USFS to open public process on wilderness area radio tower
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest said they would reconsider their decision to put a radio station in a wilderness study area, but a judge has said they can leave the equipment there in the meantime.
Last month, Missoula federal magistrate judge Kathleen DeSoto granted a request from the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, which asked that the Forest Service be allowed to voluntarily reinitiate its project-approval process instead of going further into a lawsuit where the judge might eventually order them to do it anyway. The Forest Service didn’t have to admit it had done anything wrong, and the plaintiffs were disappointed that DeSoto decided the radio equipment could remain in place during the two years she’d given the Forest Service to complete the process.
In the summer of 2020, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest installed five radio repeater stations at various sites across the forest, and one of them was on top of Odell Mountain in the West Pioneer Wilderness Study Area east of Wisdom. Forest Service employees had developed the project in 2017 but did no public scoping. After deciding to use a categorical exclusion of the federal public process, Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest Supervisor Cheri Ford approved the project in April 2020, and the equipment was installed a few months later with no public notice.
No one noticed or no one reported the radio repeater installed in the wilderness study area until the summer of 2021, when Taylor Orr, a member of the Missoula Backcountry Horsemen and a former Forest Service employee, rode to the top of Odell Mountain and was stunned by what he saw there. Sitting about 10 feet off the trail was a large, brown metal box and steel frame holding a 15-foot-tall antenna that clashed with the small whitebark pine trees and alpine vegetation covering the summit.
“My understanding is they landed a helicopter there in 2020 to put in this repeater. And it’s hard to know the truth, but they were supposed to put it off to the west, hidden from view,” Orr said in December 2022. “They claim that when they got up there, there was so much snow on the ground that they had to put it right there. It’s a pretty lame excuse.”
The other repeaters wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But the one on Odell Mountain was in a wilderness study area. The 1977 Wilderness Study Act requires such areas to be managed as wilderness, maintaining what was there in 1977, but some national forests have allowed those protections to slide over the years. Plopping a mechanical repeater station in the middle of a wilderness study area violates that requirement and the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest Plan.
In spring 2022, Orr and the Friends of the Bitterroot hired the Ferguson Law Office to look into the situation. In May, the attorneys sent a seven-page letter to incoming Beaverhead-Deerlodge Supervisor Lisa Timchack detailing the legal issues surrounding the Odell repeater and asking for its removal. When they met with Timchack four months later, she eventually said the repeaters wouldn’t be moved. So they started the formal administrative objection process with the Forest Service. When that went nowhere, they filed a complaint in Missoula federal court in March 2024 and were joined by the Backcountry Horsemen of Missoula and the Selway-Pintler Wilderness Backcountry Horsemen.
“At a time when so many of our public lands are being compromised by resource extraction, road building and the works of humans, it was important for us to challenge this action by the Forest Service,” said Jim Miller of Friends of the Bitterroot. “We recognize that the Forest Service has the authority to construct these towers for communications purposes, but we also believe there are many alternative sites outside the wilderness study area that could have been chosen.”
The plaintiffs charged that the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest didn’t follow the National Environmental Policy Act when it didn’t announce the project and request scoping comments, and the Forest didn’t follow its Forest Plan. They also say that it was inappropriate to use a categorical exclusion meant for “repair and maintenance of administrative sites,” because Odell Mountain isn’t an administrative site. However, none of that was argued due to the Forest Service’s voluntary remand, and the judge noted that the question remains of whether the Forest Service was wrong to use a categorical exclusion.
So DeSoto’s Aug. 19 ruling came down to whether the Forest Service should have to remove the repeaters - all five were contested because they weren’t publicized - while the process is reinitiated. For that, DeSoto had to weigh “the seriousness of the agency’s errors against the disruptive consequences” of removal.
The Forest Service argued that what they did wasn’t that serious because the repeater station has a “negligible effect on wide panoramic views.” The agency added that it is unlikely to change anything even after it allows public comment. The plaintiffs argued that the Forest Service’s actions were serious because it adds to an “alarming underlying trend” of the agency ignoring the public and the public process when making its decisions.
As to any disruptive consequences, the Forest Service says removing the repeaters would affect communications across the forest, especially related to emergencies, and provided declarations from a number of Forest Service employees attesting to its importance. The agency says the Odell repeater, in particular, is a primary link for the Big Hole area.
The plaintiffs argue that the Forest Service’s claims are exaggerated, considering it’s operated for decades without the repeaters. They say the Odell repeater provides only a small percentage of the radio coverage across the national forest.
DeSoto decided the Forest Service had the more persuasive arguments so the repeaters could remain in place. But she agreed with the plaintiffs that the Forest Service should have to complete its reconsideration within the limited time of two years. So for now, the Backcountry Horsemen and Friends of the Bitterroot must wait to see if the Forest Service really chooses to do the same thing after receiving public comment.
“We’re disappointed in the decision that the tower will remain there for the time being. But we’re encouraged that the Forest Service acknowledged in their brief that they should have done the public process,” Miller said.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.