Help keep the Front the way it is now! Increasingly, important habitat along the Rocky Mountain Front is under pressure from the subdivision of private land for residential development. Conservation easements have proven to be a valuable tool for protecting wildlife and a traditional way of life by leaving land in private ownership. However, in order to capitalize on the gains already made, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in need of renewed funding to purchase additional conservation easements in the coming years. Learn how you can help this important program>>
Travel Plan for the Rocky Mountain Front Released!
The Coalition applauded the Forest Service for its plan that protects wildlife while emphasizing traditional uses on the Front. On October 1st, the Lewis and Clark released a final Travel Plan for the lower two-thirds of the Rocky Mountain Front covering roughly 390,000 acres, excluding the Badger-Two Medicine area. The Plan will guide all travel, recreation, and other uses on the Front for the next two decades, specifying routes for hikers and horseback riders, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles (ORVs) ...more>

Issues > Roadless conservation

Along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front are long swaths of unroaded terrain, lands that serve as conduits for big game migrating to their winter range. The future of the Front’s unprotected roadless land, 350,000 acres in total, was thrown into doubt with the Bush Administration’s repeal of the Roadless Rule.

In May, it was replaced with a new rule that supposedly gives more control over the fate of inventoried roadless areas to state governments. While the rule does shift the burden of compiling and analyzing public sentiment and ecological data for inventoried roadless areas to the governors of 38 states, in the end it is the politically appointed Secretary of Agriculture who decides whether the states’ management expectations will be met.

The new rule’s petitioning process requires states to identify roadless areas in need of protection, plot them on a map, design individual management recommendations and then make determinations as to how these recommendations could affect public health and safety, critical wildlife habitat, critical infrastructure (such as utilities and dams), while ensuring that citizens have access to private property. No small feat and not inexpensive.

If the Secretary of Agriculture approves the state petition, the state and the Forest Service develop a management plan for that individual state. If a governor chooses not to file a petition, or the petition is not approved, the feds will create their own plan under the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture. “In other words, Washington has the final say, not Montanans,” Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer wrote the President in a June 7 letter, criticizing the new rule. He pointed out the Forest Service employs 2,375 people in Montana and has a state-wide budget of $47 million. “The state of Montana,” wrote the Governor, “has neither the budgetary nor the personnel resources available to take the necessary in-depth look at its 6,397,000 acres of roadless areas.”

While states grapple with the 18-month petitioning process, ending November 2006, management of roadless areas will revert to existing local forest management plans. In Montana, our 6.4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas hang in the balance. Currently, 1.7 million acres are off limits to road building within current Forest Planning (an administrative process perpetually open to amendment with little public comment required) and 824,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas having been formally recommended as Wilderness. The remaining 3.8 million acres, including much of the Front, are now once again open to road building.

Why Roadless Matters
Enough objective data has been compiled over the decades to clearly illustrate the value of Montana’s roadless areas, not only to ourdiverse wildlife, but also to the economy and culture of our state as a whole. Protected roadless areas mean longer, more liberal hunting seasons, stronger local economies and robust wildlife populations. They ensure secure habitat for a lasting wildlife legacy, providing opportunities to hunt healthy animal populations with diverse age composition and to fish clean waters.

Roadless areas make up the core of some of the most secure wildlife habitat left for many species in Montana. They are vital incubators key to the propagation and health of wildlife populations. Unroaded terrain is the source of clean water that our fisheries depend on, not to mention the communities we live in. As such, this precious resource needs to be conserved and managed in ways that protect and perpetuate healthy, sustainable habitats. Gov. Schweitzer will be seeking input from Montanans about the fate of Montana’s roadless forests. Make sure he hears from you.