HELENA, Mont. - A measure in the state Legislature could remove protections from a Wilderness Study Area in southwestern Montana. Opponents see it as effort to repeal other study areas in a top-down manner.

Senate Joint Resolution 7 would remove Hidden Pasture Creek's study-area designation. The designations are aimed at determining if the areas have wilderness characteristics.

Jack Kirkley is a professor of biology at the University of Montana Western who noted he wasn't speaking on behalf of the school. He agreed that it's time to resolve the issue of these study areas, but said passing resolutions in the Legislature is not right way.

"Simply saying here's our resolution to take it away and not have any further study or consideration of it is sort of shortcutting the input by citizens," said Kirkley.

A report from the Legislature's Environmental Quality Council last year determined a collaboration among many stakeholders was the best way to approach Montana's study areas. In state Sen. Jeff Welborn - R-Dillon's - resolution, he said the designation precludes Beaverhead County from addressing transportation issues within the area.

The resolution has a hearing today in the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

In 2017 and 2018, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and former U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte introduced legislation in Congress that would have stripped Wilderness Study Areas in Montana of their designations.

Mike Wilkinson is a former U.S. Forest Service employee who lives in Wise River. He said there has been local opposition to opening these areas up.

"The public input is important," said Wilkinson, "and these politicians can't just make decisions about public lands without consulting the people that live there."

Kirkley said public input is an integral part of this process.

"If you don't have a collaborative process, then you really won't have a public buy-in because people want to know that they weren't closed out of the discussion," said Kirkley. "It's public lands. There's a lot of sentiment that we own the land and we should have a say in it."

Conservation groups including the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Wildlife Federation and Business for Montana's Outdoors sent a letter urging the Senate Natural Resources Committee to withdraw Senate Joint Resolution 7 and move forward with a collaborative approach to study areas.


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Arizona conservation groups and sportsmen alike say they're pleased the Bureau of Land Management will now recognize conservation as an integral part of public lands management.

The agency's new rule puts protecting the environment on par with other land-use priorities.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said historically the BLM has done what he termed a "pretty good job," not only managing about 12 million acres of public lands in Arizona, but also protecting natural resources.

"They've got a tough job," Garlid acknowledged. "I think this rule helps make their job a little bit easier because it gives them some tools to balance those different demands on the 12 million acres that they manage."

Garlid predicted the rule will raise what he terms "harder-to-quantify conservation values" to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses like oil and gas exploration and mining. He thinks most Arizonans will recognize the new rule as a positive. A solid majority of Arizona voters across party lines say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.

To Garlid, the rule makes it clear the BLM is recognizing certain parts of federal lands, in Arizona and around the West, have been degraded. He contended restoration leases will be a good tool, allowing the BLM to lease acres to groups specifically to improve the conditions on a given landscape. He noted opponents of the new rule might see the leases as a way to "lock up" land but he argued it is not true.

"One example could be a nonprofit, like the Arizona Wildlife Federation," Garlid pointed out. "We could get a conservation lease from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work, or work to remove invasive species along a creek bank."

According to the BLM, while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, casual uses of the leased lands like recreation, hunting, fishing and research activities would generally continue.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


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A new study in the journal Nature Communications by Montana researchers said suppressing small wildfires is leading to larger, more intense and damaging blazes.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, about 98% of wildfires are fully suppressed before they grow to 100 acres; most of them within 72 hours. In Montana, the latest data show crews kept 95% of wildfires in Montana to no more than 10 acres in 2022.

Mark Kreider, a doctoral candidate in forest and conservation science at the University of Montana and co-author of the report, said the strategy leads to what is known as fire "suppression bias."

"Removing more of one type of fire than the other, what we're left with is bias towards the higher intensity fires, these more extreme fires," Kreider explained.

Montana state policy calls for crews to extinguish fires as quickly as possible, even small ones. Kreider pointed out researchers recommend letting low-intensity fires burn where possible to reduce the risk and damage potential for larger, hotter-burning and more catastrophic blazes.

Kreider acknowledged as the population grows along the urban-wildland interface, letting fires burn is not always possible, but argued it might be the best strategy for heading off catastrophic fires later.

"Especially in the western U.S. where people live close to forests, fire suppression is very important and we still must do it," Kreider noted. "But this research helps to show when possible in places where it's safe to do so, we really may benefit from allowing more low and moderate intensity fire to burn."

The National Interagency Fire Center said the number of acres scorched by wildfire has doubled since the 1980s, and the cost to battle the fires has risen to nearly $3 billion a year.


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