Daines gains federal support to strip wilderness potential from Montana sites

Senator Steve Daines received federal agency backing on Thursday for his bill to downgrade three remote Montana landscapes from potential wilderness to regular public forest.

Officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management told the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining they supported Daines’ S.3527, the Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act. Chris French, associate chief for the Forest Service, told the subcommittee the Trump administration didn’t support creating new wildernesses or wilderness study designations. BLM state official John Raby added that his agency was intent on fulfilling the president’s agenda supporting “fire management, recreation, access … and domestic mineral production to the maximum practical extent.”

Wilderness status is the highest level of protection for public lands. The late Montana Senator Lee Metcalf passed a 1977 bill ordering the Forest Service to consider nine areas totaling more than 973,000 acres as potential wilderness in the state. A separate 1976 law, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, ordered BLM to assess its holdings for wilderness potential. In 2000, BLM set aside 38 WSAs in Montana totaling 447,327 acres.

All those places received Wilderness Study Area designations, and had wilderness-style restrictions on motorized access, logging and management imposed. Although the Forest Service and BLM were supposed to complete reviews for the areas’ permanent status as either federal wilderness or general public land, the WSA status has yet to be resolved.

Daines’ bill would affect three WSAs in Montana. The Middle Fork Judith WSA covers 81,000 acres in the Lewis and Clark National Forest northeast of White Sulphur Springs. The Hoodoo Mountain and Wales Creek WSAs are on Bureau of Land Management land between Ovando and Lincoln. Each comprises about 11,500 acres.

In his bill, Daines cited a 2021 Forest Service assessment declaring the Middle Fork Judith “unsuitable for inclusion in the Wilderness Preservation System.” He noted BLM made the same recommendation on Wales Creek and Hoodoo in 2020. Overall, more than 1.1 million acres of public land in Montana are still considered WSAs. Daines claimed at least 700,000 acres of that had been designated “unsuitable” for wilderness by their managing agencies. Returning those lands to general management would allow more hazardous fuels removal, motorized access, and forest management, Daines said. 

Outside the hearing, several environmental organizations criticized Daines’ bill. Barb Cestero, The Wilderness Society’s Montana state director, called it “deeply flawed.”

“It represents the kind of top-down, one-size-fits-all approach Montanans have consistently rejected,” Cestero said in an email to Mountain Journal. She cited a 2024 statewide survey finding that 75 percent of Montana voters wanted to continue protection for WSAs.  

Daines told the subcommittee that supporters of WSAs are stacking the deck. “There’s so much misinformation and frankly lying on this issue,” as said, arguing that the federal government had failed to meet its own five-year deadlines for resolving the status of the remote areas. Removing their WSA status, he said, would still leave them protected by numerous other laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and existing agency management plans. Daines’ office did not return a request for additional comment.

However, the Trump administration has moved to restrain all those laws from impeding energy and timber development projects. And in answer to a question from New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, French said, “the needs for funding and staffing far exceed the requirements placed on us [in the Forest Service].”

Daines’ bill was one of 23 considered at Thursday’s hearing. It must still be accepted by the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee before it can reach the Senate floor for a vote. No date has been set for further action.

During the hearing, several senators noted they were presenting bills in a third consecutive congressional session. Daines initially proposed the Montana Sportsman Conservation Act in 2021. He had previously tried to strip five areas totaling 449,500 acres of WSA status in 2019.