Great Falls Tribune Guest Opinion - Sunday, April 27, 2003

Rehberg Missouri Breaks bill a mistake
By Mike Penfold

Soon Montanans will once again find themselves in the national spotlight. The 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark crossing of Montana is rapidly approaching. Visitors from across the country are now coming to enjoy our limitless sky, our incredible wildlife, and our role in history.

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument will play a starring role. As a former Bureau of Land Management director for Montana, I was fortunate to participate in the management of this historic public land area.

There has been much controversy through the decades on management of the area. The unsurprising fact is that most Montanans, as well as landowners, want to keep the "breaks" unspoiled. There has been almost no controversy about appropriateness of the ranching and cattle grazing on private land within the area.

Unfortunately Rep. Dennis Rehberg is stirring controversy once more with a proposal to remove private land from the monument. This distracts from the needed work to forge partnerships and good working relationships between landowners, the BLM, people who want economic development from tourism, and recreationists.

The private property question has been answered clearly, convincingly, and repeatedly.

Simply put, the monument will not take away anyone's property, home or access to his to her land.

The monument, to name a few examples, does not encumber anyone's private land, alter how livestock is managed, building of structures or change how wildfire would be fought.

This straightforward answer has been stated repeatedly by BLM officials at all levels - state, regional, and during the past two administrations.

Rep. Rehberg's proposed legislation would have additional unintended consequences Such a bill, for example, would make it much more difficult for private landowners to sell or trade their property to the BLM on a willing seller/willing buyer basis. Congress would have to pass additional and separate laws to add BLM acquired land back into the monument.

As Lewis and Clark said, "We moved on," now Montana's leadership should do the same. Let's move on.

Mike Penfold, Billings, is a former state director of the Bureau of Land Management in Montana. (Mike is also on the Advisory Board of the Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument.)