Every day is Public Lands Day in Montana, and other insights from our live podcast in Missoula
Highlights from CWP’s live podcast episode in Missoula, Montana
The Center for Western Priorities (CWP) wrapped up our summer road tour of our “Go West, Young Podcast” with a live episode in Missoula, Montana just in time for National Public Lands Day on September 28th. Our panelists share deep ties to Montana and spoke passionately about the importance of public lands to Montanans, where according to Tracy Stone-Manning, “every day is Public Lands Day.”
Our guests on the Missoula panel included:
- Aaron Murphy, Executive Director of Montana Conservation Voters
- Land Tawney, President & CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers
- Marilyn Marler, State Representative for House District 90 and land management professor at the University of Montana
- Tracy Stone-Manning, Associate Vice President for Public Lands at the National Wildlife Federation
CWP’s Deputy Director, Aaron Weiss, shepherded a lively and thoughtful conversation at the Imagine Nation Brewing Company about the meaning of public lands access, the visible impacts of climate change, the threats to our public lands at the state and federal level, and the importance of raising our voices to advocate for responsible energy and public lands policies. Some of the highlights from our conversation in Missoula are detailed below.
The following excerpts have been edited for clarity.
On why public lands matter so much to Montanans and why it is a high profile issue in the state:
Marilyn Marler: “It’s because we have so many. They’re a big reason why people move here. Public lands are really important to everyone in Montana, and I think that for day-to-day people, it is a bipartisan issue.”
Land Tawney: “We started the first game laws in this country in 1872. There’s been a long history of conservation leadership in this state. Without those leaders we would not have what we have today.”
Tracy Stone-Manning: “People’s values around public lands are held very deeply and it is something that transcends “red and blue,” and we have shown that at the ballot box. It’s National Public Lands Day this weekend, but for Montanans, every day is public lands day. We are surrounded by them, we are fueled by them, many of us feed ourselves from them. We make our livings from them. They’re part of who and what we are as Montanans.”
Aaron Murphy: “Everybody has these deep connections based on memories from when they were little kids. I remember when I was three years old driving through Yellowstone with my parents. I live right outside Yellowstone today.”
On the economic impact of Montana’s public lands:
Aaron: “Public lands generate $7 billion per year, just in Montana’s economy, and they are responsible for 70,000 direct jobs. That’s something that politicians pay attention to, because they should. That’s something that as a state we need to recognize: every time our public lands come under threat, that is a threat to our very economy.”
Marilyn: “I just came from two solid days of tax committee in Helena and the views on science and conservation and whether the government should hold lands, that trickles into our tax code, too, because people were saying we shouldn’t have public lands because we can’t get taxes because they’re not being used for generating money and helping the economy, but they are helping the economy, it’s like the biggest part of our economy and we need to modernize our tax code because of that.”
On the importance of hunting and fishing for conservation funding:
Land: “You look at the history of conservation in this country, and hunting and fishing has been a part of that, whether that’s stopping market killing that was going on at the start of the 1900s to the ‘dirty thirties,’ or the late twenties during the big dust bowl and the lid is coming off the prairie. You had the first Duck Stamp created to try to help out wildlife where hunters are taxing themselves; you had hunters get together with the firearms industry and start taxing firearms and ammunition, not for the general treasury, but for that money to go back to start managing wildlife. Today, when you look at how conservation is done, especially at the state level, without the hunting and fishing community, we do not have money, period.”
On the highlights of the 2019 Montana legislative session:
Marilyn: “There are people who I met who hold the view that there shouldn’t be public land, that the government has no business holding land. I saw a lot of bills that I saw as efforts to privatize wildlife and hunting opportunities in the state and that came up over and over again, and so it was good that most of those didn’t get passed.”
