Tester mum, advocates hopeful on wilderness legislation

Wilderness advocates and key officials say Sen. Jon Tester's office has plans to bring Montana its first new wilderness designation since the 1980s. But Tester's office is keeping details quiet - just saying that anyone interested in how forests are managed should contact the senator. Plans for the designation of a new wilderness area draw on separate proposals that have been in the works for years, say advocates who hope legislation will fast-track hundreds of thousands of acres into wilderness status. Beaverhead County commissioners say they have been in earnest talks with Tester's office over designation of perhaps 500,000 acres of new wilderness in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Those commissioners say they have been pressing to make sure the Montana Wilderness Association and its allies do not hold sway over the final plan. Commissioner Mike McGinley said the first proposed wilderness map presented to him by Tester's office came straight from the MWA-backed Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. But he said Tester's folks switched the base map to a hybrid of a U.S. Forest Service plan, developed earlier this decade, for the area...Missoulian