HELENA, Mont. - The Bureau of Land Management has released a plan to open up large swaths of central Montana to oil and gas development - critics say at the expense of public lands and wildlife.

The BLM's final Lewistown Resource Management Plan - covering 650,000 acres - potentially cedes up to 95% of central Montana land to the oil and gas industry. It doesn't include any protections for wilderness or wildlife, despite more than 200,000 acres originally identified as having wilderness characteristics.

Tracy Stone-Manning, associate vice president of public lands at the National Wildlife Federation, says just as troublesome is the Trump administration's seeming to ignore the public's desire to see protections.

"Our concern here is not only about what will happen to the landscape under the Lewistown plan but, of course, it's about the public too," says Stone-Manning. "And how the public is slowly but surely being cut out of our public lands."

The Resource Management Plan has been in the works for six years, with an original draft in 2016 under the Obama administration that protected 100,000 acres with wilderness characteristics.

The plan does include a new kind of designation, known as Backcountry Conservation Areas, designed to protect regions for hunting opportunities.

The two such areas or BCAs in the plan would cover about 100,000 acres in total. But hunters are skeptical.

Andrew McKean, hunting editor for Outdoor Life magazine, says BCAs sound great on paper for maintaining big game, but the plan doesn't provide any baseline for measuring how well the areas are working. He says the idea is to secure wildlife and traditional uses - but those uses aren't always compatible.

"One of the things that makes them such rich areas for wildlife is they're rough country without a lot of motorized access," says McKean. "The BCAs don't address that sort-of tension of how we maintain the wildlife values as well as maintaining the traditional access."

Stone-Manning says the new coronavirus outbreak underscores how important public lands are as a place for solace, as well as making sure plans like these protect them.

"I'm taking heart in the value that they provide all of us in times like this, and it's our obligation to make sure that we keep them intact for the future," says Stone-Manning.

Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.

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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