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Montana Wilderness Association comments on Kootenai public participation process
John Gatchell, Conservation Director
The Kootenai “starting option” included 163,000 acres of recommended wilderness in three geographic regions. About half of these areas are recommended in the current forest plan (1987):
Cabinet Mountains
Scotchman Peaks (West Cabinets, partially in Idaho & recommended wilderness by Idaho Panhandle NF)
Series of additions to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness
Yaak River Watershed
NW Peaks
Roderick
Whitefish-Galton Range (bordering British Columbia & Flathead NF)
Ten Lakes Wilderness Study Area
Whitefish Divide (Winton Wedemeyer proposed wilderness)
The Kootenai NF has the largest road mileage (8,000 miles) and the
least wilderness (one 94,000-acre area) of any national forest in
Montana. The Kootenai also features some of Montana's lowest
elevations and highest precipitation. The biodiversity is unmatched
in Montana, combining lush red cedar & hemlock forest, impenetrable
avalanche chutes brimming with wildlife foods and habitat types
unrepresented in wilderness. Defacto wilderness and roadless islands
between the 8,000 miles of forest system roads serve as vital refugia
for grizzly recovery, native mountain goat ranges, moose, wolverine,
lynx and the occasional woodland caribou drifting south from Canada.
Comments on the forest plan from Montana Department of Fish Wildlife
and Parks urge the Kootenai to revise a much more conservation-oriented
forest plan, including site-specific support for each area recommended
in the starting option and far more comprehensive additions to the
exisiting Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.
In addition, the map of unimpaired (healthy) watersheds on the
Kootenai essentially matches the map of roadless lands.
Conservation-minded northwest Montana residents participated in every
public meeting on the forest plan. Some felt that meetings lacked
adequate facilitation allowing some participants (usually motorized-use
proponents) to dominate meetings while others struggled to be heard
(often conservation representatives and loggers).
Nonetheless the case for specific tracts of wilderness on the
heavily roaded Kootenai was made, not in isolation, but generally
as part of a landscape package—wilderness here, timber
there—a willingness to negotiate travel management
differences with the aim of a balanced landscape package that
achieved conservation goals and met the needs of the community.
Outside the public meetings there were many meetings and direct
talks aimed at working out site-specific agreements with
representatives for local snowmobile clubs. It was apparent that
agreements were entirely possible in the Yaak and Ten Lakes but that
the club leaders were being pressured not to complete any agreements.
Some began attacking the collaborative process itself
and the Forest Supervisor went to the last round of forest plan
meetings giving clear signals that major changes were in the works
regardless of whether they were achieved through collaboration.
This signal chilled and effectively ended hopeful collaboration
and was followed by Supervisor Castenada’s unilateral action. The key
feature of his action was to open a series of areas that had
been recommended wilderness to snowmobile traffic, expand
timber management and eliminate “recommended wilderness” and
replace it with a new category, “wild lands.”
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