Wilderness News

The 1910 fires - and significant wildfires that followed into the 1930s - had a devastating hand in bestowing rugged portions of the Bitterroot Mountains with new life.

The landscape was so thoroughly blackened in some areas between Lookout and Lolo passes, loggers turned their attention elsewhere while nature found a new canvas for blending its palette of flora and fauna.

Fires had essentially banked a reservoir of wildness eventually recognized by national forest managers.

U.S. Senators will be back in session in three weeks discussing the nation's energy policies among many other hot topics. Montana's senators know any energy policy changes could have a big impact on the state.

Many Senators will go on vacation, spend time with family, anything they can do to get away from work between sessions, but not Jon Tester, he comes to northern Montana to do what he knows is an equally important job, harvest his crop on his family's farm. Even though he's thousands of miles away from D.C. he's always thinking about what's going on in Washington.

Faced with new interest in natural-gas drilling, Friends of the Allegheny Wilderness is trying to secure federal protection for pristine areas in Allegheny National Forest. Staff and volunteers with the non-profit organization are lobbying federal lawmakers to protect eight tracts (a total of 54,000 acres) under the Wilderness Protection Act. They also hope to purchase mineral rights in key areas of the Allegheny Forest to prevent drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

On the PBS series, "Antique Roadshow" we've all chortled with glee when someone brings in a painting they discovered at a neighborhood garage sale for $5 and are told by the expert that it is a rare piece of art worth $500,000. "Those people didn't know what they had," we chuckle, eyeing the gaudy vase passed through our own family tree.

In recent months there has been a healthy discussioninvolving many parties as to what, if any, portions of the White River National Forest not already designated as wilderness should be considered for addition to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

SOMEWHERE NEAR NORTH POLE - Some of the terrain in Idaho's 206,000-acre Gospel Hump Wilderness northeast of Riggins drops thousands of feet in less than a mile.

Elevations vary from 1,970 feet at the Wind River Pack Bridge along the Salmon River to 8,940 feet at the summit of Buffalo Hump.

And yes, there is an 8,818-foot mountaintop called North Pole. Go figure.

The landscape ranges from heavily forested in the north to dry, sparsely vegetated mountainsides in the south.

The director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has accepted an invitation from the Phillips County Commission to visit Malta in September. During the visit, Bob Abbey will talk about the agency's internal planning for new land protections for the West, including Montana.

"I think it's great," Phillips County Chairwoman Lesley Robinson said. "We don't get a lot of people from D.C. coming to Eastern Montana to see what we feel about an issue."

BLACKFOOT - U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, met with Bingham County Commissioners Tuesday morning. They discussed a variety of subjects.

Items discussed included the Tea Party Movement, the TARP vote and the Boulder-White Cloud bill.

The Tea Party Movement started as a group of people concerned with the increasing federal deficit and high taxes, Simpson said. Now, many fringe groups have attached themselves to the Tea Party movement.

While the proposed San Juan County Wilderness Bill is on hold because of the January 1, 2011 departure of Robert Bennett from the U.S. Senate, there remains a strong interest in maintaining the momentum to solve the longstanding wilderness debate.

Bennett initiated a process to develop a wilderness proposal for San Juan County, similar to the process that resulted in a Washington County Wilderness Bill in 2008. The Senator's office called for input from whomever wanted to participate.

A 21-page U.S. Bureau of Land Management planning document that discusses the possibility of creating a grasslands national monument in northeastern Montana was made public Monday by U.S. Sen. Jon Tester.

Snippets of the "treasured landscapes" document and emails between conservation groups and government officials have been previously reported, prompting concern in some quarters that another national monument in Montana was in the works.

The full document released Monday says "Internal Draft - NOT FOR RELEASE" at the top.