News and Views - Billings Gazette 11-2-05

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Billings Gazette - 11/2/05
BLM gets thumbs down on Missouri Breaks

By BRETT FRENCH
Of The Gazette Staff

In a national review, the Bureau of Land Management received poor to failing
grades from The Wilderness Society for its management of the Upper Missouri
River Breaks National Monument in north-central Montana.

Although the agency "strongly disagrees with the Wilderness Society study,"
said Celia Boddington, a Washington, D.C., BLM spokeswoman, she noted that
the National Landscape Conservation System is still a work in progress.

"We've come a long way and continue to move forward," she said. "We're
working with national and local partners to make still further improvements
to the system."

The study's release came in the same week that the BLM's Lewistown field
office unveiled its draft resource management plan for the Missouri Breaks,
which is already drawing fire from local conservation groups.

"I don't think the BLM has sat down and created a vision for the monument,"
said Hugo Tureck, a Coffee Creek rancher and board member of the Friends of
the Missouri Breaks Monument. "I'd like to see them go back to the drawing
board."

Tureck said the BLM made the mistake of "trying to give everyone a little
something, and in the end they never addressed 'What does this monument
stand for?'

"This monument is something special, but we're not looking at it like that,"
he said.

The Wilderness Society's grades, outlined in a 28-page report, were equally
critical of the steps the BLM has taken in protecting the 26-million-acre
National Landscape Conservation System, which includes the Breaks.

The Missouri Breaks' grades were based partly on an interview with Gary
Slagel, monument manager. Several of the group's questions about the
Missouri Breaks couldn't be answered because its resource management plan is
still in the works.

But of those that could be answered, the BLM was criticized for not giving
Slagel direct supervisory authority; not placing Slagel on the state BLM
director's management team; and its thin law enforcement coverage - 217,256
visitors per law enforcement officer, or one ranger for the entire 377,000
acres.

The BLM did recently hire a replacement ranger who will now be based in Fort
Benton, instead of Havre. That ranger will coordinate with the BLM's other
two rangers in Malta and Lewistown to cover the monument, Slagel said.

"So we've actually got better coverage," he said.

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(406) 538-8506

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