Hundreds of wilderness advocates from across Montana met last month in Great Falls to celebrate the 50th anniversary of America’s first statewide wilderness advocacy organization—the Montana Wilderness Association [1].
When MWA was organized in 1958, congressional approval of the Wilderness Act was still six years in the future. Thanks to steady leadership from MWA, that law succeeded—with strong support from members of Montana’s congressional delegation, first and foremost Senator Lee Metcalf (D). And it brought immediate statutory protection to five wilderness areas in Montana, including the nearly million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The MWA's highest award, the Founders Award, was presented to a
group of local leaders who helped stop gas leasing that threatened
wildlands on the Rocky Mountain Front: Dusty Crary, Karl & Teri
Rappold, Sharon & Chuck Blixrud, Gloria Flora, Roy Jacobs, Bill
Cunningham, Stoney Burk, and Gene Sentz
Looking back at fifty years of wilderness history, MWA members celebrated many successes:
- In 1972, Congress protected the nation’s first citizen-proposed wilderness area (until then Congress had only designated areas based on agency studies required by the Wilderness Act itself). The 240,000-acre Scapegoat Wilderness was different, based on a proposal initiated by local citizens backed by MWA and its allies, blocking development plans being made by the U.S. Forest Service to build roads and begin logging in the area.
- With leadership from MWA, Congress kept up a steady pace of wilderness preservation for public lands in Montana, passing an additional 8 laws between 1975 and 1983, the last being designation of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness south of Bozeman.
U.S. Senator Jon Tester and cowboy poet Paul Zarzyski
There have been challenges, too. A million-acre-plus package of new wilderness designations passed both the House and Senate in 1988, only to end up vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Despite lack of congressional action to designate additional wilderness in the state for the past 25 years, MWA has succeeded—working with other like-minded groups—to protect threatened roadless areas while building grassroots support that can lead to the goal of congressional success. Among the many campaigns being pursued by MWA and its five chapters are those focused on wilderness opportunities for the Rocky Mountain Front [2] west of Great Falls and other important additions to the Bob Marshall Wilderness, to block off-road vehicle threats to the Pryor Mountains near Billings, and for the Scotchman Peaks wilderness [3], which straddles the Montana-Idaho border southwest of Libby.
Campaign for America's Wilderness exective director Mike Matz
(second from left), congratulates (from left): MWA executive
director Tim Baker, president-elect Daphne Herling, and president
Joseph Scalia III.
MWA is also a founding group in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, an innovative plan to protect more than a half-million acres of additional wilderness across the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwestern Montana. It will also address conservation needs for other parts of the landscape, including stewardship forestry projects that will help protect blue-ribbon trout streams. This proposal has drawn support from other conservation groups, including Montana Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, as well as the owners of the five stewardship-oriented wood products companies working in communities in that region. It was this kind of grassroots collaboration that Senator Jon Tester (D) highlighted in his banquet speech at the MWA convention: "The Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership has become a national model of local teamwork. It’s an effort to improve the way we manage and use our forests. It protects our Montana heritage. And it moves us toward a more responsible future. It creates wilderness while allowing restoration management in our woodlands."
Also helping celebrate 50 years of conservation leadership was Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, who praised the Montana Wilderness Association “for providing exactly the kind of bold leadership necessary to advance wilderness protection in a state that hasn’t had any designated by Congress for 25 years. The Campaign for America’s Wilderness is pleased to be partners with an organization that has such a long and distinguished history.”
MWA Celebrates 50 Years of Wilderness Advocacy
Excerpts from a 4/27/08 Great Falls Tribune editorial
It doesn’t fuel a mill or factory, and it doesn’t come in a box with “Made in Montana” stamped on it.
But a giant and spectacular product of 50 years of effort by a core group of dedicated Montanans contributed just as surely to the state’s way or life and to its economy. It also contributes to the soul of America.
We’re talking about wilderness—the sliver of public land that is protected by law from commercial development and motorized visitation.
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For many years, the way of the West was to tame the land. That meant log it, drill it, plow it and build on it.
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As American history unfolded, though, and the amount of wild lands dwindled, it occurred to more and more people that some of the land should be kept as it was, for the sake of purity and for the sake of future generations.
Fifty years ago, some of those people in Montana formed an organization dedicated to that purpose.
Today in Great Falls, the Montana Wilderness Association is gathered to celebrate a half century of successes, and to talk about what should happen next.
We welcome them and applaud their efforts.