Lewistown News-Argus, 10/9/04

Still controversial, the Missouri Breaks Monument remains an unfinished work

by JIM DULLENTY
News-Argus Staff Writer

The Upper Missouri River Breaks Monument remains a lighting rod attracting controversy and stirring the emotions of ranchers who do not want to be inside its boundaries and supporters who believe the Monument preserves wild areas from destruction.

But since the Monument was established in a last-minute declaration by President Bill Clinton in 2001, nothing much has happened.

The Missouri River continues its ancient course through the rugged Breaks country. Canoeists still float the lazy river in summer and ice fisherman still fish there in winter. Nothing much has changed.

As Ronald Moody, a Lewistown proponent of the Monument, puts it "the Monument is very much an unfinished work." He means, of course, the management and use of the Monument is unfinished. That the Monument itself is unfinished requires a longer view. The sculpturing that created the Breaks, which constitute most of the Monument, is a work of eons, not decades. That is God's work. That work is unfinished also.

The Missouri earned legendary status early in American history -- starting about 1809 with the publication of a journal from a member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Patrick Gass -- the first expedition journal to be published. Some years later the captains' journals were published.

Since then countless books and articles have been written about the expedition and most of them include coverage of the Upper Missouri River and its Breaks.

Now the exploits of that expedition 200 years ago are being marked by a celebration which will continue through 2006. Supporters of the Monument expect the celebration to focus greater national attention on the river including the region within the Monument.

For some the Missouri, the Breaks and the Monument are the instruments of a very personal experience. Matt Knox, a Winifred rancher, said he woke up one day and discovered that some of his land was within the Monument. And he didn't want it there.

Hugo Tureck, the Coffee Creek rancher who played a role in establishing the Monument, says he doesn't see that as any big deal. Private property within the Monument is still private property, Tureck said.

Sen. Ed Butcher (R-Winifred), Tureck's opponent in the House District 29 race this fall, has no land within the Monument but he views what happened as "another big federal government land grab." Nothing has been done since the Monument was declared to ease landowner concerns, he said.

Knox, president of an organization called Missouri River Stewards, and Ron Poertner, secretary, said it is helpful that Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) recently got the Bureau of Land Management to issue a map which does not show the exterior boundaries of the Monument.

As Knox and Poertner explain, with the old maps people would intrude on private lands and as long as the map showed them inside the Monument boundary, they thought they had a right to be there. This will eliminate that confusion even though the boundary is still there.

But Tureck thinks maps without boundaries will just confuse people wanting to use the Monument.

"It's a visual thing," said Tureck. "People want to be able to look at a map and see boundaries." He added, he doesn't think the map will accomplish anything.

The man who manages the Monument, as with most things involving that designation, takes a middle road. Gary E. Slagel, Lewistown, says the new map won't harm anything.

"It does not change anything we are doing. Nor does it affect future management of the area," said Slagel. "If it helps landowners with trespass problems then we're tickled to death."

Keeping a hawk-like watch over all activity associated with the Monument is an organization of supporters called Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument. The group's indefatigable director is Mary Jones, of Lewistown, who has intensively monitored the planning process.

"The Friends has monitored open houses, interdisciplinary team meetings, Resource Advisory Council (RAC) discussions and small group resource meetings," said Jones.

But the Friends is not happy with everything that is happening, Jones said.

"Because of lack of balance of views and Monument support at Resource Management Plan (RMP) meetings, the Friends is concerned that the direction of the RMP process has swerved away from the vision set out in the Monument Proclamation," she said.

"In May 2004, the Friends issued a press release outlining why the BLM looked to be off course and asked the public to become more involved in shaping a plan that respects the unique character of the Breaks," Jones said.

For one thing, Jones is concerned that the BLM may allow six primitive airstrips within the Monument. She said no airstrip has ever been authorized in any BLM public process.

Not surprising, Knox and Poertner disagree. They favor airstrips which, they say, have no negative impacts on the land. They say such strips are grass and most people would not know they are there.

"Airstrips are needed for fire fighting, search and rescue and by ranchers who use them in ranching operations," said Knox. He said the airstrips are maintained without cost to the taxpayer and aircraft clubs use them to access the wilderness areas.

Both men said they are "hard-pressed to know why these environmental groups oppose them."

Density of roads is another concern of the Friends of the Monument. Jones said BLM "believes that every track where a vehicle has traveled is a 'road.' The Proclamation requires the BLM to come up with a transportation system that protects the attributes for which the Monument was created.

"Unnecessary roads need to be closed. Eighty-five percent of all comments received by the BLM the past two years favored managing the Monument as a remote, backcountry experience with solitude and primitive qualities being the dominant themes."

Knox and Poertner are concerned power boats no longer will be allowed on the river. They say the issue has been settled several times in the RAC meetings and then "they keep revisiting it."

At present motor boats are not allowed from the weekend before Memorial Day to Labor Day and the two are concerned they won't be allowed at all. This will adversely affect a major recreational use of the river, the two said.

But the Friends is concerned that floatplanes and personal watercraft of all kinds will be allowed in the 0-to-3 mile section of the river below Fort Benton.

"Across the U.S. jet skis are causing problems and agencies are seeking ways to limit them," Jones said. "The BLM, on the other hand, is encouraging their presence in the area which has been designated as a Wild and Scenic River. Protection of the river from inappropriate motorized use helps maintain the wild and remote character of the Monument."