On what’s happening to make sage-grouse populations plummet:
Tracy: “Sage-grouse populations are plummeting all across the West…50% fewer birds in Idaho, for example. 30% less in Wyoming. In 2015 a bunch of stakeholders from across the West got together and said, ‘Hey, you know what would be really bad? If the sage-grouse were listed under the Endangered Species Act. That’d be really bad, so let’s prevent that,’ and they worked really hard together and came up with collaborative plans, got governors on board. Governors from both parties came together and said, ‘This is what’s gonna help the West, this is gonna help not only the bird, but the 350 other species that rely on this beautiful sagebrush-steppe habitat.’ Then a new Secretary comes in and they said, ‘Man, these plans are a problem,’ and subsequently spent a couple years trying to gut them. Now, there is leasing smack-dab in the middle of sage-grouse habitat, not only in Montana but all over the West.”
Land: “It was probably not perfect for anybody, but it was a path forward for everybody, one, to keep the bird off the list, but also so they could have certainty going forward, for either a ranching community, or for oil and gas, so besides how bad this is for the bird, it’s also bad for collaboration, and collaboration is about compromise, and that has become a dirty word in this country, and to me, I think the underlying piece of this is that collaboration doesn’t matter, and sitting down with your neighbor and figuring out a compromise doesn’t matter, and that’s a really bad problem.”
On lessons learned about collaboration:
Aaron: “I think we’ve learned a lot of really good lessons from collaboration, and what I’ve learned is that by collaborating, you build power. It is by working together and teaming up, not just with people with like minds, but people who have like interests. Politics is secondary to the values that we have here.”
On where the effects of climate change are most visible in Montana:
Land: “It’s more about what we’re handing our children…whether you think that humans are engaged in climate change or not, we should be thinking about how we do the best for our fish and wildlife and our natural resources, which include clean air and clean water.”
Marilyn: “There’s a fellow from across the aisle whose always talking about the problem of the ongoing wildfires, but he would never attribute it to the climate might be changing, or that since white settlement the management of fire regime has been different or anything like this, because his answer was ‘environmentalists are preventing us from logging enough.’”
Tracy: “Our fire seasons are 78 days longer than they used to be. Glacier National Park is no longer going to have glaciers in another decade or so. We shut down rivers because of climate: in 2016, the governor shut down Yellowstone River, because fish were dying and it was climate related. We get back to the economy of the $7 billion of economic activity generated and the 70,000 jobs, that’s just in outdoor recreation, that’s not the software company that plants themselves in Missoula or Bozeman because they want to raise their family here. So the economic effects trickle way beyond those big numbers because of our public lands, and our public lands are threatened immeasurably because of climate change.”
On the impact of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in Montana:
Tracy: “The Land and Water Conservation Fund arguably is one of America’s best conservation programs. It’s touched every county in our country. It has touched that river that we’re sitting right next to over and over again because the majority of our river access sites in Montana are funded with LWCF dollars. It’s sort of the unsung hero of American conservation, and yet Congress has been stealing the money almost every year since the fund was created. There was a public lands package that had over a hundred public lands bills and what was the leading force for that was reauthorization for the LWCF. Member, after member, after member went to the Senate floor singing this program’s praises, so they’ve taken a great first step and now they just need to bring it home and finish the job and get it funded.”
On acting director for policy and programs at the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley:
Land: “There’s this thing that’s bringing us together, public lands and public waters, and then you put somebody like William Pendley in charge of the largest public land agency in the country…You have somebody that’s made a career out of wanting to dismantle the very public lands that he now controls. At the very least, he needs to go through a Senate confirmation process and the Senators from Montana and Idaho and Wyoming can ask him the same questions that I have. This isn’t like one speech that he made, this is a career out of saying that he wants to divest public lands. Having him in that position is a slap in the face to hunters and anglers, it’s a slap in the face to the American public.”
On why the Badger-Two Medicine area is so important and why it matters to protect it from oil and gas development:
Aaron: “It’s important to know that not only is it stunning in terms of landscape and in terms of wildlife habitat, and in terms of quality of water, it’s also a sacred place for Blackfeet people and it has been for thousands of years. I just wanted to set the scene for why we’re having that fight. It’s not just because it’s pretty mountains, it’s because for people who I’m not related to, it’s a fundamentally sacred place and we need to listen to how important it is.”
On the importance of advocacy and being heard by elected officials:
Marilyn: “Instead of getting discouraged, I want everyone to know that as an elected person, we do read your comments, even though you might get a form letter back, or no letter back, we’re reading all those comments and you do have an influence.”
