Monumental Monuments

 



                               Monument Designation of the Badger-Two Medicine Country
                                     Monument Designation of the Badger- Two Medicine

  

     I think back to days gone by, specifically those early, formative years guiding raft and fishing trips on the Snake River through Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.  What great country that is, and was, for me.  Needing to know a bit of the area's history I learned that Grand Teton National Park had been initially, almost a half century before I arrived on the scene, a National Monument, declared so by the president in 1929 by way of the Antiquities Act of 1906.  That act allowed the president to set aside "land to be protected as important historic, cultural, and ecological sites without the approval of congress."  There's some fine print added to the original Antiquities Act and some of that has been the subject of modern day interpretation and discussion.  Nevertheless, to this day, the president of the United States is allowed to set aside land or water that he deems is needing of protection.  In recent history, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all added numerous monument status to lands and water that were deemed in need of increased protection as National Monuments.  Specifically, in 2016, during his last year in the White House, Barack Obama set aside the Bears Ears country in Utah, more than 1.3 million acres of land as a national monument.  Then the fun started.

   During President Trumps first year in office he directed the Secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, to review some of the existing monuments with an eye toward reducing the sizes of many of which he felt were not being used in a manner consistent with the original intent of the Antiquities Act of 1906.  The 1.3 million acre Bear Ears National Monument along with the 1.6 million acre Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument have taken center stage following the review and may very well be in the process for severe reduction in size in the year ahead.  The Bears Ears is projected to go from the 1.3 million acres down to 120,000.  That's quite a change!  A drastic reduction in acreage is also planned for the Grand Staircase- Escalante as well.  Needless to say, in many quarters, and most certainly among every environmental organization known to man, there has been a loud outcry of opposition to the administrations actions.  "America's conservation legacy defines us and is the envy of the world.  Today is a dark day for that legacy.  "Teddy Roosevelt is shaking his fists.  Undermining one of our bedrock conservation laws and selling out to industry flies in the face of T.R., who president Trump said he wanted to emulate."  Oh boy!

     And here's where it gets interesting.  Ironically, or coincidentally, I'm not sure which, while at the same time taking aim at the two monuments in question, Secretary Zinke proposes that the Badger Two Medicine country of northern Montana become a National Monument, to the tune of 130,000 acres of country that begins six miles from where I'm writing this blog as we speak!  Bear Creek Ranch lies just six miles to the west of the northeast border of the, at this time, informally proposed Badger- Two Medicine National Monument.  More than a few of you reading this blog, many of you guests of ours, or close friends at Bear Creek Ranch over the years, have ridden on more than one occasion into the heart of the Badger- Two Medicine, with us.  You know the country of the Badger- Two Med as well as many others.  You've been there.  You also know it's some pretty special country, raw, rugged, spectacular, and drop dead beautiful.  And you never saw another soul on a ride you did with us.  That country is still quiet, very lightly visited, and even more importantly, well taken care of by those of us that do visit.  And that's the beginning of the rub, the conflict, the internal turmoil that lies right below the surface of potential monument designation.  At first blush, "protecting" the Badger- Two Medicine Country seems like a no- brainer.  After all, this nation's conservation legacy lays in no small part on the efficacy of the original Antiquities Act and the intent of that act is to protect our public lands.  I get that.  BUT.  Does the Badger-Two Medicine country need the additional level of protection that National Monument status would provide it, if any?

    What is so important to recognize at this point in time is that the Badger-Two Medicine country is protected at many levels because it is in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.  The Badger Two Med has been given increased protection over the years from oil and gas exploration and the use of motorized vehicles.  Both of those added levels of regulation were won after lengthy battles on the public and legal stage.  The Badger Two-Med country works very well under the "multiple use" directive of the Forest Service.  Folks hike, fish, hunt, and ride freely, without federal restriction.  There is also a limited amount of livestock grazing also permitted.  In my opinion, and I have been a long time and ardent user of the country in question, the existing levels of protection in the area work real well for about everyone.  The glaring exception to that last statement is the role the Blackfeet Tribe plays in the present and future of the area.  I'll add to that thought in the following paragraphs.

    At this point I'll cut right to the heart of the matter.  The Badger-Two Medicine is everything it is, beautiful, majestic, raw, and rugged because it is not a monument.  It has not nor should be added to National Monument status because it will have a bulls eye painted on it both in this country and around the world.  A bulls eye of visitation that it doesn't need.  The Badger-Two Med is what it is because it has been left alone, unlike our National Parks and Monuments, and monument status will change that irreversibly.  If the Blackfeet Tribe desires more use or management authority in the country then I say bring it to the table. 

     Pushing back on National Monument creation anywhere is hard for me to do.  My natural instinct is go all in on monuments and provide the kind of protection all our remaining wild places need and deserve.  But I am also seeing a change in the character of many of our wild lands as they continue to get more and more visitation and use.  This past summer the visitation in Glacier National Park went well beyond the 3 million mark, almost double the use I normally noted not many years ago.  Trails are crowded as are park facilities.  And the irony to those thoughts is that Glacier National Park is fully visible and directly across Highway 2 from the north boundary of the Badger Two-Medicine.  We look north into the park as we ride just to the south of it and we rarely see a soul on our side of the tracks.  And those souls rarely see us! 

