Lewistown News-Argus - 10/1/03
Property owners want out
by Jim Dullenty, News-Argus Staff Writer

The 127 ranchers who own the 81,000 acres of private property within the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument unanimously do not want their property included in the Monument, Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.) said on Tuesday.

Rehberg spoke to the News-Argus following a hearing on a bill he has introduced to remove private property from the Monument which was held on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Matt Knox, speaking for the property owners as head of the Missouri River Stewards, and Hugo J. Tureck, vice chairman of the Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument, testified at the hearing.

Knox is a rancher near Winifred and Tureck is a public lands rancher near Coffee Creek.

The lone Montana congressman said he hopes the U.S. House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation, and Public Lands, which held the hearing, will vote out his bill favorably so it can be taken up by the House Natural Resources Committee.

If that committee approves the bill, it will reach the floor of the House for debate, Rehberg said. He said last year the bill's progress was halted when Congress adjourned. If it does not pass this year, he will introduce it next year, Rehberg said.

Tureck said the bill is unnecessary, that private property owners in the Monument already have all the protections they need and that fear the government will confiscate their land is unfounded.

"Of the 81,000 acres of private property in the Monument, 35,000 is covered by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act which was adopted 27 years ago. During those 27 years, not a single acre of private land has been taken.

All private property rights have been protected," said Tureck.

But ranchers with land in the Monument are concerned about government control and do not want to be in the Monument, Rehberg said. He said the way the land was included in the Monument led to hard feelings on the part of private landowners there.

"The normal ways we do things in this democracy is to conduct our affairs in the light of day. The Monument was created without complete public knowledge or a full disclosure of what would happen," Rehberg said. He said President Bill Clinton and then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt created the Monument "in the late night hours of Jan. 17, 2001, just before Clinton's term ended."

Those who oppose my bill say private property rights are not affected by the Monument. But if that is so, why do they oppose the bill," said Rehberg. "The landowners were left out of the process and they are still out of the process. They still do not have a map they were promised showing property boundaries."

The congressman said he received a petition supporting his legislation signed by more than 3,000 Montanans, most of whom live inside or near the Breaks boundary.

But Tureck said testimony from those attending Bureau of Land Management hearings on the Monument has been overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the Monument the way it is.

"Efforts to dismantle the Monument shortly after its designation generated over 1,400 letters to our governor, 1,100 asking her to keep the Monument as it is," said Tureck.

He added that the first round of public hearings generated 5,700 public comments of which 5,602 supported protection of the Monument in its entirety.

Rehberg, in his testimony to the congressional committee, said "Let there be no mistake, the federal government's decision to include more than 80,000 acres of private land in the Monument's boundary sends one clear and unmistakable message to the families involved: 'Washington wants your land.'"