It’s spring in Montana and summer is just around the corner. The streams begin to swell with the life-giving waters of last winter’s snowpack; the poplar seeds drift on the afternoon air currents to land on these rising waters, which will carry them to fertile soil. Montana’s population is also growing, as residents and visitors alike put their skis away and prepare for what many predict will be record numbers of tourists to our parks and other wild places.
For the nearly 900 members of FOAM – the Fishing Outfitters Association of Montana – this is what we have been waiting for all winter. We are ready and we are excited. But after a year of profound societal changes, we are also thinking about the future. Ours and our rivers ”.
Our future is inexorably intertwined with that of rivers. Economically, we rely on clean, healthy rivers to deliver the iconic experiences that attract our customers from around the world. Whether it’s the cry of a reel as a Madisonian brown trout peels, or the humble beauty of a native cutthroat caught and released in a secret stream, there’s a reason. that so many people come to Montana for. Yet these are just the most obvious ways our rivers fuel our $ 7.1 billion outdoor recreation industry. For all the cars hired to view wildlife in Yellowstone, the unforgettable dinners with iconic mountain views, and amenities purchased from local businesses, rivers are the lifeblood that keeps the environment healthy. In doing so, they keep our economy healthy.
Of course, that’s only half the story. Like many of our colleagues, we do what we do because we love rivers. We like to spend our days in the water. Perhaps more than anything, we love to share this joy with others.
For all of these reasons and more, FOAM supports the Montana Headwaters Legacy Act (MHLA). This historic, locally supported legislation would protect a landscape of rivers in the Greater Yellowstone and Smith river systems by designating them as Wild and Scenic, the strongest form of federal river protection in the United States. This will help us better understand the health of our rivers and respond to any threats that may emerge tomorrow or ten years from now. Equally important, the wild and scenic designations will help raise awareness of the quality of our waters and the urgent need to protect them.
Each of the 17 rivers and streams in the MHLA is unique, and we all fall in love with something different. For some, it’s the scenic mountain views of the Paradise Valley of the Yellowstone River. For others, it’s the roar of living water above an isolated hole in the Boulder. This is part of what makes MHLA’s holistic approach so powerful. Each waterway is part of a larger, connected system. If we secure this system enough to keep it whole, we are protecting something more than the sum of its parts. It is vital that we do this for fish, wildlife and people.
Our river systems, as we know them today, will not last if we do not act now. Many who visit Montana’s rivers see them as limitless pristine resources. But those of us who live and work on the water every day see a more complete story. Indeed, we have a lot to lose. Between increasing human pressures, lower flows at the end of the season, an uncertain snowpack and increasingly frequent algae blooms, our rivers are changing rapidly. These changes are too ambitious to respond with anything less than what the MHLA is proposing. We must look beyond our own personal impacts and act together to achieve the greatest collective impact our rivers need.
FOAM calls on those chosen to represent the Montanais – Senator Jon Tester, Senator Steve Daines and Representative Matt Rosendale – to reintroduce and pass the Montana Headwaters Legacy Act today. We also call on all guides and outfitters in the state, whether or not they work on the rivers, to answer this call and to lead by example. We all depend, directly or indirectly, on public resources. It’s up to us to protect them.
John Barrasso signals his opposition to BLM’s choice of Tracy Stone-Manning for his links with “eco-terrorists”
June 11, 2021
Montana Loans
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Roberta T. Mainor
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso said on Friday he would oppose President Biden’s candidate for the Bureau of Land Management over his early ties to “eco-terrorists,” referring to his stint with the group radical environmental Earth First!
Tracy Stone-Manning, Mr Biden’s choice for the post of director of BLM, was affiliated with the eco-sabotage group three decades ago while studying at the University of Montana, as a Editor-in-chief of the group’s “radical environmental journal” and testifying during a tree pricking test.
“Tracy Stone-Manning has collaborated with eco-terrorists,” Barrasso, the leading Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to the Washington Times.
“She worked with extreme environmental activists who planted trees, threatening the lives and livelihoods of loggers,” he said. “While she was granted immunity from prosecution to testify against her companions in court, her actions were outrageous. This clearly disqualifies her from the position of the next director of the Bureau of Land Management.”
