More wilderness?:
Author of Montana Wilderness Study Act ponders fate of locked-up lands
By ROD DANIEL Staff Reporter
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The sun lights up a forested ridge in a part of the 94,000-acre Sapphire Wilderness Study Area. Sapphire WSA was one of 10 areas to be designated for study as possible wilderness in 1977 when the Montana Wilderness Study Act was signed into law.
Photo by JEREMY LURGIO - Ravalli Republic |
Twenty-seven years after passage of the Montana Wilderness Study Act, a Hamilton conservationist who authored the congressional bill wants to see some action on deciding the fate of Montana's seven remaining Forest Service wilderness study areas. But after almost three decades of waiting, 84-year-old Clifton Merritt isn't holding his breath.
Merritt first conceived of protecting, for future wilderness consideration, 10 areas in Montana's national forests in the early 1970s when he was field director for The Wilderness Society. The Helena-area native spent much of his lifetime hiking, hunting and fishing in Montana's wild lands, so he was well-suited to select the areas based on their suitability for designation as wilderness.
He said he personally chose the 10 areas because of their pristine nature and premier wildlife habitat and hoped that eventually most of the areas might become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
"I selected the areas myself based on their world-class wildlife and cold, clear streams," he said, "and also because I had heard the Forest Service was planning to build roads in all but one of the 10 areas. I wrote the act myself and submitted it to Senator (Lee) Metcalf."
Metcalf successfully shepherded the bill through Congress, he said, and with minor modification it made it to President Carter's desk and was signed into law in 1977. One of Metcalf's changes to the bill's original wording - which at the time seemed innocuous to Merritt - has since proved to be a sticking point for managing the areas and is currently the subject of a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service by the Montana Wilderness Association, Friends of the Bitterroot and American Wildlands.
"We felt the study areas should be maintained in a wilderness condition, so in the bill I wrote that they should be managed in accordance with the Wilderness Act," Merritt said. "But Senator Metcalf, as a concession to the snowmobilers, wanted to change it to read that they should be administered 'so as to maintain their presently existing wilderness character.' I told him that was OK because we wanted to make sure the bill passed."
As Merritt intended, the Montana Wilderness Study Act succeeded in preventing roadbuilding in the designated areas, he said, but they later saw uses not allowed in designated wilderness - like off-road vehicle use and mechanical trail maintenance.
"The act stopped any regular construction of roads," he said, "but it didn't stop off-road vehicles from affecting the wilderness character of the land. We've seen instances where the Forest Service deliberately used machines to widen the trails, some up to 10 feet wide."
Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Dave Bull is charged with managing two of Montana's seven remaining wilderness study areas, Blue Joint WSA up the West Fork and Sapphire WSA east of Darby. Bull said the 1977 Act mandates the study areas be managed as wilderness but allows uses permitted on the land prior to its passage.
"We are instructed by Congress not to do anything to lessen their eligibility for wilderness designation," Bull said. "But uses that were existing at the time can continue, and in some cases that includes motorized use."
In the case of the Blue Joint WSA, he said, motorcycle use was present in the 1970s, so today only two wheelers are allowed in the area and they must stay on the trails. But the situation in the Sapphire WSA is a bit more complicated, he said.
"The use that was present in the Sapphire in 1977 included motorcycles, Jeeps and four-wheel-drive pick-ups," he said.
That's because suppressing the Sleeping Child forest fires of 1961 required a network of cat trails, he said, which subsequently turned into Jeep trails.
"In about 1994 we issued a decision closing the area to large four-wheel-drive vehicles, but opened it up to ATVs," Bull said. "That's been a bone of contention with wilderness advocates who feel that such an established use might keep it from becoming wilderness."
Larry Campbell, executive director of Friends of the Bitterroot, agreed that such use might indeed make it more difficult for the Sapphire WSA to become wilderness, but he believes of greater concern is the fact that off-road-vehicle use is clearly inconsistent with the guidelines provided by the Montana Wilderness Study Act.
