Montana Wilderness Bill

Alexander Cockburn’s attack (Column Left, April 19) on the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations for their support for the pending Montana wilderness bill grotesquely and deliberately misrepresents the destiny of national forests in Montana. The Montana wilderness bill actually protects about 2.1 million acres, not 1.7 million, and retains the protection of an additional 700,000. Cockburn omitted areas protected as wilderness study areas. These areas include such threatened areas as the Thompson-Seton, Nevada Mountain, the Crazies, Cowboy’s Heaven, Trout Creek, the Sapphires, Badger-Two Medicine, Choteau Mountain, Volcano Reef, Deep Creek, Renshaw Mountain and Falls Creek. Much of the Rocky Mountain Front has been saved from oil and gas drilling.

It does leave unprotected another 3 million acres in Montana, and is far from adequate. For that reason the Sierra Club is also supporting the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which would protect these remaining areas, and additional millions of acres in Wyoming, Idaho and Washington.

But the acres left unprotected by the Williams bill are already unprotected, and, alas, hundreds of thousands of acres of roadless area have already been lost in the last decade. Logging is not the only threat; oil and gas leasing is a major threat to grizzly bear habitat in some of the areas disparaged by Cockburn as “rock and ice.”

That is why the Sierra Club has chosen to protect 2.1 million acres now by supporting the Montana wilderness bill, with as many improvements as we can squeeze out of this Congress. We oppose the so-called “release” language contained in the Montana bill, although as indicated these lands have already been released under existing law. We are beginning our campaign for the passage of NREPA and the protection of this entire ecosystem. We will be working to reduce logging budgets, reduce below-cost timber sales, and use whatever levers we can to protect this region.

CARL POPE

Executive Director

Sierra Club, San Francisco