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UNCOMMON GROUND MIKE JOPEK DINOSAUR POLITICIANS
GUEST COLUMN STEVE DAINES
PROTECTING THE MONTANA WAY OF LIFE
THE BLOSSOMS ON OUR CHERRY, pear, plum and apple trees are amazingly bountiful. It looks like a bumper fruit crop this year, but who knows. The bees are sure active this springtime. Yet farming weather has been anything but predictable.
With a warmer winter and spring we’ve tended to plenty of farm chores earlier this season. Plenty of crops are already planted in the ground awaiting rain. My hands are cracked and dry ahead of most seasons.
Over the decades of growing food, we’ve transitioned to include more tech- nology like drip irrigation, planters paper and hoop houses. Protecting a small farm from chaotic weather is no easy task and the sheer amount of challenges are over- whelming at times.
Guarding tender crops like lettuce from damaging hail or blazing sunshine is nearly impossible without technology like shade cloth or row cover. Hopefully the next federal Farm Bill focuses as much on small farm technology needs as it does for big agribusiness.
Meanwhile, May hopefully brings fresh rainstorms with no hail. Last year the forests were so dry that some of the summer outdoor time was choked out by wild re smoke. Most everyone wants to avoid that blazing haze this summer.
Last season we lost hundreds of feet of crops like Napa cabbage to overbear- ing heat and drought, while kale aphids devoured plants like I’ve never seen prior. It was a challengingly heated season, one that many producers do not want to repeat.
Nationally the ve-year Olympic aver- age cost of federal crop insurance has increased dramatically for taxpayers. The cost to our government ballooned to $8.6 billion in 2014, up from $3.3 bil- lion the decade prior. Big weather events caused signi cant growth in commodity and livestock damage programs.
President Barack Obama’s 2017 bud- get proposal includes $18 billion worth of savings over the decade for safety net programs, but Congress has yet to act on whether insurance companies or farmers
should incur the brunt of these reforms. The Feds recently allocated $48 mil- lion to help relocate an entire commu- nity in Louisiana besieged by the e ects of climate change. The citizens on the Isle de Jean Charles will become our nations’
rst climate refugees.
The Department of Housing and
Urban Development granted $1 billion to 13 states coping with challenges to our weather. Aging levees, dams and drainage systems all need improvements to cope with a new magnitude of Mother Nature.
Predictions indicate that over the next several decades between 50 and 200 mil- lion people across the globe will be dis- placed from their homes as a changing climate threatens our freshwater sup- plies while oods, storms and drought grow signi cantly harsher.
Yet whether the news is from local farmers or people across the planet, hard- heads in Congress continue to deny that anything is occurring to our earth while 7 billion people burn fossil fuels.
Sadly for many people across the nation, the climate will have to get a lot worse before a Republican-controlled Congress does anything more than allo- cate billions of taxpayer dollars toward disaster recovery.
There are many solutions available to Congress, some within reach. But small local farmers like myself aren’t holding our breaths waiting for action.
Farmers, like the citizens resettling in Louisiana, are on the forefront of weather. On our farm we spend nearly every day outdoors on chores like work- ing row, harvesting bunches, or watering seedlings.
It’s convenient to sit in an air-condi- tioned o ce retorting that nothing is changing outdoors. Yet spend a grow- ing season in the blazing sun or drench- ing rain to quickly appreciate the shear power of our climate.
Dinosaur politicians who insist that nothing is happening should consider retirement. Their service has earned pen- sions and I speculate Louisiana has some decent deals on beachfront property.
In Montana, the land is our liveli- hood and provides us our unique way of life. As a fth-generation Montanan and avid sportsman, I know hunting, shing and access to public lands is an import- ant treasure for our families. As a kid I hunted in the Bridgers, backpacked in the Beartooths, and shed the streams of southwest Montana with my grand- father and my dad – and still do with my own family.
Recently, I pushed through a bipar- tisan energy bill that not only modern- izes our energy policies, but also, for the rst time, permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). It ensures that our children and grandchildren have the same access to our public lands that I did growing up in Montana.
In Montana and throughout the coun- try, LWCF plays a critical role in achiev- ing the goal of preserving and protecting Montanans’ opportunities to hunt, sh and enjoy outdoor recreation. As tour- ism is an important economic driver in our state, we must ensure that we have the ability to keep Montana’s businesses in business.
LWCF keeps lands, like family ranches, in the family and working. It keeps forests in productive use through the Forest Legacy Program – like in the Haskill Basin near White sh, where my good friend Chuck Roady of Stoltze Land and Lumber works.
Or Eric Grove of Great Divide Cyclery in Helena who has built his mountain bike business around the South Hills Trail System outside of Helena, which is facilitated by LWCF. There are many other small businesses like Eric’s in Montana that depend on our thriving outdoors economy, overall supporting 64,000 jobs and over $5 billion/year in consumer spending.
I also know that Montana sportsmen are frustrated with their current level of access to public lands. And they are frustrated with fringe groups who are obstructing worthwhile projects that are important to e ectively managing
our forests.
By increasing transparency we will
now know how taxpayer dollars are being spent to reward extreme envi- ronmentalists who repeatedly litigate against responsible, Montana-made for- est management projects. Through this legislation, I was able to secure import- ant reforms that promote and protect access to Montana’s public lands and increase recreational opportunities for hunters and anglers.
Montana’s best paying jobs rely on our wealth of natural resources. This bill makes it easier for us to expand export markets for natural gas, allowing more American energy to power the world, opening the door for American entre- preneurialism and innovation to lead the way.
Montana is the fth-largest pro- ducer of hydropower in the nation and we have 23 hydroelectric dams. This bill strengthens our nation’s hydro- power development by de ning hydro as a renewable fuel – this is great news for Montana and well overdue.
This bill also improves federal per- mitting of critical and strategic mineral production – which supports 22,000 good-paying Montana mining jobs and is essential to our national security and international competitiveness.
The absence of just one critical min- eral or metal could disrupt entire tech- nologies and entire industries, creating a ripple e ect throughout our entire economy. For example, the Stillwater Mining Company provides one of the only sources of palladium and platinum in the world.
We still have more work to do to ght back against Washington, D.C., anti-en- ergy regulations that will cripple Mon- tana’s economy. By working together, we can build upon Montana’s all-of-the- above energy portfolio to strike the right balance between developing our natural resources and protecting access to the public lands that Montanans so deeply treasure.
“DINOSAUR POLITICIANS WHO INSIST THAT NOTHING IS HAPPENING SHOULD CONSIDER RETIREMENT.”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
“WE STILL HAVE MORE WORK TO DO TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST WASHINGTON, D.C., ANTI-ENERGY REGULATIONS THAT WILL CRIPPLE MONTANA’S ECONOMY.”
Montana Republican U.S. Sen.r Steve Daines serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
MAY 11, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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