Cutting roads: Advisory group, BLM struggle to develop Missouri Breaks plan

By BRETT FRENCH, Gazette Outdoor Writer

The number of roads open in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is shaping up to be one of the most difficult issues in formulating a Resource Management Plan for the area.

Grazing permittees want to ensure access to their Bureau of Land Management allotments. Conservationists want minimal road access to maintain the area's wild character and protect wildlife. And sportsmen are divided between those who want few roads to ensure game animals mature and those who want vehicle access to make hunting and retrieval of game easier.

"It's the classic trade-off between quality and access," said Jim Satterfield, regional manager for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Satterfield was recently appointed as an adviser to the Central Montana Resource Advisory Council, a public body that provides management direction to the BLM. In addition, FWP will now have two members on the BLM's interdisciplinary team, which is charged with developing the draft Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement for the monument. A draft isn't expected until the end of the year, pushed back from an expected July publication due to health problems suffered by one of the BLM's key employees.

There's little debate among RAC members or the BLM that there are too many roads in the monument.

"They're just like spaghetti in there," said Bob Doerk, the RAC's chairman from Fort Benton.

Gary Slagel, BLM's monument manager, agreed.

"There are a lot of spur roads to the end of ridges," he said. "We don't need those roads."

What the BLM does want to do, Slagel said, is "keep the main roads open that access major chunks of public land and maintain access for grazing permittees.

"We need to provide adequate access while maintaining the monument's wild character," he said.

But Hugo Tureck, a rancher whose property abuts the monument, said the BLM is not considering the closure of enough roads.

"Let's start with a minimal road system and then ask what do we need beyond that," Tureck said.

As proof that there are too many roads in the monument, Tureck points to a study of the effects of travel routes and vehicle access on wildlife in the monument, published by The Wilderness Society in 2003. The study refers to the roads as a transportation network, since "road" has a specific legal meaning. Using mapping analysis, the society found that "nearly 100 percent of land in the monument is within two miles of a route" and "just 14 percent of land in the monument is more than a mile from a transportation feature."

Consequently, the society said the monument's "wildlife populations are threatened by landscape fragmentation..."

Satterfield said that from a hunter's perspective, it only makes sense that where access is easier, game animals are shot young so few reach mature, trophy status.

"The best places to hunt are where access is difficult and the animals aren't spooked out of there," Satterfield said.

But Ron Moody, a member of the Montana Wildlife Federation who has been following the RAC's deliberations, said that 70 to 80 percent of the monument has no legal access for the public. The figure excludes river access.

"There are only four roads that touch the boundary of the monument that are legal public access," Moody said.

He said he'd like to see enough roads to allow the public reasonable access to the monument, but not a mile more.

One of Tureck's contentions is that the proclamation creating the monument doesn't talk about providing access. "All it talks about is preservation," he said.

The proclamation states in part that the "Secretary of Interior shall prepare a transportation plan that addresses the actions, including road closures or travel restrictions, necessary to protect the objects identified in this proclamation."

Tureck said he doesn't want all roads closed. "I would like to see traditional activities continue to occur, but create a place where people can find solitude and look at a landscape so rugged, so brutal and yet so gentle. To go down to some point and look across and not see four-wheelers."

Doerk, chairman of the RAC, said the transportation and access plan is a dynamic process. His group's chore, he said, will not be suggesting which roads stay open or which ones are closed. Instead, the RAC will provide the BLM with a vision to guide their decisions.

"In terms of the monument, what is the legacy we want to leave," he said. "Will the landscape be the same? Did we do our job in protecting it? Or didn't we?

"Are we keeping it as the kind of special place that it is now," he continued. "Everyone (on the RAC) wants that. But we also know there will continue to be impacts."

About the monument The Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument in north-central Montana was created by proclamation in 2001 by President Clinton under the auspices of the Antiquities Act. The monument, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, covers 377,346 acres of land, most of it federal but also intermingled with state and private holdings.

Within the monument is the 149-mile long Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River - running downstream from Fort Benton to the Fred Robinson Bridge on Highway 191. The river corridor is hailed as maintaining much of the wild character of the area as seen by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805.

Six wilderness study areas, the Chief Joseph (Nez Perce) National Historic Trail, the Missouri Breaks National Back Country Byway, and the Cow Creek Area of Critical Environmental Concern are also within the monument boundaries.

The badlands country is home to big game species such as elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep, in addition to 55 other mammal species, 233 bird species such as the sage grouse, 20 different amphibians and reptiles and 48 species of fish including the endangered pallid sturgeon.

For more information, log on to www.mt.blm.gov/ldo/um/

To comment

Until the Bureau of Land Management gets to the draft stage, it will not have a preferred alternative transportation plan, according to Gary Slagel, BLM's monument manager.

In an letter to the public on the BLM's Web site, Slagel wrote: "We've used the public comments so many provided earlier to help create six alternatives to analyze in the draft Environmental Impact Statement (one that reflects current management and five other possible alternative scenarios).

"For several months we've been working to select various portions of these six alternatives to form a preliminary preferred alternative. Our preliminary preferred alternative seems to change daily as we refine the specifics of each alternative.

"We also asked the Central Montana Resource Advisory Council (RAC) to participate in forming a preliminary preferred alternative. Their past several meetings have been devoted mostly to this task. The RAC has been able to agree on some recommendations, but not on others. This may reflect how differently and strongly people feel about how to manage these BLM lands in the future."

The public can still comment on how they would like to see the monument managed.

Written comments should be sent to: Gary Slagel, Monument Manager, Bureau of Land Management, Lewistown Field Office, P.O. Box 1160, Lewistown, MT 59457-1160. E-mail comments should be sent to monumentrmp@blm.gov. Please be sure to include your complete mailing address in both mailed and e-mailed comments.