Snowmobilers seek Trump’s help in gaining access to proposed Great Burn Wilderness

Thwarted in the courts, snowmobile groups from Montana and Idaho are asking the Trump administration to open proposed wilderness areas in western Montana and elsewhere to their mechanized sleds. The Missoula-based Backcountry Sled Patriots has drafted an executive order for President Donald Trump, requiring the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to prove snowmobile access would specifically harm a would-be wilderness area before denying mechanized access. With support from the Idaho State Snowmobile Association and two county commissions in western Montana, the Sled Patriots are honing in on the proposed Great Burn Wilderness, which straddles the Montana-Idaho border from Lolo Pass to Lookout Pass. “The only real change is that decisions would have to be (based on) a specific finding, rather than a subjective finding,” said Stan Spencer, Backcountry Sled Patriots president. “I’m a snowmobiler, so if there’s a specific finding that snowmobiles are impairing the wilderness character, I’m willing to listen,” he said. “But if it’s a subjective finding that it might be or could be affecting something down the road, that’s what bothers us to no end.” Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, no vehicles or mechanized equipment are allowed in congressionally designated wilderness areas, unless an exception is requested and granted – almost always related to an emergency. Spencer asserts that the Forest Service’s Region 1 – including Montana, North Dakota and parts of Idaho and South Dakota – differs from the rest of the agency by managing potential wilderness areas as if they were designated wilderness. He blames a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from 2011, which said the 1977 Montana Wilderness Study Act required the Forest Service to maintain the wilderness characteristics of study areas. The only allowable changes, the court rules, were those that might enhance an area’s wilderness characteristics, such as barring access to motorized equipment. Since 2011, the Backcountry Sled Patriots has joined two other lawsuits challenging Forest Service policy regarding motorized access, only to fail because of the 9th Circuit Court ruling. Those losses, Spencer said, leave snowmobilers with no choice but to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court – or seek the president’s help...MORE

Allowing a federal agency to designate an area for study and then manage it as if it were Wilderness, is basically taking a legislative function - the designation of Wilderness - and delegating that authority to bureaucrats in the field. That's why legislation has been introduced to undesignate some of the study areas. That means it takes an act of Congress to undo what career employees have done in the field. Instead of an agency recommending to Congress an area be designated as Wilderness and then Congress having the option to reject, adopt or amend the recommendation, the agency designates the Wilderness and then waits to see what Congress might do. For wilderness advocates, wilderness is created and if Congress doesn't take action one way or the other, their wilderness remains. Now, think if the process is reversed. What if field employees could undesignate a Wilderness, and then manage it as multiple use until Congress acted one way or the other? Seems preposterous, but is no different than what is being done now, except in reverse.