June 13, 2002

Monument bill support sought by Rehberg
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., says he plans to ask congressional colleagues Thursday to support his bill to exclude any private land from being within boundaries of Montana's newest national monument.

Rehberg said Wednesday his bill is about shooing potential trespassers off private land, about the rights of private landowners to drill or work their land as they wish, and about the encroachment of federal control over Western lands.

Critics, however, say his bill is unnecessary.

Rehberg wants colleagues in Congress to redraw the map of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument to exclude about 81,000 acres of privately owned land within the monument's current boundaries.

A subcommittee of the House Resources Committee is expected to hear testimony on Rehberg's bill, which he introduced earlier in the spring.

His bill would not remove a single acre of publicly owned land from the monument. It also would not change how the Bureau of Land Management would oversee the monument's 377,346 acres. And private property owners - even those whose land is bordered on all sides by the monument - already are permitted to manage their land as they see fit.

So what would Rehberg's bill do?

Essentially, it would make it harder for owners of private property within the monument to sell to the federal government, if that's what they chose to do.

Under the new map that Rehberg proposes, each parcel of private land within the sprawling monument in north-central Montana sold to the government would require an act of Congress to redraw the boundaries.

"We're taking away the automatic inclusion of the property into the monument," Rehberg said. "They'd have to come back to Congress and ask for action. We're putting the burden back on the federal government to acquire the land."

Conservation groups, environmentalists and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., have spoken out against Rehberg's bill, saying it sets up roadblocks for future generations that may wish to sell to the Interior Department.

"It's unnecessary legislation," said Chris Mehl, a spokesman for the Montana chapter of the Wilderness Society.

In prepared testimony for the House subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Land, Hugo Tureck, who ranches public land near the monument, predicted that passage of Rehberg's bill would have the result of discouraging people from selling their land to become part of the monument.

"There will be less interest in purchasing or trading public lands for inholdings from willing sellers if there is no guarantee, as there is now, that the land become part of the monument," he said.

But Rehberg has the support of the commissioners of four counties with land within the monument. And he says he has not heard any opposition to his bill from people who own land within the monument - only from those who work and live off the land outside of it.

"To a person, I've never found someone who supports this existing map who owns property inside the boundary," Rehberg said.

The monument was created by executive order of then-President Clinton on Jan. 17, 2001.

The designation stretches along 149 mostly isolated miles of the Missouri River, from Fort Benton to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Much of the area still looks the way it did when the Lewis and Clark expedition came through nearly 200 years ago.

The Clinton designation is intended to protect the land's resources, including the sage grouse, elk and antelope that live there. But it still allows cattle grazing, fishing, hunting, hiking and other traditional uses to continue.

Copyright 2002 Associated Press