Tracy: “As an advocate, I am so grateful to hear our voices matter. Even in the darkest of times, don’t give up. Keep using your voice.”
Land: “People don’t think their voices count in this country because you don’t use it. Use your damn voice! And you might lose — all of us have lost plenty of times up here, but we keep using our voices and we’re trying to rally people to do the same thing, and once you rally those people, you get wins like we did this last spring in the Senate [with the passage of the Public Lands Act of 2019].”
On what a just transition from coal energy could look like in Montana:
Tracy: “Montana sits on a third of the nation’s coal reserves, and this town [Colstrip] was built around this plant, and I tell you, there’s nothing like walking into a high school gymnasium filled with four hundred and some terrified and angry people. They’re terrified because the town and the lives they had built were under threat, and so we have a really deep obligation to those communities who literally powered us to bring them along as part of that transition. There is giant opportunity in the new energy economy in Montana. We have a ton of wind, we have a ton of sun (unless you live in Missoula), we have geothermal resources, so I think the future is actually bright, but the transition is going to be hard. We also have this remarkable asset in what’s called the Colstrip Line. You had to get the power out somehow so there’s a giant line running from Colstrip all the way to the West coast that should be filled with renewable energy.”
On how Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA) has changed along with the changing landscape of conservation:
Land: “We’re a rocket ship, man. When I was hired six years ago we had a thousand members and now we’re closing in on 40,000 members, and that is because of this idea that public lands belong to everybody. Once you start to recognize that story and all the things that led to it, we’re on the precipice of losing that all the time. These times feel pretty bad right now, but I would remind people of the market killings going on in the 1920s, the ‘dirty thirties,’ the rivers that were on fire in the 60's…out of all those bad things came really good stuff: clean air, clean water, our wilderness act, Pittman-Robertson…BHA is very lucky to be in the time and place to be advocating for public lands and public waters to be available to every person in America.”
On Montana’s priorities heading into 2020:
Aaron: “This year, November 5th is an election day, and up for election will be several members of city councils around the state. We have, as an organization, endorsed a good number of candidates who are in line with our mission and they are champions. What we’re doing is laying the groundwork for candidates of the future who can think around the corners so that when we deal with issues like coal plants going away, or a Bakken oil boom that goes bust (even though they said it would never go bust), they’re thinking beyond that, so that’s something to look forward to.”
Land: “What’s awesome about Montana is that public lands issues have risen to that top four or five issues. It’s still, like, when you’ve got a roof over your head and you’ve got a job, conservation comes pretty quickly after that, if not first. I think for me it’s pretty easy, I’m a one-issue voter, but it’s so awesome for me to watch especially our statewide races.”
Aaron: “The threat is still imminent. There are still people…we have a member of the Montana Senate who is the head of the American Lands Council. They are very ferociously advocating for the sell-off and transfer of our public lands that we own, and so we have to keep that fight up, because there are people who have figured out if you say the right things and you say, ‘I support public lands,’ but then they turn around and they vote against, or they ask for less than full funding for them, those public lands that we own are under threat.”
On understanding the nuances of “access” to public lands:
Marilyn: “Sometimes public lands supporters talk about supporting public lands access, and of course that’s important, but I think that phrase has been co-opted by some people who oppose public lands, or oppose conservation on public lands and they talk about access in terms of allowing more motorized access, or not protecting it at all so that everyone can drive on it all the time.”
Land: “There’s hardly any place in this country and in Montana in general that you have to walk into, or use four legs, which is what I mean by horses. These places are finite compared to the places where you can go to recreate on motorcycles and ATVs, which by the way, a lot of people do, a lot of my friends do, my cousin does, all should be a place on the landscape, but there shouldn’t be all access everywhere, all the time.”
We thoroughly enjoyed taking our “Go West, Young Podcast” on the road this summer, and we look forward to future opportunities to talk to conservation champions in their own communities across the Rocky Mountain West. In the mean time, please let us know if there’s a great story to tell about public lands in your backyard. Send us an email at podcast@westernpriorities.org.
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