Montana: Delegation should rethink releasing wilderness study areas
George Wuerthner
Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, and Rep. Troy Downing, reintroduced Daines' "Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act," which would remove three wilderness study areas (WSAs) from wilderness consideration, releasing them for potential resource extraction.
The areas to be released include the 81,000-acre Middle Fork of the Judith WSA in the Little Belt Mountains east of Great Falls, and the 11,380-acre Wales Creek WSA and 11,580-acre Hoodoo WSA, managed by the BLM and both in the Garnet Range east of Missoula.
The Congressional Delegation lists three justifications for release from wilderness study status. The Delegation claims that removing WSA status will enable wildlife habitat restoration, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and improve public access to public land.
The claim that release from WSA status will reduce wildfire risk, presumably by thinning or logging, ignores recent scientific research. I don't blame the Delegation for their lack of familiarity with the most recent science. Still, a growing body of research finds that "active forest management" (logging/thinning) exacerbates wildfire spread and severity.
To quote from one of the studies, Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent-fire forests of the western United States? "We found forests with higher levels of protection had lower severity values, even though they are generally identified as having the highest overall levels of biomass and fuel loading. Our results suggest a need to reconsider current simplistic assumptions about the relationship between forest protection and fire severity in fire management and policy."
Furthermore, the more access roads and motorized vehicles there are, the more wildfires occur, since human ignitions are the primary source of wildfires. According to the study, human ignitions accounted for 84% of all wildfires and 44% of total area burned.
According to one study of the relationship between roads and wildfire ignition, 95% of human-caused fires occurred within ½ mile of a road. Over 90% of all wildfires from all causes occurred within ½ mile of a road.
To quote from another study: "A large body of scientific evidence and opinion, including from a growing group of U.S. Forest Service scientists, contradicts the current approach of 'thinning' forest wildlands ostensibly to curb wildfires and stop them from reaching and impacting communities. Research concludes that thinning—including thinning-plus-burning—and post-fire logging/clearcutting increase overall tree mortality and carbon emissions, make wildfires spread faster toward homes and/or burn more severely."
Finally, suggesting these roadless areas need "management" to improve wildlife habitat fails to recognize that WSA and other roadless lands contain some of the best wildlife habitat available for many species. For instance, roadless lands are recognized as the best habitat for preserving trout. They are also essential to the security habitat for species like grizzly bear, elk, wolverine, and many species that avoid both roads and trails.
Our roadless lands are critical to our efforts to protect sensitive wildlife, old-growth forests (carbon storage), and non-motorized recreation, which are more limited on public lands, where there are fewer restrictions and more resource exploitation.
In short, none of the rationales for releasing these WSA is legitimate from a scientific or spiritual perspective. Hopefully, the Delegation will consider its decision to eliminate the WSA protections.
George Wuerthner has published several books on wildfire, including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy, as well as several on wilderness, such as Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness The Foundation for Conservation. 541-255-6039