    I cringe at the thought of National Monument protection in the Badger-Two Med.  That country is  good just the way it is today.  I don't want that to change nor do I suspect that current users of the area would embrace that change either.  What I fear is that the enticement of the false narrative of added protection in Monument status will blind many folks to the reality that  National Monuments bring, and that is potentially immense additional visitation and use. 

    As I've heard on many occasions in my life when looking at a difficult decision that doesn't need to be made, the wise man sayeth;  "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The Badger-Two Medicine Country ain't broke.  It is good the way it is.  It doesn't need fixing, certainly not to the extent that Monument status would bring.

    There's a whole lot of stuff in this world I know very little about.  But I do know a whole lot about the Badger-Two Medicine Country.  I know that monument designation of that country will change it forever, and not for the better.  Bill Beck, Winter 2017

An Oxymoron? Managing Grizzlies.

                                             
                                                                Managing Grizzlies

The very contentious issue of debate regarding the "listing" of the grizzly bear is again coming into focus in the American West.  On Wednesday, November 29th, in Missoula, many of this regions grizzly bear bureaucrats will be gathering, once again, to discuss the status of ursus horribilis, most specifically, in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (or NCDE).  The biggest piece of that day long discussion will be to debate the merits of delisting the grizzly in Northern Montana and if in fact that is going to occur how will the grizzly be managed moving forward.

They'll all be there.  You know who I'm talking about!  From Wilderness Watch to the Sahara Club, and all of 'em in between, every environ- meddling outfit within five hundred miles. They'll all be there in force, in all their glory, sanctifying the the status of the grizzly, and theirs as well.  And of course, grizzly bear managers from the Fed, the state and the tribes will be driving the agenda for the day.  I'm looking forward to attending, as a member of the general public and I do hope the public makes it's presence felt. I can already feel the hair on the back of my neck getting stiff! 

I've lived in grizzly bear country for quite some time, going back to the the early 80's and on up through the present.  I am writing this piece, having just come back from feeding in our barn, not expecting to see a bear there but keeping my eyes open regardless.  I think it's a bit late in November to find a hungry grizzly poking around near our feed bins but who knows, it's only been a couple weeks since the last grizzly's presence exited the property.  I've been run out of there on more than one occasion over the years.  There's a foot and a half of snow out there and a whole lot more in the high country so chances are any bear in the area is denned up.

Most of my life over the past forty years has been spent at our ranch, directly adjacent to the southern edge of Glacier National Park, just to the north of the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex, and just west of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.  There's lots of bears in the area, to say the least.  Always has been.  Yes, we've noted some fluctuation in population over the years.  The decade of the 90's was really something, grizzlies everywhere.  One summer we had three different sows with twin cubs on and off the property.  We lost a colt to a sow with a cub one Spring night and the following evening had eight different grizzlies doing a dance around the culvert trap, set up to capture the sow that had killed the colt.  A buddy of mine and myself counted 55 grizzlies between May and June 1st within ten miles of the ranch one year.  It seemed like there were bears everywhere.  These past ten years we appear to have lost the big, dense population of bears that we once had but I don't think they'v gone too far!  The population of those bears appears to have moved, or migrated if you will, in an easterly direction, over to the prairie country and the Rocky Mountain Front, back to their historic habitat, before the advent of the white man. We saw eight of the big bears there this past summer over the course of two days within a few miles of each other.  And I doubt if we saw them all.  There was bear sign everywhere.

I'm wondering if there will be some sharp folks attending the upcoming meeting in Missoula?  Will there be some real outdoor brain power present at that gathering of bear professionals?  Will they all have their laptops at their disposal, ready to augment their argument with satellite imagery data uploaded from a solar powered live feed 200 miles distant on Grant Ridge?  How many of them will have spent years in the out of doors, in bear country, among bears, accumulating the experience, the knowledge, and the wisdom to know that the whole deal, the whole debate, the grist of the entire issue, is not as complex or as difficult to solve as they would have you believe?  There will be several hundred attendees in Missoula on the 29th and several hundred opinions on how to proceed with the debate, "to list or not to list."

There's always going to be bears in this country, in the NCDE.  It's just a matter of how many we can live with, or perhaps how many can live with us.  Of little doubt to me however, is that the number we finally settle on has got to be finite.  In other words, there can't be an unlimited degree of population growth among the big bears.  There has been growth for decades and the results of that have been an increasing amount of man/bear conflict and a feeling among many folks that the biological and social carrying capacity of the NCDE has been reached.  And yes, I do recognize that thought is not likely to be received well among the crowd I expect to be attending!

If I were in a position to make an executive decision regarding the future management of the grizzly bear here's what would happen;  The grizzly bear would once again become the domain of the state of Montana;. the presence of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service would be relegated back to the east side of the Mississippi River, never to be present in this state again, ever;  the population of the grizzly would be capped at its' present number;  legal hunting of the grizzly would be initiated and become a viable management tool in man/bear conflict;  For starters, 50 grizzlies, two third males, and one third females, would be legally harvested each year:  in the NCDE grizzlies will not be present east of Highway 89 from the Canadian border south to Interstate 90.

I've had a richer life having lived with grizzlies and in grizzly country for as long as I have.  I also understand that the grizzly is an animal that needs lots of room to live, a whole lot more than you and I need.  I'd rather see the grizzly in his world than ours.  We don't do well together and one of us always loses when there's conflict.  The bear dies or we get hurt and die as well.  Neither of us wins.  Leave the bear alone in northwest Montana, west of Highway 89.  We'll all be happy.