Blackfoot Stewardship: New Game

THE GAME THAT NOBODY WINS is familiar to Montanans. It goes like this: sides are chosen, and each justifies their vision for public lands with claims of forest health, recreational tradition, and the hopes of future generations. Lines of communication between quiet and motorized users, conservationists and industry break down. The battle of attrition reaches an impasse when the Forest Service claims a compromise that no party is willing to affirm.

Ron Ogden, President of the Seeley Lake snowmobile club, has seen how this game ends: lawsuits, and a court-determined management plan that one camp grudgingly accepts and the other bitterly dismisses. When the judge¹s fist falls, nobody wins," he says, sitting at the Ice Cream Place just off Highway 93 on a spring day in Seeley Lake. “That's why the Blackfoot cooperative project is so important.”

Historically, primary concerns such as jobs, access, habitat, and quiet trails have been used as opposing chess pieces and moved from opposite ends of the board. It is this lack of coordination that has made public lands conservation in Montana a major challenge for too many years. Meanwhile, whether we like it or not, the “new West” is at Montana’s doorstep. Once open valleys are filling in with new homes, businesses and people eager to share in our quality of life. As Montana changes, age-old debates over public land use sharpen. But Ron and number of others are playing a new game in the Blackfoot watershed. It’s a game where people talk instead of shout, and where everyone has room to win.

SEVEN YEARS AGO, John Gatchell, Conservation Director of the Montana Wilderness Association, approached Ron to negotiate a winter recreation agreement for the Lolo National Forest. "During our first meeting," Ron recalls, "I sat across from John just like this." Reenacting that day, Ron stiffens up, crosses his arms, and looks low and mean from under the bill of his Arctic Cat ball cap and then breaks the pose, wheezing with laughter.

Westslope Cutthroat, South Fork of the Flathead

Ron has reason to be pleased; seven years of negotiations have produced a conservation package that has something for everyone. It's called the Blackfoot-Clearwater Cooperative Stewardship Project, and it benefits the whole landscape from the headwaters to the highway. If this proposal becomes a bill and that bill passes, then snowmobile users will have access to a new 2,000-acre snowmobile area north of Ovando. Horsemen, hikers, and outfitters will see Wilderness signs moved to include the storied mountain passes of Monture Creek. Loggers will have a brand new co-generation facility to generate power for the Pyramid Mountain lumber mill in Seeley Lake and prevent forest fires by burning waste wood removed from the watershed.

And all parties will welcome millions of dollars in funding to restore former Plum Creek Timber lands. Norman McLean once wrote, "A river . . . has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us." The citizens of the watershed that he made famous have listened well. Each may hear something different, but the source is the same. With this in mind, citizens from Lincoln to Seeley Lake have worked together so that the Blackfoot River backcountry will remain wild and free for future generations to use and enjoy.

As Blackfoot residents endeavor to make their shared vision a reality, hope grows for further cooperation on Montana's public lands.