Collaboration key to Front plan

Congress created instant wilderness nationwide 45 years ago when it passed the Wilderness Act, but the recipe for conserving public land today is akin to slow cooking, with more ingredients needed to satisfy varying tastes. That's what advocates of a new conservation plan that would protect Montana's famed Rocky Mountain Front say. "The name of the game now is collaboration," said Bill Cunningham of Choteau, a Bob Marshall Wilderness Area outfitter who has been involved in wilderness debates for decades. Last week, the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front unveiled a conservation plan for 393,000 acres of public lands in the Lewis and Clark and Helena national forests. New wilderness is part of the new plan — but so is a brand new designation with less teeth than a wilderness designation, but more protection for undeveloped roadless lands. Additional funding to fight weeds, a tip of the hat to ranchers, also is part of the proposal. Former Congressman Pat Williams, who introduced 16 wilderness bills between 1982 and 1994, said he had hearings on those bills, but members of the delegation tended to write them. The process has changed, he said. "They wait for local folks to bring them a proposal that is mature, that has been collaborated with lots of meetings," he said...read more