Viewpoint: Rattlesnake recreation area needs its own management

Andy Kulla

In the 1970’s, when the entire Rattlesnake drainage was checkerboard ownership between the Forest Service and Montana Power Company (MPC), MPC began logging and roading their lands in the drainage, as is still visible today in the lower Lake Creek and Wrangle creek drainages.

This caused great alarm in the public and led to the formation and development of a citizen’s initiative and Rattlesnake advocacy group (Friends of the Rattlesnake). The effort to prevent logging and road building in the Rattlesnake drainage garnered widespread public and political support.

The citizens’ initiative along with congressional and presidential support then put in place lasting protection for the NRA and Wilderness under the Rattlesnake Act of 1980.  That Act designated the current National Recreation Area and Wilderness. The NRA and Wilderness were designated specifically to stop commercial logging and road construction in the Rattlesnake drainage.

The Rattlesnake NRA has its own Management Area in the present 1986 Lolo Forest Plan and strict standards to protect its character, setting and primitive recreation experience. In the new Proposed Action, it is chopped up into three different management areas with much fewer protective measures and would be opened up to new road construction, reconstruction of existing roads and construction of new temporary roads, in addition to timber cutting and removal.

How to keep the Rattlesnake NRA managed like it is without new roads and commercial timber cutting?

The RNRA should be assigned its own Management Area (MA), not only for its unique character and history, but because it is only one of two Congressionally designated areas on the LNF, the other being Wilderness, which has its own MA.

All of the standards in the 1986 LNF Plan should remain in the Revised Plan and it should clearly state that the RNRA is closed to commercial tree removal, new road construction, existing road reconstruction and will be managed in perpetuity, as was the intent of Congress in 1980, for primitive recreation and where the preservation and enhancement of the recreation resource is the number one management objective.