Daines' votes rankle wilderness advocates

One could say the honeymoon between Sen. Steve Daines and some members of the conservation community ended last week.

Daines was subject to intense criticism by the Montana Wilderness Association and other groups following his votes on proposed amendments to the Keystone XL pipeline.

At the forefront was an amendment the freshman Republican offered on reauthorization of the Land, Water and Conservation Fund. LWCF uses money collected from offshore oil and gas royalties for land conservation programs, from purchasing inholdings in national parks to buying land for fishing access sites. Montana has received $400 million in LWCF money over the years, more than any other state.

While supporting LWCF, Daines’ amendment added that it “should include improvements to the structure of the program to more effectively manage existing federal land.”

MWA executive director Brian Sybert charged that the language effectively undermined the fund.

“It’s never been about managing existing federal lands,” he said.

Sybert said LWCF has worked effectively for more than 50 years.

“It makes no sense why you’d want to mess with that,” he said.

When a separate amendment came up to simply re-authorize LWCF as is, Daines voted against it.

“The vote I took wasn’t in opposition to the LWCF,” Daines said in a teleconference call. “The intent of my amendment was to get a strong bipartisan support for LWCF, yet still uphold the integrity and purpose of the program to insure it will continue to exist.”

Daines said re-authorizing LWCF should be a “transparent” process and be fully debated on the Senate floor.

Another amendment Daines voted for also rankled MWA. That amendment would have required that Congress act on wilderness study areas on Bureau of Land Management lands and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges in the next year or they would be released.

But resolving all of those wilderness study areas, including 449,000 acres in Montana alone, in that short a time period would be impossible, Sybert charged.

Daines said he supported the amendment because it was time for Congress to take action.

“Wilderness study areas are often managed as de facto wilderness in perpetuity and go for years with their status unresolved,” Daines said in an e-mail. “Only Congress can designate new wilderness areas, so this amendment would simply require Congress to do its job and make a decision about the status of WSAs.”

None of the amendments passed, but the votes left Sybert a bit puzzled. Last year, Daines voted for the North Fork Watershed Protection Act and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which added 67,000 acres of wilderness to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

Daines also spoke about the need for states to have more control over how national forests in their boundaries are managed, Sen. Steve Daines said in a teleconference meeting with invited constituents last week. But he stopped short of endorsing a transfer of ownership to the states.

“We need to increase the states’ inputs,” the Republican senator said.

While in the House last year, Daines sponsored a bill that passed calling for the creation of local advisory boards that would have a say in the management of national forests at the governor’s behest.

“(But) there’s questions about the financial feasibility of the actual transfer of lands,” he said.

Several Western states have explored the idea of taking over Forest Service and other federal lands, but the costs could outweigh the gains. A recent study by the University of Idaho’s Policy Analysis Group found that in a “worst case” scenario, Idaho could lose nearly $111 million a year managing the 16.4 million acres of National Forest in its state.

Other scenarios showed a profit, but only if the timber market doubled and the harvest was a billion board feet a year. The state could also potentially incur millions in wildfire fighting and prevention costs.

Even so, speakers on the conference call and Daines himself noted that things are clearly out of tilt in recent years. In 1987, Daines said, the yield from Forest Service lands in Montana was 624 million board feet. By 2013, it was down to 113 million board feet.

Daines said that in talking to mill owners, he learned the problem boiled down to two things — “lawsuits and lack of logs.”

To address lawsuits, Daines said he supports reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act, in which plaintiffs who sue the federal government can recover their court costs if they prevail.

Daines claimed that was an incentive to sue and suggested plaintiffs post a bond in cases where environmental groups challenge a Forest Service decision.

Daines said any reform would take a bipartisan effort, and he hoped to work with Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, on future legislation.

“We need Republican and Democratic support if we’re going to get anything done,” he said.

When asked about Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, a bill that would increase timber production on three national forests in Montana and would increase wilderness, Daines said he wanted to see legislation that included all 10 national forests in Montana, not just three.

“That bill never saw the light of day on the Senate floor,” he said.

On the supply side, Daines heard from constituents who complained about the lack of available timber. A log home builder in the Gallatin said it was cheaper to get logs hauled from British Columbia than to try to find them close to home.

One person suggested opening up roads that had been closed so loggers could get at timber. That would take reform of the Endangered Species Act, which Daines said he supported. He likened the ESA to an old ranch pickup truck — it served its purpose but was in need of reform.

Pat Taber, of Swan Mountain Outfitters, brought up concerns about outfitting opportunities. He said the ESA and the National Environmental Policy Act were important pieces of legislation, but now the Forest Service was in “extreme over-protective mode,” and it was nearly impossible to get a permit for any new outfitting on the national forests.

Swan Mountain Outfitters currently works out of the Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park.