Wilderness access should be preserved

On May 8, the Bureau of Land Management will hold a public meeting in the Triangle Telephone Hospitality Room at 6 p.m. These meetings will also be held in Glasgow, Malta, Chester and Great Falls.

The event is a part of the public involvement process required of the BLM in the final stages of the Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (RMP/EIS).

Currently in draft status, the document consists of two volumes which amount to a total of 1,291 pages making the document quite inaccessible for most people in the BLM Havre field office region (a region that stretches from Glacier County east to a portion of Valley County and southward with a portion of Chouteau County. Fortunately, it has an executive summary and a very helpful table of contents. This document, once finalized, will set the policy for BLM land use for many years to come. This is a big issue.

One aspect of the RMP/EIS that I would like to address falls under the category of "wilderness characteristics."

In the document, 26 areas, a total of 386,428 acres, in the region have been identified as having wilderness characteristics. Of the five alternative plans, designated by the letters "A" through "E," the BLM's preferred plan, Alternative E, recognizes and offers protections for only two of the 26 areas for a total of 10,714 acres. Furthermore, the protections offered by the BLM for these small areas are very limited, for example, the areas would still be open to oil and gas leasing with a no surface occupation stipulation. It's important to realize that the protections offered by the BLM in this plan are very limited and these wilderness characteristic protections are distinct from designated National Wildernesses which require an act of Congress.

In my view, these protections are an important step toward further protections and I would like to offer up reasons why the public should push to expand wilderness protections at the meetings throughout the region.

What constitutes wilderness is determined by the language in the Wilderness Act of 1964. In brief, qualification for wilderness status requires meeting standards for size, naturalness, opportunities for solitude, opportunities for primitive and unconfined recreation, and other special features. Wilderness areas are special because these unique features. In arguing for why the public should push to preserve these areas I will provide reasons rooted in two aspects of our lives: health and economy. Before moving on, however, I feel that it is important to point at that once an area has been developed, according to the Wilderness Act, that area is no longer qualified for wilderness status; once development occurs the wilderness is lost.

Wilderness has played an important role in human lives for the history of our existence. If you take a look at the world's religions you will see that it is a place people go for spiritual development and, since the audience here is primarily Christian, I will point out the passage in Matthew 4:1-11 as an example. In that passage Jesus enters the wilderness to be tempted. The wilderness is where people go for trials and these trials are important for development of both body and spirit. My time spent in the wilderness has produced some of my most cherished memories as has provided for my health in many ways. I feel that there is strong evidence of this being true for many other people based on the amount of tourists that flee the cities to enjoy Montana's wonderful National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Access to the wilderness is a concern for health both physical and mental.

The areas under consideration for wilderness protections are not the typical mountainous terrain, they are high plains prairies and badlands. These areas are typically exploited because their beauty is often overlooked, but they are potential tourist destinations for both their wildlife and landscapes. Numerous struggling communities throughout the region could benefit from the potential tourism in these areas. With a good marketing campaign and promotion, I believe that tourism can increase in the Hi-Line as a destination rather than an area to pass through. This increase could help alleviate the issues brought about by population loss.

The protection of these wilderness areas is a benefit to the residents of the Hi-Line, and I would like to urge the citizenry to consider the issue and attend the BLM RMP meeting on Wednesday.

(Michael Stone lives in Havre.)