"At issue is the preservation of wilderness character, which includes qualities such as silence, remoteness and solitude," Campbell said. "Our contention is these characters have been damaged by the exponential growth of motor-vehicle use."
Since his group joined the lawsuit filed in 1996 challenging the Forest Service's management of the WSAs, Campbell and others have made repeated trips into the areas to monitor and document what they believe are violations of the law. Many of their records, including photographs of eroded ATV trails, video tapes of off-trail motorized use and decibel readings measuring noise from motorized vehicles, have become part of the court record in the ongoing case.
After taking a circuitous trail through the federal court system all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case has been remanded back to federal district court, where it currently awaits a ruling by Judge Donald Malloy, Campbell said.
"In our view it's not even a close call," he said. "The wilderness character (of the study areas) has been degraded."
Bull disagrees and said if the areas were to be designated as wilderness, the Forest Service would simply close them to off-road-vehicle use and in a few years, "no one would know the difference."
"I absolutely believe that these areas remain suitable for wilderness designation," Bull said.
Montana Snowmobile Association vice-president and former Forest Service supervisor Terry Solberg agrees with Bull that the areas are still suitable as wilderness, but he questions whether any more wilderness is necessary in Ravalli County.
"I think we need to ask ourselves 'Do we need any more wilderness locally?'" Solberg said. "Do these areas offer anything new in the way of wilderness features? If not, we need to consider the fact that almost half of the Bitterroot National Forest is already wilderness."
Solberg said he personally would like to see the WSAs open to a variety of uses, so more people could enjoy them.
"I think we should keep our options open," he said. "The population of the valley is growing, and we have a finite land base. I'd hate to see the areas locked up forever."
Solberg concedes, however, that the Forest Service has its hands full in protecting the areas from over-use. He cautions Forest Service managers as well as the public to recognize the impacts of different types of use.
"We shouldn't lump everything into one category," he said. "Snowmobiles, ATVs and four-wheel drive vehicles have far different impacts as far as winter or summer use. We need to look at those differences."
Since snowmobiles usually travel several feet above the frozen terrain, he said, they have very little impact compared with, for example, all-terrain vehicles, which can cause erosion on steep trails.
Bull said one of the biggest challenges in managing the study areas is that they should be allowed the same level of use as in 1977.
"That's problematic," he said, "because all we have is anecdotal evidence. All we can do is make educated guesses of what use was going on based on resource impacts."
But Merritt said in 1977 there was hardly any off-road use in the forest, as compared with today when all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles are a popular way of accessing Forest Service land. To apply management rules in effect 27 years ago by allowing access by ATVs, he said, undermines the spirit of the wilderness study areas.
"There may have been an occasional Jeep or four-wheel drive truck in the forest," he said, "but there was no ATV use when these areas were designated for wilderness study. Gutting the trails and allowing ATVs to run through them is not protecting the wilderness character of the land."
Campbell concurred. "They didn't even make ATVs in 1977," he said, "and if you were to try taking a snowmobile made in 1977 in there, you wouldn't get very far."
Since passage of the Montana Wilderness Study Act, the future of three of the original 10 WSAs has been decided - part of the Taylor-Hilgard WSA became the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, the Mt. Henry WSA north of Libby was released for logging and the Elkhorn WSA near Helena became the Elkhorn National Wildlife Management Area - while the remaining seven await further congressional action.
Without full wilderness designation, the fate of each WSA remains a subject for debate between multiple-use advocates and conservationists.
Given that it will take an act of Congress for the areas to become wilderness, Solberg doesn't expect their status to change in the near future.
"In the last 25 years, there's been no action at the congressional level to create more wilderness," he said. "I doubt that that will change."
Merritt said he's disappointed the WSAs he helped create 27 years ago have not yet received wilderness designation, but he hopes to see their fate decided in his lifetime.
"I don't say they all need to become wilderness," he said. "But they need to be truly studied by the Forest Service and citizens, and they can decide how best they should be managed."
Reporter Rod Daniel can be reached at 363-3300 or rdaniel@ravallirepublic.com
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