Wilderness advocates sharply divided on 'consensus' proposals

...If Thomas’ “golden decade of conservation” relies on the success of consensus and collaboration, then there may be no better test of that theory than Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. FJRA is the first major piece of federal land management legislation in Montana to spring from the well of “collaboration,” and it is by far the most ambitious and controversial. Many wilderness advocates have fiercely opposed the measure since its introduction in 2009. Their primary criticism of the bill, though they have many, is that it mandates the Forest Service log tens of thousands of acres in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai national forests. Sen. Max Baucus followed Tester’s bill with a proposal of his own in 2011. The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act has many of the same detractors who say it designates a paltry amount of wilderness while locking-in grazing, logging and motorized recreation. However, with its lack of logging mandates and fewer carve outs for permanent motorized recreation, the opposition from the environmental community is less severe. Both bills rely on the idea of bringing the timber industry groups, conservationists and other stakeholders together to hammer out consensus proposals for public land management. That concept, particularly when it comes to Wilderness proposals, has fierce detractors in the environmental movement. Count 88-year-old Stewart “Brandy” Brandborg among them. Brandborg was director of Wilderness Society from 1964 to 1977. His grass-roots organizing and advocacy were pivotal in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Collaboration, as demonstrated by the process that created FJRA and the Heritage Act, is antithetical to the original concept of the 1964 Wilderness Act and threatens to undermine the bedrock administrative laws that demand public involvement and transparency in land management decisions, Brandborg said. “Good management of land prescribed by public land agencies, and good protective measures for water and our environment in general, are being subjected to a rash of proposals and policies that defy every rule and every restriction we’ve placed on resource management,” Brandborg says. “I take gross exception to the go-along policies of those state and local organizations who say we can embrace collaboration.” Four-and-a-half years since Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act was first introduced, the bill continues to languish in the Senate, and wilderness advocates remained locked in a bitter internecine battle that some say could undermine the entire future of wilderness in Montana...more