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COVER
CONSERVATIONIST
TV and talk radio now for close to 30 years, altering the political stratosphere,” Sisson said. “Lately I see the worm turn- ing with respect to Republicans and con- servatives and their public positions on a variety of environmental protection measures.”
That’s not to say the paradigm shift has come easily, or that the North Fork bill transcended the trenches of partisan politics.
Earlier in the day, Daines and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, his Democratic counter- part and a frequent rival on a gamut of issues, stood side-by-side on the banks of the North Fork and addressed a coa- lition of unlikely bedfellows with mixed interests, the river serving as a com- mon unifier. Some of the stakeholders in attendance had worked on the North Fork measure for decades, reaching out from all corners of the enviro-political arena, and fighting tooth and nail to craft a bill that Montana’s full delegation could get behind.
Daines was an early champion of the North Fork Watershed Protection Act, announcing his support for it just months into his first term as Montana’s lone U.S. House representative, and sur- prising some political observers by intro- ducing his own version of the bill in the House while Tester and former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, the bill’s earliest architect, hammered away in the Senate.
It represented the first time in recent memory a public lands bill had garnered the support of Montana’s entire congres- sional delegation.
The bill finally emerged late last year as a rider to the National Defense Autho- rization Act, a piece of must-pass leg- islation that included a package of 70 national public land bills, the largest col- lection since the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.
In addition to the North Fork bill, the package included the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which adds 67,000 acres to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, designates 208,000 acres nearby as a conservation management area, and releases 14,000 acres of wilderness study areas for a new assessment of the potential for oil and gas extraction. It also allows the reassessment of 15,000 addi- tional acres of wilderness study areas for potential energy development, a big bone of contention in reaching the partisan compromise.
But the same folks who applauded Daines for his support on the North Fork bill are critical of his stances on other measures, including a forest reform bill they say would strip away bedrock envi- ronmental protections from the Endan- gered Species Act and the National Envi- ronmental Policy Act.
Over in the House, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a first-term Republican con- gressman from Whitefish – who nabbed Daines’ seat when the latter was elected to the U.S. Senate – and a self-described
“Teddy Roosevelt Republican,” is a co-sponsor of the Resilient Federal For- ests Act of 2015, which a coalition of Mon- tana sportsmen, timber leaders, outfit- ters, business owners, and conserva- tionists say is out of sync with the brand of collaboration-driven forest manage- ment solution that best suits Montana’s interests.
The bill, which Daines supports, puts timber harvests above all else, critics say, and opens the door for unsuitable forest management while limiting public involvement. It would also require those litigating forest projects or policy to post a bond and categorically exclude projects that have collaborative support with the goal of increasing the size of projects.
At the same time, Zinke recently cast a lone-wolf vote to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in the House Natural Resources Commit- tee, breaking from the pack as the only Republican to vote in favor of extending funding of the half-century old conserva- tion bill. Daines also supports LWCF, so much so that he recently rallied a group of Republican senators to testify on the Senate floor in favor of reauthorization.
Tester, meanwhile, has been an ardent supporter of not just reauthoriz- ing LWCF, but appropriating it in full, and all three members of the delegation decried the extreme partisan politics that ultimately forced its expiration at the end of last month, for the first time in the LWCF’s history.
For many Montanans, the mount- ing examples of a unified delegation are
recognize that the state’s streak of inde- pendence runs deep, and that issues align most voters more than party pol- itics, some observers say they should be bolder on conservation and environmen- tal protection measures in the Treasure State, especially on issues that are polit- ically risky.
As a political and ecological analog, University of Montana political science professor Rob Saldin points to Idaho’s slate of conservative lawmakers, includ- ing U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, who serve the most reli- ably Republican state in the country while managing to usher major wilder- ness bills through Congress. Not only have they thrown their support behind those measures, they’ve marched at the vanguard – like the Crapo-led effort to designate more than 500,000 acres of Idaho’s Owyhee Canyonlands as wil- derness, and Simpson’s Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, which created three new wilderness areas totaling more than 300,000 acres.
Compared to Daines and Zinke, Sal- din said the Idaho contingent sets the bar higher, using the model of collaboration to appeal to diverse interests, while also taking big political risks.
“It’s not clear to me that Zinke and Daines should be getting a lot of acco- lades for their work on the environ- ment,” Saldin said. “When you look at how the Republicans next door in Idaho have stuck their necks out to pass wilder- ness bills, which is the gold standard, the Montana Republicans’ support for the lowest of the low hanging fruit like the North Fork and LWCF is nowhere near as ambitious, countercultural and risky for a Republican as what the Idaho dele- gation has done.”
ABOVE U.S. Sens. Jon Tester, right, and Steve Daines speak about the North Fork Watershed Protection Act.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Others recognize that Daines and Zinke are still relatively new to their positions in Washington, D.C., where the political current is as tumultuous as ever, and that an unrivaled level of government dysfunction is eclipsing the interests of rural states like Montana. So, if through the lens of Washington politics it appears that Daines and Zinke are carefully selecting issues to champion and feel- ing others out, it’s probably because they are, and it’s not unique on the landscape of relative political newcomers.
“Montana is a little bit John Denver and a little bit Merle Haggard. As a politi- cian, you need to strike just the right mel- ody,” Daines said. “I think we’re uniquely poised, though, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, on the North Fork and elsewhere.”
Zinke’s critics include former support- ers, who say he was more moderate as a state lawmaker, and that the cutthroat nature of Washington politics has polit- icized his stances on a range of issues.
Sisson, of ConservAmerica, sees it dif- ferently, and said he’s encouraged by the arrival of lawmakers like Zinke in D.C., even if it takes them time to find an even flow that reaches their constituents back home.
“Electorally there are a lot of Repub- licans who run on certain platforms because that is how you win the primary and go on to the general election. They’re trying to thread the needle, and to win
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Incouraging.
N A PURPLE STATE LIKE MON- tana, however, it’s a fine line. And while both Republican lawmakers
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