By Tim Leeds/Havre Daily News/tleeds@havredailynews.com
While a lawsuit is delaying the release of a draft management plan for the Upper Missouri River Breaks Monument, a group supporting the monument is taking issue with specifics in the plan.
"It's moving in the wrong direction to create something that the monument proclamation doesn't speak to," said Dennis Tighe of Great Falls, president of the Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument.
The monument was created by a presidential proclamation in January 2001 shortly before President Clinton left office.
The Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument said several measures in the draft don't protect the monument's resources, including provisions that would allow airstrips, use of jet skis, too many roads and oil and gas wells, and one that would allow people to take fossils and plant samples from the monument.
Gary Slagel, manager of the monument for the federal Bureau of Land Management in Lewistown, said the preferred alternatives identified by BLM in the draft are still in the very early stages and could change before BLM drafts a permanent plan.
"Until we come out with a draft, that will continue to change," he said. "This is just a preliminary draft that hasn't gone out for comment and analysis."
Slagel said BLM is also planning to resolve issues in the lawsuit that is delaying the plan. The Montana Wilderness Association filed the lawsuit over three gas exploration leases BLM approved in 1999. U.S. District Judge Don Molloy ruled earlier this year that BLM did not collect enough public input on the leases.
BLM will hold public meetings to collect comment on the three leases, Slagel said.
"(Molloy) never said the leases were invalid," he added.
The lawsuit has put the planning process about a year behind schedule, Slagel said.
"We had hoped to have that draft on the street prior to December," he said.
He said it now appears that the draft won't be released until next spring or summer, and the final management plan probably won't be ready until 2006.
The meetings BLM will hold about the leases will not address other issues, such as transportation or how many people can be in the monument at a time, he said.
The alternatives are being developed by a team that includes representatives of state agencies, counties and BLM's Central Montana Resource Advisory Council.
Hugo Tureck, who ranches near Coffee Creek south of the monument, said the planning process for the management plan has been too piecemeal.
"There's not a vision out there for what this is supposed to be for the American public," said Tureck, a former RAC chairman.
Tighe said the proposed alternatives seem to ignore the comments most people have made about the monument.
BLM held 11 open houses in 2002 to collect comment about what the management plan should address. By the end of 2002, the bureau
