Montana delegation backs bill to release wilderness study areas

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) Most of Montana’s Congressional delegation is once again sponsoring a bill to remove three study areas from consideration as designated wilderness.

On Wednesday, Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Rep. Troy Downing reintroduced Daines’ “Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act,” which would remove three wilderness study areas from wilderness consideration, releasing them to be managed as regular federal land. Rep. Ryan Zinke was not listed as a sponsor.

Two areas – the 11,580-acre Wales Creek and the 11,380-acre Hoodoo wilderness study areas managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management – are 40 to 50 miles east of Missoula in the Garnet Range north of Interstate 90. The third area, the much larger Middle Fork Judith wilderness study area, is around 81,000 acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the Little Belt Mountains southeast of Great Falls.

Daines previously introduced the Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act in 2023, but it was never heard in committee. Now, he’s bringing it forward again, and he explained his strangely titled bill in a press release Wednesday.

“As a lifelong sportsman, increasing access to Montana’s great outdoors is one of my top priorities. The ‘Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act’ promotes our outdoor way of life by returning restrictive WSA’s to general public land management, which will improve wildlife habitat restoration, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and unlock better access to public land,” Daines said in the release.

It should be noted that neither hunting nor fishing are prohibited in wilderness study areas. In the past, sportsmen’s organizations have opposed the wholesale elimination of wilderness study areas. However, some have indicated they are considering the Wales Creek and Hoodoo areas could serve as political sacrifices to save other areas.

The wildfire risk in the Hoodoo area was significantly reduced this summer after the Windy Rock Fire burned a majority of the area.

Daines first proposed a similar bill – the Protect Public Use of Public Lands Act – in 2018 to release five Forest Service wilderness study areas, including the Middle Fork Judith. Former Rep. Greg Gianforte joined him but increased the number of wilderness study areas on the chopping block to 29, including those under BLM management. Both politicians had based their legislation off feedback from a select group of conservative counties and user groups, including the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Montana Snowmobile Association. Other organizations protested the bills and the lack of transparency during the process.

This most recent bill is supported by the Montana Logging Association, Montana Snowmobiles Association, Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, Montana Farm Bureau Federation, Great Falls Bicycle Club and the Judith Basin and Powell county commissioners.

In 1976, the BLM established 38 wilderness study areas in Montana, including the Wales Creek and Hoodoo areas. In 1977, the Montana Wilderness Study Act set nine Forest Service study areas aside for wilderness consideration, including the Middle Fork Judith. Federal evaluations of the areas conducted during the 1980s concluded some areas, including the three being considered in the bill, weren’t suitable for wilderness designation.

This year’s bill cites the 2020 BLM Missoula Office Resource Management Plan as justification for eliminating the Wales Creek and Hoodoo wilderness study areas. The plan said the two areas were unsuitable for wilderness designation.

However, the plan was not developed during “a 5-year collaborative process,” as the bill claims, but under the direction of the first Trump administration, which ignored a lot of public comments made during scoping. The three resource management plans for Missoula, Lewistown and Miles City were scheduled to be released to the public in late 2018, but they were delayed when the three offices were required to send the drafts to Washington, D.C., for review and revision. When they were returned and published in May 2019, all three draft plans heavily emphasized natural resources extraction.

A Pew Charitable Trust review of six BLM resource management plans drafted in 2019 found all “would fail to conserve lands that the agency’s own research has deemed worthy of protection; cut decades-old safeguards; minimally protect a fraction of 1% of the areas found to contain wilderness characteristics; and open vast swaths of public lands to energy and mineral development.”

Several Montana conservation organizations protested the Montana plans, including Wild Montana and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. When the draft plans were finalized in early 2020, some changes had been made to cater to sportsmen, but resource extraction still dominated. The Missoula Office’s new objective was to “produce the greatest quantities of forest products from vegetation restoration activities.”

The 2020 plans created a new designation – backcountry conservation area – that allows resource extraction but prioritizes the long-term maintenance of big game populations for hunting. The Missoula plan proposes to manage its three wilderness study areas as wilderness unless Congress releases them. Then, if Daines’ bill passes, portions of the wilderness study areas would become backcountry conservation areas: a 6,100-acre Hoodoos BCA and a 2,365-acre Wales BCA, according to the plan. The remainder of each area is open to any and all uses.

During the 2025 Legislature, the Senate Energy, Technology, and Federal Relations Committee voted 9-4 against a resolution calling on Congress to remove protection from Montana’s wilderness study areas. More than 3,300 Montanans signed a petition opposing the bill and supporting local solutions for study area management.

Some anticipate that more roads will invade wilderness study areas once they’re no longer protected. Zach Angstead, Wild Montana federal policy director, said Daines has countered those claims by saying the areas will still be protected under the Roadless Rule. But now, the Trump administration is on the verge of repealing the Roadless Rule, so that level of protection could disappear. And Daines strongly supports repeal of the Roadless Rule, according to a Dec. 5 email from a Daines spokesperson to the Flathead Beacon.

“Sen. Daines’ push to remove (wilderness study area) protections and roll back the Roadless Rule show that this isn’t about better local management – it’s about opening Montana’s public lands up to large-scale development to benefit corporations, not Montanans,” Angstead said in a statement. “Managing (wilderness study areas) properly requires local collaborative solutions developed by the people who know these places best. The people and the legislature have made it clear that Daines needs to give up this unpopular crusade to undermine and dismantle public lands and start taking his cues from real people who have been working to shape the future of (wilderness study areas).”

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.