Moody credits the BLM for including the type of representatives that make the planning sessions open meetings. Thus, Monument supporters have been allowed to observe the proceedings but they are not allowed to participate, he said.

What disturbs Moody is that the Martz Administration did not appoint a representative of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to the panel developing a management plan. In this manner, he believes, the governor "manipulated the process" in a calculated move to "reduce the overall level of environmental protection likely to be applied to the land within the Monument."

Much of the work has involved wildlife, hunting and fishing in the Monument and without the FWP present, there have been repeated situations in panel meetings in which BLM people are asking each other what the FWP position is on a wildlife or hunting related question, Moody said.

Moody also believes including county commissioners in the process has not been helpful because "their actual role has been as lobbyists for the local ranching and outfitting interests in the Monument area. Many of the questions that should have been addressed by FWP were, in fact, decided by Carl Seilstad and Art Kleinjan."

Seilstad is a Fergus County commissioner and Kleinjan is a commissioner in Blaine County.

But Slagel thinks, on the whole, the management planning process has been going well and is about on schedule. It normally takes about three years to develop a management plan and a Monument management plan will be developed in about that amount of time, Slagel said.

"We're analyzing all the issues. We are done with the scoping meetings and now when the draft management plan comes out we will have public meetings at which we will take comments," Slagel said.

Although Slagel said the planning process is generally on track, he acknowledged a draft management plan has been delayed by 9-12 months because of a lawsuit by the Montana Wilderness Association over three gas drilling leases which the MWA says did not have adequate National Environmental Policy Act analysis.

Public meetings are scheduled to receive comment on those three leases and nine others, Slagel said. The meetings will be held Nov. 8 in Winifred, Nov. 9 in Lewistown, Nov. 10 in Great Falls, Nov. 15 in Chinook, Nov. 16 in Fort Belknap and Nov. 17 in Billings. Times have not been announced, he said.

The Friends group does not appear too upset by these delays. Jones, in a prepared statement, said "for a number of reasons the scheduled process is behind including the fact that the RAC has been asked to participate in forming a preliminary preferred alternative.

"The RAC has agreed on some recommendations but has real questions on others. The members of the RAC, a diverse group of Central Montana citizens, have taken their obligations seriously and to do this, they need more information and time to discuss that information."

But Moody thinks the BLM is struggling and at this point is trying to stick closely to resource protection as expressed by the Proclamation but also dealing with various administrative guidelines. He sees a large, hard-to-change agency not responding to a small but significant course change.

"The contest I see being played out in the BLM planning process is centered on two original and conflicting visions for the lands included in the Monument. First, there is the vision of change that advocates seeing the future as becoming different from the past. This vision advocates greater protection of the resource.

"The second vision is of a future similar to the past. This vision advocates retention of traditional industrial exploitation of the land as the prime value of the area. Recreational uses are present but ancillary to this vision.

"The proposed RMP I see developing is almost entirely a plan for the second vision with only slight adjustments for the possibility of change."

Moody thinks that neighboring landowners are discovering their land is more valuable because the Monument exists. But Knox and Poertner don't see that.

"When we view our private property, we don't want to be cornered into selling to the government," Knox said. He also noted that every time private land is sold to the government there is a loss of taxes to support local institutions like schools.

The federal government sends PILT (payment in lieu of taxes) money to the counties but the Winifred School, for example, hasn't seen a dime of that money, Knox said.

Knox noted that the amount of private land in the Monument, 81,000 acres, is not a small amount of land. Tureck has been quoted as saying private land never has been taken out of a Monument in the history of the Monument system.

But Poertner said while it is true there never has been a successful court challenge to private land inside monuments, the matter can be taken to Congress. And Congress has acted to take land out. In the case of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument in Utah, the town of Escalante was removed, he said.

Both Jones and Moody think that communities near the Monument will benefit from its presence and that Winifred, to some extent, already has benefited.

But Butcher says otherwise.

"Winifred's progress is not due to the Monument. We may get an occasional purchase (from a tourist) -- gas or something -- but Winifred gets a lot more business from hunters," Butcher said. "Unfortunately, like in the CMR, they're cutting down on hunting in the Monument.

"They want you to walk 20 miles to carry your elk out. They want to protect sage hens and they claim that motorized vehicles bother sage hens. That's idiocy. I was raised with sage hens and we always had to shoo them away from our airport. They hatched chicks in our yard," Butcher said.

He added predators, not cars, have resulted in the decline of sage hen populations.

Butcher, like Knox and Poertner, would prefer a return to the Wild and Scenic River designation for the Missouri River in the Breaks area and he keeps hoping that will happen.

"Never before have we had this blatant usage of the presidential executive order which was not intended to take millions of acres out of private use," Butcher said. He acknowledged, however, it will be almost impossible to get it overturned.

"I'm not expecting (President) Bush to do anything," Butcher said.

Tureck believes the benefits from the Monument are more long-term. He noted that the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge is bringing a lot of visitors to Lewistown and a national monument in the neighborhood will do the same thing.

"People like to travel and see national monuments," Tureck said adding, "It also will attract people who want to live here.

"In Central Montana, you have the CMR, the Snowies and now the Monument. They offer a quality of life. They offer a lifestyle. We are just beginning to see the affects of having the Monument here."

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