BUTTE – U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, holding a series of meetings on U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s plan to expand wilderness and increase logging in Montana, said Wednesday he is not yet for or against it, but he agrees that something must be done.
Rehberg, during an interview before a town hall meeting in Butte, said it would be premature for him to establish his stance on the legislation or its goals before he finishes taking public comment. Many in the crowd asked him to oppose it, while others asked for him to support it.
“All I ask is that people let me finish my 21 public hearings,” Rehberg said.
Rehberg said he is hearing a lot of good ideas — such as one that would only designate new wilderness if more timber is actually logged. He said a lot of people feel they were left out of the process that led to Tester’s legislation, and he thinks more helpful ideas are out there.
“I see passion and emotion,” Rehberg said. “I don’t see anger and vitriol. People are actually being reasonable.”
Tester, a Democrat, is pitching the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act as a consensus-driven balance between preserving the environment and creating new jobs with a steady source of timber. Supporters of the measure say the bill strikes a delicate balance between the timber industry and environmentalists — one that can easily be upset with too much tinkering.
Tester’s bill would create more than 600,000 acres of wilderness, mostly in southwestern Montana’s Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, and open 70,000 acres in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge to logging over the next decade.
The aim is to provide a steady source of timber for the state’s ailing logging industry following a string of recent mill closures. It also sets aside 330,000 acres go to establish new recreation, protective or special management areas. For the most part, they simply protect current motorized use or other recreation.
Opposition has come from both ends of the spectrum. Some environmentalists want more wilderness and no logging mandate — while others want logging and motorized access with no wilderness designations.
In Butte, most people that spoke up were against Tester’s plan.
Snowmobilers said the new designation carves up prized riding areas, and others complained there is already too much wilderness. The Montana Mining Association said the wilderness locks up areas that could be explored, but also causes problems because wilderness comes with buffer areas and air quality standards that make getting nearby permits very difficult.
Mining industry representatives lamented that their old allies in the timber industry carved a special deal with environmentalists. People from the timber industry said at the meeting that the deal was needed to break decades of gridlock in forest management.
“If we went and negotiated a wilderness bill and didn’t include the logging industry, and threw them under the bus, how would they feel?” said Tad Dale, who works at Montana Resources. “This is what happened to the mining industry here.”
Rehberg said he disagrees with an Obama administration assessment that the logging mandate is too large, and he has heard from area forest experts who think the forest could support more logging. But his assessment on the bill will have to wait.
“This is not the end. This is the beginning,” Rehberg told the crowd. “Doing nothing is not the answer.”