Rocky Front protection a decades-long struggle

Soon perhaps Gene Sentz can breathe a sigh of relief. Thirty-seven years ago this month, the former school teacher, forester and wilderness packer from Choteau sat down with a group of like-minded friends to start Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front.

At that time, they were concerned about Forest Service proposals to allow oil and gas mining leases on federal lands along the Front. The small group fought the Forest Service, but the leases were eventually granted and some wells were drilled.

An oil well drilled at the head of Blackleaf Canyon in 1970 never panned out. The well is long gone, and the road has become a hiking path.

In 2000, Lewis and Clark Forest supervisor Gloria Flora administratively banned oil and gas leases along the Rocky Front. In 2006, Sen. Max Baucus added a provision to a tax bill that banned oil and gas leases along the Front. Existing leases were either relinquished by companies that held them or bought out by a private foundation that in turn retired them.

Much of the work on the ban was done by Sen. Conrad Burns’ staff, Sentz recalled, but Burns lost the election to Jon Tester in 2006, and Baucus saw the legislation to its finish.

Shortly after the oil and gas ban went into effect, Sentz’s group, which had evolved into the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, started work on what became the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act.

A collaborative group of ranchers, landowners, citizens, outfitters and wilderness advocates, the Coalition came up with a plan to protect recreational, scenic, historical, cultural, fish, wildlife, roadless and ecological values on about 208,000 acres of federal lands as a conservation management area while maintaining traditional uses such as grazing. The bill also added about 67,000 acres to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

Passage of the bill languished in Congress despite popular support until last week, when it was rolled into a defense spending bill along with more than 80 other land-use measures nationwide.

“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Sentz said last week. “It’s like icing on the cake.”

Sentz was hesitant to celebrate until the bill was signed by President Obama, but the House passed the bill on Dec. 4 and the Senate should take up the measure this week.

The bill contains some compromises, including releasing several Bureau of Land Management Wilderness Study Areas in southeast Montana, potentially opening them to future energy exploration. Conservationists, however, say the compromise was worth it.

“It’s fitting to have new wilderness happen by adding onto the Bob Marshall in the 50th year of the Wilderness Act,” noted Peter Aengst, of the Northern Rockies office of the Wilderness Society.

Of the 80-plus land use provisions in the bill, Montana had the most acreage of any state. The Rocky Front act affects 275,000 acres, and the North Fork Watershed Protection Act, which bans any future energy leases on federal lands in the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Flathead River, affects more than 430,000 acres.