HELENA – U.S. Sen. Jon tester is continuing public meetings on his proposal to both add more wilderness and require more logging of federal land with a meeting in northwestern Montana.
Tester will be in Troy on Saturday morning for a meeting at the high school discussing his bill, dubbed the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.”
The measure adds more than 600,000 acres of wilderness by creating some new areas, mostly in southwestern Montana’s Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. It also adds to the existing Bob Marshall, Mission, Anaconda-Pintler and Lee Metcalf wilderness areas.
At the same time, the bill specifies large swaths of land as open for logging. The aim is to provide a steady source of timber to the state’s logging industry.
Some environmentalists complain it gives too much to logging and doesn’t add enough wilderness.