Feds seek input on land

OVANDO, Mont. – The Obama administration launched a nationwide listening tour Tuesday with a firm message that its new conservation agenda for rural places will be driven by local ideas, not some agenda from Washington, D.C.

Representatives from several federal agencies and the White House used the first public session of “America’s Great Outdoors Initiative” to highlight a collaboration of ranchers, timber companies and environmentalists in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Montana is a state, like many in the West, where federal land management and conservation are often hotly debated and can lead to lengthy stalemates.

“The first message, clearly, is that this effort must be bottom up,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Far be it from me, from Iowa or Washington, D.C., or wherever I come from, to suggest I know better.”

Vilsack said in an interview that President Barack Obama expects that the multi-agency listening sessions around the country will result in a report delivered to him by November. The next event will be in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, following sessions today in Missoula, Bozeman and Helena.

Watershed preservation efforts from the Great Lakes to Chesapeake Bay will also be covered, Vilsack said. The goal is to include everything from recreation to economic development, particularly for rural areas where incomes languish compared with most urban areas.

In Montana, the administration officials were joined by the state’s governor and U.S. senators and highlighted a decade-long conservation effort around the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and Glacier National Park.

It has focused on voluntary land sales from a large timber company and conservation agreements with ranchers and landowners to allow for some logging and biomass energy production aimed at improving the area economy while also enhancing wildlife habitat.

Vilsack said any final plans that come out of the initiative will have to be creative with reallocation or better use of current funds.

Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, were integral in persuading the administration to launch the project looking at local partnerships.

Locals said federal agencies can play a big role in the success of such efforts – but they can also hurt when plans from big cities are applied to distant wildlands.

“Urban-based conservation movements have really only succeeded in alienating the very best allies: our ranchers, our loggers, our sportsmen and our farmers,” said Melanie Parker, who lives in the scenic Swan Valley and has played an integral role in getting loggers and environmentalists in the area to talk with one another.