Wilderness agency director says policits won’t change wilderness-use policy

By Steve Miller, Journal Staff Writer | Saturday, November 11, 2006

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The shift in power in Washington after this week’s election will not affect the success of wilderness proposals such as the one for 71,000 acres along the Cheyenne River southwest of Rapid City, according to Doug Scott, a longtime national wilderness advocate from Seattle.

Scott, policy director for the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, spoke Friday at the Fifth Annual Wilderness Symposium at Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn in Rapid City.

“We’ve had a titanic political change in our country this last week,” Scott told the crowd of nearly 100 people. “I’m here to

say that it doesn’t change anything about the politics of whether there will be any new wilderness in South Dakota.”

Scott said regardless of which political party controls Congress or the White House, it has made no difference in getting wilderness areas designated by Congress in the years since Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964.

He said, for example, President Bush has signed 10 wilderness designations since taking office. He noted that the late Sen. Karl Mundt, a longtime Republican force in South Dakota politics, was one of the original act’s 10 sponsors.

Since the original act, Congress has passed more than 130 laws designating additions to the wilderness system, which now protects 106.7 million acres nationwide.

Scott said his organization only supports local efforts, such as those by the South Dakota Grasslands Wilderness Coalition, which hosted the symposium.

The coalition has proposed federal wilderness designation for 71,381 acres of federal land on the Buffalo Gap National Grassland near the Cheyenne River.

They include 38,895 acres of the Indian Creek area southwest of Scenic, 16,713 acres of the Red Shirt area, 8,555 acres of the Cheyenne River area south of Red Shirt and 10,218 acres of the First Black Canyon area, farther to the south.

“The success or failure of

any additional wilderness in South Dakota depends on what is decided in South Dakota,” Scott told the group.

Only Congress can grant wilderness designation, and it does so only with the support of that state’s congressional delegation, Scott said. Sens. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and John Thune, R-S.D., and Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., haven’t yet announced positions on the proposal.

However, the Black Hills Multiple Use Coalition, 11 West River counties and grazing groups oppose the proposal.

Scott said ranchers with grazing allotments on the national grassland can be assured that those rights will be protected if the areas are designated as wilderness.

Scott said federal law, beginning with the Wilderness Act of 1964, guarantees the rights of grazers with allotments on federal property designated as wilderness.

He said some U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel in the 1960s and 1970s were overzealous in administering wilderness, putting onerous restrictions on grazers.

“Our movement and ranchers complained, and Congress went back and passed more laws specifically protecting the grazers’ rights,” Scott said.

Travis Bies, a Fairburn-area rancher who grazes cattle on some of the national grassland that would be affected near Red Shirt, was among those in the audience Friday night. Bies said he remained skeptical about the wilderness proposal, although he said he wasn’t “100 percent opposed.”

“We have to protect our lands,” Bies said after Scott’s speech. “It is the public’s land, and the public should have use of that land. But there are other ways to regulate the land without wilderness designation.”

Bies, who was elected Tuesday to the Custer County Commission, said other options might include reserving various parts of Buffalo Gap National Grassland as roadless area and others for off-highway vehicle use.

Tom Troxel, executive secretary of the Black Hills Multiple Use Coalition, said many ranchers and others have doubts about the ability of federal laws to protect the grazers if a wilderness proposal is enacted into law. “I think the grazing permittees are not as convinced as the proponents that that’s the case,” Troxel said Friday. “Sometimes, it’s the death of a thousand cuts. They get nicked a little here and a little there, and pretty soon, they’re bleeding to death.”

Cheryl Warren of Custer, manager of the South Dakota Grasslands Wilderness Coalition, said some ranchers are not opposed to wilderness and that even some who are opposed would like a way to keep off-highway vehicles off the federal land they graze.

Scott acknowledged that others, including off-road vehicle enthusiasts and rock hounds, oppose the wilderness proposal.

He and Warren said that “cherry-stem” roads, usually single roads that go partway into a wilderness area, provide some access.

But Scott also admitted that wilderness would mean some uses are restricted. “Multiple use doesn’t mean every use on every acre,” he said in an interview before his speech.

But he said that to get a wilderness bill through Congress, there must be compromise, including provisions for other uses such as off-highway vehicles.

He said prairie dogs and invasive plant species are other concerns but that they can be dealt with.

“My bottom line is, there’s a moral obligation to leave some of this. All we’re really passing on to future generations is the decision whether to keep it.”

He said a wilderness designation isn’t locked in permanently. Scott said Congress can, and has, gone back and tinkered with wilderness protection for some areas.

“I have every confidence that future generations will not judge that we preserved too much but that we preserved too little,” Scott said.

Also speaking at the symposium were Janet Zeller, national accessibility program manager for the U.S. Forest Service, and Tom Domek of Custer, author of the recently published book “Rain Shadow: A Traveler’s Guide to the Buffalo Gap National Grassland.”

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com