoln County Coalition (LCC) which has timber, recreation, business and local government represented in addition to YVFC. However, the nine people who comprise LCC are hardly representative of the citizens of Lincoln County. The local chapter of Montanans For Multiple Use has collected over 1200 signatures opposing any new wilderness and the signatures are still coming in. This is a huge number in a county of only 19,000 including children.

Save The West has obtained an early draft from LCC but most of their work seems to go on behind closed doors. They did not present the proposed legislation to the public before they sent to the Montana congressional delegation. Apparently LCC does not plan to allow Lincoln County citizens to view the proposal and express their opinion about it.

Here is what we know to this point.

The jobs and recreation people with LCC have agreed to congressional wilderness designation of approximately 30,000 acres of a Yaak roadless area called Roderick. The Yaak folks have agreed to allow snowmobiling in a small area called Northwest Peaks. Some of the area that the snowmobilers wanted has already been closed by another forest but there is still some good terrain left. YVFC has also agreed to some stewardship logging in the Wildland Urban Interface to reduce high fire fuels. This is not really a concession since everybody agrees that these fuels need to be cleaned out near residences. Congress has even passed legislation encouraging and funding these efforts. So far, the jobs and recreation people in the coalition haven't really got much for their support of wilderness.

The biggest sticking point of all is that while wilderness is guaranteed and permanent, the jobs and recreation parts of the package are not. And they won't be as long as the environmentalists think they can get their wilderness cheaply. If the proposed bill does not contain strong language that places the jobs and recreation parts of this bill on a superior or at least equal footing with the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws, the jobs and recreation folks will likely end up with nothing. In addition to protection from ESA, the legislation needs to include some way to insulate jobs and recreation from legal action by environmentalists.

At this point LCC has not reached agreement on guarantees for the non-wilderness part of this proposal. MFMU fears that out of desperation the jobs and recreation stakeholders in LCC will settle for less than they need and end up with little or nothing.

In fact they could end up with less than they have now. If LCC sends a message to congress that the folks in Montana support more wilderness, Congress may decide to pass NREPA instead of the LCC proposal and NREPA will cancel everything that the jobs and recreation folks are trying to accomplish in LCC.

Save The West has great empathy for the non-wilderness members of LCC. They and people like them are our kind of folks - real Montanans. We really hope they get what they need. But we don't believe that negotiating from a position of weakness will get us anything. Furthermore we don't support one small group compromising the future of others. We believe the adoption of this proposal and others like it will make it more likely for similar proposals to be forced on others who may not want them. Therefore, it is imperative that any concessions for wilderness be reciprocated with multiple use benefits of equal value and certainty.

Recently LCC has changed their name to Three Rivers Challenge. We suspect this change may be due to growing opposition to LCC.

This is a map of the Three Rivers District which LCC is focused on. Libby is at the lower right; the Roderick Roadless Area is in the middle. Northwest peaks which will allow some snowmobiling is in the upper left. The gray areas are private or state lands. Roadless areas are shown in brown and the rest of the national forest is white.

With the LCC plan most of the Roderick area would become wilderness. The rest of the lands marked in brown would remain roadless. With NREPA all of the brown would become wilderness.