Page 24 - Flathead Beacon // 7.16.14

24 | FEDERAL LAND JULY 16, 2014 | FLATHEADBEACON
The Face of Environmental Activism
After 30 years of challenging forest managers and users in the name of wild land and wildlife, Keith Hammer is one of the most familiar, and notorious, activists in Montana
“We’re given no choice unfortunate- ly,” he says. “We let them know we’re go- ing to enforce these standards and rules. The agency brings on the problem by try- ing to shirk their responsibility or lower the standards rather than just doing what they said they were going to do.”
As a young man, Hammer gained an intimate knowledge of the woods by be- ing around his dad, an outdoor enthusi- ast who fished and hunted.
“I was the youngest of four kids and we stuck with those hobbies and pur- suits. He instilled that in us kids,” he says.
Hammer also gained experience from cutting trail as a seasonal em- ployee with the Forest Service and then
spending eight years hauling a chainsaw as a full-time logger.
Fate intervened when his passion for the outdoors and varied hands-on expe- rience collided in the early 1980s. Ham- mer was back in the Swan Valley helping his brother build a home when he found neighbors were up in arms about a pro- posed timber sale in the nearby moun- tainside. The Forest Service was plan- ning a large harvest in Noisy Basin, an expansive acreage within the Flathead National Forest. The sale allowed the development of 30 miles of new logging road and a dozen 20-acre clear-cuts on the face of the Swan Range between Lake Blaine and Ferndale.
In the eyes of some residents, the
Ky DILLON TABISH of the Beacon
eith Hammer lives in the foot-
hills of the Jewel Basin, a tract of
alpine forest off the shoulder of Flathead Lake that’s set aside for back- packing, fishing and plant and wildlife viewing. His front yard and small home sit in relative solitude amid 5.5 acres of mostly wild land his father gave him and where he has lived since 1980. It’s the sylvan landscape where he grew up, af- ter his father moved the family of four kids from central New York to the Flat- head Valley in the early 1960s to accept a demotion working at the Creston Fish Hatchery just so they could be in Mon- tana.
From this setting, Hammer has dug his heels into the ground and become one of the most well known — and some would say notorious — environmental activists in the state. Thirty years ago he helped form the Swan View Coalition, which has evolved into an outdoors ad- vocate and lightning rod for land users and the timber industry. As president of the local group, he has frequently sued the U.S. Forest Service over land man- agement decisions and proposed proj- ects, all in the name of protecting public land and wildlife.
Supporters cheer Hammer’s ongoing efforts, but his critics decry his constant protest.
“It seems like every record of deci- sion that’s coming out is getting a law- suit filed on it for whatever reason,” Ju- lia Altemus, executive vice president of the Montana Wood Products Associa- tion, which promotes the state’s logging
industry, says of environmental groups like Hammer’s. “These groups are just cutting and pasting lawsuits.”
Hammer sees it differently and de- scribes himself as a watchdog playing an important role.
B
Keith Hammer, with the Swan View Coalition, is pictured at his home outside Bigfork. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
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