Her opposition comes from Republicans who are concerned about her background as an activist as well as a loan of $ 50,000 to $ 100,000 she received in 2008 while working for Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana. , and which she finished repaying in 2020.
Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall identified the lender as Democratic donor and Montana developer Stuart Goldberg and asked if she was getting “special treatment” with the 6% interest rate, significantly lower than the 11% charged on average at the time for personal consumer loans.
The Times has contacted Ms Stone-Manning for comment.
Ms Stone-Manning, 55, has a top-notch resume in the Montana public service – she served as chief of staff to Montana Governor Steve Bullock and headed the State Department for Environmental Quality – But she got her start in environmental activism with Earth First !, a radical collective associated with civil disobedience, direct action and industrial sabotage.
The group was co-founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, an activist the FBI arrested in 1990 on charges relating to a conspiracy to target a power line tower in Arizona. He said he was not involved but pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and did not serve any jail time, according to the Aspen Daily News.
Ms Stone-Manning’s involvement appeared to last about three years: she said in court testimony that she joined the group in 1988 and in the June 1991 edition of Earth First! journal, which features a wrench and hammer on the masthead, listed her as an editor.
During the 1993 Idaho conspiracy trial, she said she met several men who were later accused of driving metal spikes into trees, known as tree stings, to disrupt a timber sale in the city. Clearwater National Forest near Powell, Idaho.
One of the men, John Blount, asked him in April 1989 to send an anonymous letter to the Forest Service warning them that 500 pounds of bridge points had been driven into the trees.
In her testimony in court, she said that she took the letter and re-typed it on a typewriter she rented from the university, changing some spelling mistakes and removing some profanity, and then typing it out. posted a few days after receiving it.
Why post it?
“Because I wanted people to know that these trees were spiky. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt from the hanging trees, ”she said in the court transcript.
When asked why she had retyped it, Ms. Stone-Manning replied that she had done it because “I didn’t want it on my personal computer.”
According to the 1993 Associated Press report, two of the men, Arvid E. Hartley and Neil K. McLain, pleaded guilty to tying trees and agreed to testify against three others, including Mr. Blount.
In a 2013 interview with the Missoulian, Ms Stone-Manning gave more details, claiming that after Mr Blount handed her the letter, she realized that “now my fingerprints were all over the place.”
“The easy thing to do would have been to burn that letter and go away and not be associated with it, but it was not the right thing to do because the trees were spiky and someone could be injured when the loggers were sent, ”she said. . “So I posted the letter.”
The retyped letter from “George Hayduke” stated that 11 people were involved in tree planting and that the “sales were marked so that no worker was injured”, adding that he would pay them $ 1 for the tree planting. sale, but “you would like to have to find me first and this could be your WORST nightmare.”
During the trial, Ms Stone-Manning said she was not aware of other incidents related to tree planting, although Earth First! did not hide his sympathies for eco-sabotage.
In his book, “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching”, Mr. Foreman described “the correct way to plant a tree and explains why, when taking a bulldozer out of service, pouring sand into its tank. gasoline is much more effective than pouring sugar “. the Los Angeles Times reported in 1990.
Mr Foreman later pointed out that the technique was aimed at stopping logging, not harming people, after California lumberjack George Alexander was seriously injured in 1987 when a bandsaw struck a sharp point embedded in it. a log. The shattered blade flew away, hitting him on the head and cutting his face.
Earth first of June 1991! The newspaper Ms. Stone-Manning is listed on includes a cartoon about planting trees and an advertisement for t-shirts featuring the slogan “Not a tree more” with a spike running through it.
The post, published on the Environment and Society portal, also includes a disclaimer: “Although we do not accept the authority of the hierarchical state, nothing here is intended to challenge us. his police power. “
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the appointment of Ms. Stone-Manning as head of the agency, which oversees 245 million acres of federal land primarily in the West.
She was introduced by Mr. Tester, who called her a “proven leader with experience working across the aisle to get things done”.
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