In his recent inaugural speech, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte spoke about how we have what the rest of the nation wants, saying: “The American dream lives in Montana and it’s here where we are proving what is possible when the government gets out of the way and empowers the people.”

If anything, his words reflect a relative newcomer’s poor understanding of Montana history — and what can happen when you “get government out of the way.”  But long-time Montanans remember.  We lived through and still suffer from the era when government was indeed “out of the way” and the rapacious appetites of the railroad, cattle, timber and mining barons ran rampant, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. 

The record is clear, and while many scars yet remain, the benefits of regulating formerly unrestricted greed and destruction are evident all across this vast state.  

Anyone who knew those who lived in Montana 100 years ago can easily recall their stories of hunters basically wiping out the wildlife populations.  The most distinct example of human-caused destruction of wildlife was the decimation of the buffalo that once wandered our plains in the millions.  

But the slaughter was stopped — not by individuals, but by the government.  While buffalo continue to recover, Montana now boasts healthy populations of deer, elk, antelope and moose — all of which would have been hunted to extirpation were it not for the institution of regulations to prevent their demise.  

Hunting seasons were established to protect the time when existing wildlife carried the next generation to replenish the herds.  Regulatory limits on how many animals one individual could kill were instituted not to crush freedom, as the governor insinuated government has done, but to provide continuing opportunities for Montanans and generations yet to come. 

While our clean rivers and abundant fisheries are the envy of the nation, that’s not by accident.  Plenty of Montanans still remember when the Clark Fork was a dead river that ran red with mining and smelting wastes, which we will continue to wrestle with for decades to come.  

The timber barons ran huge rafts of logs down the Blackfoot, destroying the banks and scouring the riverbed on their way to the mills and leaving behind clearcuts leaching sediment into once-healthy tributaries.  Half a century later, the Blackfoot was again decimated when the Mike Horse mine tailings pond failed, flooding the river with toxic metals that wiped out the fishery.

And of course not all that long ago there was no such thing as the catch-and-release fishing ethic pioneered and promoted by iconic conservationists like Bud Lilly, who would willingly tell friends that in his youth it was “catch and release in bacon grease.”

While the governor lauds “unleashing freedom,” the undeniable reality of Montana’s past is that there must be sidebars on that “freedom” because there are those who will pillage the state’s wealth to get it while they can with no concern for the consequences.

The legislature’s GOP leaders, echoing the governor, have the regulatory laws that restored past damages and now protect Montanans and their environment in their crosshairs.  But laws such as the Montana Environmental Policy Act protect all Montanans — and rest assured Republicans need clean air, water, and soil, too, as well as healthy populations of fish and wildlife.

Montanans continue to suffer from past deregulatory mistakes, which took our electricity rates from the lowest in the region to the highest.  The lesson?  Beware “unleashing freedom” if the result is actually unleashing rapacious corporations to once again plunder and pollute this great state.