Great Falls Tribune - Editorial - July 19, 2001
Show your support for Breaks Monument -- again

Supporters of the Upper Missouri River Breaks might have thought they had done everything necessary to secure the future of the new 377,000-acre national monument. Under normal circumstances, they might have been right.

But there's a new sheriff in town, and circumstances are not normal.

Monument foes, some of whom seem to distrust the federal government unless it involves cheap grazing leases, have enlisted the help of allies inside government to, in effect, start a new, abbreviated process.

Back in March, the new sheriff -- Interior Secretary Gale Norton -- indicated she wasn't going to try to undo the monuments, but she asked states to make recommendations regarding possibly reducing the monuments' size or relaxing their restrictions.

In other words, she and her boss, the president, knew how unpopular undoing the monuments would be, so they devised a way to nibble the monuments to death.

As part of this new, extralegal "process," Gov. Judy Martz in June picked a task force composed of a state senator, a representative, Fort Belknap's tribal chairman and a commissioner from each of the four counties spanned by the Breaks.

She plans to transmit the panel's final recommendations to Norton by Sept. 1.

Parallel to that effort, a bitter Idaho congressman, joined by some others including Montana's Denny Rehberg, have launched a futile effort in Congress to gut the Antiquities Act, the 95-year-old law used by Teddy Roosevelt to protect the Grand Canyon, and used in January by Clinton to protect the Breaks and several other areas.

What it means is that, although the game was legally over, the other team and new referees have come back onto the floor, and the horn is sounding.

Apparently the Montana task force intends to repeat in three or four weeks what it took the Central Montana Resource Advisory Committee several years to accomplish.

We have no doubt that advocates of the Breaks, including the newly formed Friends of the Monument group that held a press conference Tuesday in Great Falls, will get their uniforms back on and make it into the new game.

We expect they will turn out to participate and comment in numbers similar to the numbers that participated and commented before, when the real game was still being played.

There's an easy way to make this underhanded tactic backfire, and that's an outpouring of support for the monument stronger than what's come so far.

Our purpose, then, is to urge anyone else who cares about this gift for the nation -- a guarantee that this 149-mile stretch of relatively pristine river and its surroundings stays that way and is properly managed for future generations -- to get in the game.

The new task force is accepting comments and has scheduled three hearings (see inset), but the comment deadline is just three weeks away -- not much time during a beautiful Montana summer to assemble a movement.

Also making it more difficult is that the session featuring the most controversial topic -- monument boundaries -- is in beautiful but remote Winifred at 10 a.m. midweek.

Now if we were planning public hearings to gather public input on an issue of importance to the American public, we probably would have tried to make our hearing a little more accessible to members of the public who have jobs, but hey, that's just us.

Let your voice be heard.

The people who didn't like the result the first time now want another crack at history. Don't let them get away with it.