Page 5 - Flathead Beacon // 12.17.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
NEWS
Senate Approves Montana Lands Package
DECEMBER 17, 2014 | 5 W•O•R•D•S
of the Week
AN INDEX OF RECENT NEWSMAKERS
TORTURE
A Senate report was released last week, detailing the CIA’s brutal interrogation tactics that turned secret prisons into chambers of suffering and did nothing to make America safer after the 9/11 attacks. The report included a story fabricated by one ter- rorist who claimed to be try- ing to recruit black Muslims in Montana.
WILDERNESS
The U.S. Senate approved
a sprawling lands bill that includes the North Fork Wa- tershed Protection Act and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, adding new wilderness to Montana for the first time in 31 years.
PROTESTS
Crowds continue to gather and protest the lack of in- dictments in several recent police shootings involving unarmed black men. Tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington D.C. over the weekend to march in support of “Justice for All.”
MAILBOXES
Some Flathead County residents have complained that their mailboxes are being damaged by county snow plows, but the county says residents are responsible for any damage due to the county’s right of way.
Congress attaches a host of land management bills to annual Defense Authorization Act
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Beacon
The U.S. Senate on Dec. 12 approved a sprawling lands bill that includes the North Fork Watershed Protection Act and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, sending to President Barack Obama’s desk a suite of measures that adds new wilder- ness to Montana for the first time in 31 years.
The Montana bills are part of a broad collection of national bills and land pro- posals attached to the annual National Defense Authorization Act. The 89-11 vote came in at 3 p.m. with Montana’s Demo- cratic Sens. Jon Tester and John Walsh both voting in favor.
The National Defense Authorization Act allows $585 billion in discretionary spending and $63.7 billion in overseas contingency operations. Obama was ex- pected to sign the bill into law in the com- ing days.
This time, it also includes a package of 70 national public land management bills, the largest collection since the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. To- gether, they create about 250,000 acres of new wilderness designation and protec- tion of other lands from energy develop- ment in Montana.
Most Montana conservation groups hailed passage of the land management measures as a monumental success, while others across the nation rankled that the measures also open thousands of acres to logging in Alaska and exchange federal lands for new mining operations.
Eight Montana bills were included in the package, including the North Fork Wa- tershed Protection Act, which bans future
Fall colors along the North Fork Flathead River. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
mining and drilling on 383,267 acres in the North Fork of the Flathead River, an area that tracks along the western edge of Glacier National Park, and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which adds 67,000 acres to the Bob Marshall Wilder- ness Area, designates 208,000 acres near- by 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.
Current and former members of Mon- tana’s congressional delegation have been working on some of the bills for months and even decades, and recently ramped up negotiations in an effort to spur the legis- lation forward before the lame-duck ses- sion expires.
Tester and Walsh worked alongside Senator-elect and U.S. Rep. Steve Daines to include the Montana lands bills in the
broader lands package.
“I am proud of this historic agreement,
and I am particularly proud today to be a Montanan,” Tester said on the Senate floor. “Montana is home to sky-touching mountains and beautiful plains. It’s home to hard-working men and women and to Native Americans with deep connections to the land. But it’s The Last Best Place because we are all of these things and be- cause we are willing to work together to preserve and strengthen them.”
“Montana’s congressional delegation was able to put aside political differences by following the example set by of our fel- low citizens,” Walsh said. “Passage of the North Fork withdrawal caps 40 years of Montanans working together to protect our outdoor heritage and strengthen the economy of the Flathead.”
See Lands PAGE 28